TY - JOUR AU - Abdulkadiroglu,Atila AU - Angrist,Joshua AU - Dynarski,Susan AU - Kane,Thomas J. AU - Pathak,Parag TI - Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters and Pilots JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15549 PY - 2009 Y2 - November 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15549 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15549.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Atila Abdulkadiroğlu Duke University Department of Economics Durham, NC 27708 E-Mail: atila.abdulkadiroglu@duke.edu Joshua Angrist Department of Economics MIT, E52-353 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Tel: 617/253-8909 Fax: 617/253-1330 E-Mail: angrist@mit.edu Susan Dynarski University of Michigan Weill Hall 735 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091 Tel: 734 615 5113 Fax: NA E-Mail: dynarski@umich.edu Thomas J. Kane Harvard Graduate School of Education Center for Education Policy Research 50 Church St., 4th Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/496-4359 E-Mail: kaneto@gse.harvard.edu Parag Pathak MIT Department of Economics 50 Memorial Drive E52-391C Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: 617/253-7458 E-Mail: ppathak@mit.edu AB - Charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools. In return for this freedom, charter schools are subject to heightened accountability. This paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from Boston, where charter schools enroll a growing share of students. We also evaluate an alternative to the charter model, Boston's pilot schools. These schools have some of the independence of charter schools, but operate within the school district, face little risk of closure, and are covered by many of same collective bargaining provisions as traditional public schools. Estimates using student assignment lotteries show large and significant test score gains for charter lottery winners in middle and high school. In contrast, lottery-based estimates for pilot schools are small and mostly insignificant. The large positive lottery-based estimates for charter schools are similar to estimates constructed using statistical controls in the same sample, but larger than those using statistical controls in a wider sample of schools. The latter are still substantial, however. The estimates for pilot schools are smaller and more variable than those for charters, with some significant negative effects. ER -