Charter School Practices and Student Selection : An Equilibrium Analysis

We model charter school entry and choice of educational practices. Student achievement depends on cognitive ability, motivation, effort, and match of school curriculum to ability. Exercising charter school autonomy over curriculum, to maximize achievement gains, the charter sets curriculum to attract the highest ability students. Achievement gains are modest, consistent with empirical evidence. We next investigate a no-excuses charter that not only chooses curriculum but also enforces an effort minimum. Consistent with the evidence, highly motivated students select into the charter, achievement gains are large, and the largest gains accrue to those who would be lower performers in public school