First Degree Earns: The Impact of College Quality on College Completion Rates

We use a Massachusetts merit aid program to provide the first clear causal evidence on the impact of college quality on students’ postsecondary enrollment decisions and rates of degree completion, where college quality is defined by a variety of measures including on-time graduation rates. High school students with test scores above multiple thresholds were granted tuition waivers at in-state public colleges of lower quality than the average alternative available to such students. A binding score regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below these thresholds yields two main findings. First, students are remarkably willing to forego college quality for relatively small amounts of money. Second, choosing a lower quality college significantly lowers on-time completion rates, a result driven by highskilled students who would otherwise have attended higher quality colleges. For the marginal student, enrolling at an in-state public college lowered the probability of graduating on time by more than 40%. The low completion rates of scholarship users imply the program had little impact on the in-state production of college degrees. More broadly, these results suggest that the critically important task of improving college quality requires steps beyond merely changing the composition of the student body

Charter Schools and the Road to College Readiness: The Effects on College Preparation, Attendance and Choice

The analysis here focuses on Boston's charter high schools. For the purpose of this report, an analysis of high schools is both a necessity and a virtue. It is necessary to study high schools because most students applying to charters in earlier grades are not yet old enough to generate data on postsecondary outcomes. Charter high schools are also of substantial policy interest: a growing body of research argues that high school may be too late for cost-effective human capital interventions. Indeed, impact analyses of interventions for urban youth have mostly generated disappointing results.This report is interested in ascertaining whether charter schools, which in Massachusetts are largely budget-neutral, can have a substantial impact on the life course of affected students. The set of schools studied here comes from an earlier investigation of the effects of charter attendance in Boston on test scores.The high schools from the earlier study, which enroll the bulk of charter high school students in Boston, generate statistically and socially significant gains on state assessments in the 10th grade. This report questions whether these gains are sustained

School Accountability, Postsecondary Attainment and Earnings

We study the impact of accountability pressure in Texas public high schools in the 1990s on postsecondary attainment and earnings, using administrative data from the Texas Schools Project (TSP). We find that high schools respond to the risk of being rated Low-Performing by increasing student achievement on high-stakes exams. Years later, these students are more likely to have attended college and completed a four-year degree, and they have higher earnings at age 25. However, we find no overall impact - and large declines in attainment and earnings for low-scoring students - of pressure to achieve a higher accountability rating

Charter School Demand and Effectiveness: A Boston Update

This report begins with a focus on applications to charter schools. While much attention has been focused on charter school waitlists, waitlist data can be misleading. It includes duplicates, but also includes waitlists that have been rolled over from year to year and might be an unrealistic measure of demand. Instead, the authors investigate three factors related to demand: the yearly percentage of each middle school and high school class that applies to a charter in our lottery sample; the percentage of applicants that receive an offer from a charter school; and where students ultimately attend. This report also examines the demographic makeup of charter school enrollees and compare it to BPS. The next section follows the path of charter school students and report their performance in charters using the evidence from the lotteries. The lottery sample now covers many more charter schools. The 2009 report included findings from eight schools. This report includes MCAS results through 2012 from 12 schools and many more cohorts from the original schools, with additional newly opened schools contributing to the demand analysis. In addition to updating the test score results from the 2009 report, this report breaks down the test score effects by student subgroups. Trends are investigated over time in charter performance and by school groups. Finally, this report gives results using statistical controls, which allow the authros to estimate effects for attending charter schools that do not have sufficient lottery records for the more rigorous lottery based analysis. The lottery sample now contains almost all Boston charter schools with entry grades at middle or high school

Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston’s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice

We use admissions lotteries to estimate effects of attendance at Boston’s charter high schools on college preparation and enrollment. Charter schools increase pass rates on Massachusetts’ high-stakes exit exam, with large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored scholarship. Charter attendance also boosts SAT scores sharply and increases the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, the number of AP exams taken, and AP scores. Charters induce a substantial shift from 2- to 4-year institutions, though the effect on overall college enrollment is modest. Charter effects on college-related outcomes are strongly correlated with charter effects on earlier tests.Institute of Education Sciences (U.S.) (Grant 08120031)NewSchools Venture Fun

TEACHING TO THE STUDENT: CHARTER SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS IN SPITE OF PERVERSE INCENTIVES

Abstract Recent work has shown that Boston charter schools raise standardized test scores more than their traditional school counterparts. Critics of charter schools argue that charter schools create those achievement gains by focusing exclusively on test preparation, at the expense of deeper learning. In this paper, I test that critique by estimating the impact of charter school attendance on subscales of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and examining them for evidence of score inflation. If charter schools are teaching to the test to a greater extent than their counterparts, one would expect to see higher scores on commonly tested standards, higher-stakes subjects, and frequently tested topics. Despite incentives to reallocate effort away from less frequently tested content to highly tested content, and to coach to item type, I find no evidence of this type of test preparation. Boston charter middle schools perform consistently across all standardized test subscales

Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston's Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools

Assesses the impact of charter and pilot schools on achievement by tracking students who showed similar academic traits in earlier grades across school types. Also compares applicants who won the lottery to attend charters or pilots and those who did not

Merit Aid, Student Mobility, and the Role of College Selectivity

In this paper, we investigate the role of college selectivity in mobility decisions (both in-state and out-of-state) of freshmen students following Georgia's HOPE scholarship program. How did HOPE affect the selectivity of colleges attended by Georgia's freshmen students? Did it induce Georgia's freshmen students who would have otherwise attended more selective out-of-state colleges to instead attend less selective in-state ones? Or was there movement to more selective ones, both in-state and out-of-state? Using student residency and enrollment data from IPEDS and selectivity data from Barron's and Peterson's, we find that in the aftermath of HOPE, Georgia freshmen attended relatively more selective colleges overall. Disaggregating further, we find that Georgia freshmen attending in-state colleges attended more selective ones. Georgia freshmen attending out-of-state colleges were also more likely to attend more selective colleges, most likely due to an increase in the reservation price to go to out-of-state colleges following HOPE. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks and have important policy implications. In particular, Peltzman had observed in his classic 1973 paper that in-kind subsidies can induce individuals to invest in less quality-adjusted human capital than they might otherwise. The fact that Georgia freshmen attended relatively more selective colleges in the post-HOPE period allays, to some extent, the concern that state merit aid programs can adversely affect long-term outcomes and human capital formation