TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hanushek,Eric A.
AU  - Kain,John F.
AU  - Rivkin,Steven G.
AU  - Branch,Gregory F.
TI  - Charter School Quality and Parental Decision Making With School Choice
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11252
PY  - 2005
Y2  - April 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11252
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11252.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/736-0942
Fax: 650/723-1687
E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu

John Kain
Director
Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Scienc
Mail Station GC21
P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX  75083-0688
Tel: 972-883-2555
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased

Steven G. Rivkin
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144
Chicago, IL 60607
Tel: 312.413.2368
E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu
AB  - Charter schools have become a very popular instrument for reforming public schools, because they expand choices, facilitate local innovation, and provide incentives for the regular public schools while remaining under public control. Despite their conceptual appeal, evaluating their performance has been hindered by the selective nature of their student populations. This paper investigates the quality of charter schools in Texas in terms of mathematics and reading achievement and finds that, after an initial start-up period, average school quality in the charter sector is not significantly different from that in regular public schools. Perhaps most important, the parental decision to exit a charter school is much more sensitive to education quality than the decision to exit a regular public school, consistent with the notion that the introduction of charter schools substantially reduces the transactions costs of switching schools. Low income charter school families are, however, less sensitive to school quality than higher income families.
ER  -