School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents' choices reward effective schools and punish … ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics … attendance, and college quality. Parents prefer schools that enroll high-achieving peers, and these schools generate larger …

non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non …

special-need students, groups that charter critics have argued are typically under-served. The results show overall gains of 0 ….35 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn. LEP students, special … education students, and those with low baseline scores benefit more from time spent at KIPP than do other students, with reading …

schools enroll a growing share of students. We also evaluate an alternative to the charter model, Boston's pilot schools …