Testimony of Elizabeth Setren, Tufts University Professor, on Charter Public School Research and the 2010 Achievement Gap Act

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Elizabeth Setren and I am an education economist and the Gunnar Myrdal Professor of Economics at Tufts University. I study issues of school integration and school choice in Massachusetts. I analyzed the impact of the 2010 Achievement Gap Act, which resulted in two peer reviewed academic papers whose findings I’d like to share with you today.

In the first paper, we study what happened in Boston when the 2010 Achievement Gap Act
raised the charter cap. 

Using rigorous lottery-based design, we study students who chose to apply to charter schools and compare the outcomes of those who were randomly admitted to those who were not. This removes other factors such as student motivation or background that might explain different outcomes across school types. The lottery-based design means that we estimate the causal impact of attending a Boston charter school.

We find that the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education chose the
relatively higher performing charters to expand their network.

Second, we find that the new Boston charter schools that opened when the charter cap lifted had large positive effects on MCAS math and English exam scores. And this positive impact was comparable to the effectiveness of the original schools in the network. The Boston charter sector maintained its large positive effects on test scores as it expanded.

In the second paper, I find that the 2010 law change and the concomitant changes to charter advertising led special education and English language learners to apply to Boston charter schools at rates that mirrored their prevalence in Boston. 8 Lottery comparisons showed that charters produced large achievement gains for special education and English Language learners that are comparable with the gains for general education students.

Together with other research, there is clear evidence that the expansion of charter seats in
2010 positively impacted students that wanted to attend charter schools in Boston. I would be happy to answer questions now or later about this and other research on charters and charter enrollment caps.