TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dobbie,Will
AU  - Fryer,Roland G., Jr
TI  - Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17632
PY  - 2011
Y2  - December 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17632
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17632.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Will Dobbie
Education Innovation Laboratory
Harvard University
44 Brattle Street, 5th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-Mail: dobbie@fas.harvard.edu

Roland G. Fryer, Jr
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 208
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-9592
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: rfryer@fas.harvard.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2012-03-01
AB  - Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible estimates of each school's effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures -- class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no certification, and the fraction of teachers with an advanced degree -- are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by over forty years of qualitative research -- frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations -- explains approximately 50 percent of the variation in school effectiveness. Our results are robust to controls for three alternative theories of schooling: a model emphasizing the provision of wrap-around services, a model focused on teacher selection and retention, and the "No Excuses'' model of education.  We conclude by showing that our index provides similar results in a separate sample of charter schools.
ER  -