This study presents evi­dence that a STEM-focused sum­mer pro­gram for high-achiev­ing, under­served high school stu­dents that is held annu­al­ly at a selec­tive, pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty increas­es appli­ca­tion and enroll­ment rates at selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties and per­sis­tence in STEM. The study uses records from the pro­gram admis­sion process to reduce selec­tion bias by focus­ing on appli­cants who advanced […]

The fis­cal and edu­ca­tion­al con­se­quences of char­ter expan­sion for non-char­ter stu­dents are cen­tral issues in the debate over char­ter schools. Do char­ter schools drain resources and high-achiev­ing peers from non-char­ter schools? This paper answers these ques­tions using an empir­i­cal strat­e­gy that exploits a 2011 reform that lift­ed caps on char­ter schools for under­per­form­ing dis­tricts in […]

Can schools that boost stu­dent out­comes repro­duce their suc­cess at new cam­pus­es? We study a pol­i­cy reform that allowed effec­tive char­ter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to repli­cate their school mod­els at new loca­tions. Estimates based on ran­dom­ized admis­sion lot­ter­ies show that repli­ca­tion char­ter schools gen­er­ate large achieve­ment gains on par with those pro­duced by their […]