An Analysis of Charter State Laws: Exploring Legal Factors Impacting Charter School Performance

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Schools of Choice: How Do They Measure Up?

Abstract

This study examines the effects of five charter school state laws on the mean school performance of charter schools across the country. It exploits within-school and within-state variation to estimate the impact of specific policy provisions on charter performance over a four-year academic period. Preliminary results show that states with multiple authorizers experience a negative performance effect compared to states with only state or local school boards as authorizers. When time interactions with policy provisions are included in the model, the effects of quality authorizing and appeal process are positive and statistically significant indicating that over time, states with quality authorizing and appeal process laws are doing better than states without. Other analyzed provisions are not statistically significant.

Author

• Christopher B. Yaluma, The Ohio State University