Lottery estimates suggest oversubscribed urban charter schools boost student achievement markedly. But these estimates needn’t capture treatment effects for students who haven’t applied to charter schools or for students attending charters for which demand is weak. This paper reports...

One of the most wide-ranging reforms in public education in the last decade has been the reorganization of large comprehensive high schools into small schools with roughly 100 students per grade. We use assignment lotteries embedded in New York City's high school match to estimate the effects of...

Centralized and coordinated school assignment systems are a growing part of recent education reforms. This paper estimates school demand using rank order lists submitted in New York City's high school assignment system launched in Fall 2003 to study the effects of coordinating admissions in a...

In July 2005 the Boston School Committee voted to replace the existing Boston school choice mechanism with a deferred acceptance mechanism that simplifies the strategic choices facing parents. This paper presents the empirical case against the previous Boston mechanism, a priority matching...

The design of the New York City (NYC) High School match involved tradeoffs among efficiency, stability and strategy-proofness that raise new theoretical questions. We analyze a model with indifferences--ties--in school preferences. Simulations with field data and the theory favor breaking...

Talented students compete fiercely for seats at Boston and New York exam schools. These schools are characterized by high levels of peer achievement and a demanding curriculum tailored to each district's highest achievers. While exam school students do very well in school, the question of...

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...