Readers of JPGB have already seen the working paper, but Education Next now has the peer-reviewed and published version of Booker, Sass, Gill, and Zimmer’s study of the effect of charter high school on graduation and college attendance. Since you are way ahead of the curve you already knew that attending a charter high school increases the probability that a student will graduate high school and go to college.
The study is so clever because it focuses on students who attended charter middle schools. Some went on to charter high school and some did not. By comparing the two groups Booker, et al reduce the selection bias of choice, since all of the students chose charter schools at least for middle school. But there may still be some selection bias in who chooses to continue in charter high school, so Booker, et al address that with a neato instrumental variable. Some students don’t go on to charter high school because there isn’t one available nearby. Their analysis predicts whether students continue to a charter high school based on the availability of nearby charter options.
Check out the highly readable Ed Next article for yourself. Also watch the podcast interview with Brian Gill.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
This study is such old news, Jay – it’s not like the authors were selfish enough to hide their study from the world until it was at long last finally published in one of these dinosaur-tech dead tree journals, whose publication processes are so slow you can measure them in geologic eras.
I for one am thankful that as we endured the interminable wait for the publication process to reach its long-delayed conclusion, parents, scohols, policymakers and the American people were not denied access to this important information as they made critical decisions for their children, their families, their institutions, their communities, and their country.
I mean, can you imagine living in a country where scientists actually kept important results from their work secret from people who needed to know them just because they hadn’t yet been laboriously translated into the form of black markings printed on processed tree carcasses?
[…] Learners, African-American and Latino students. There’s mounting evidence that charter schools decrease dropout rates, increase college attendance rates and improve the quality of colleges that college-bound students […]
[…] Learners, African-Americans and Latinos. There’s also mounting evidence that charter schools decrease dropout rates, increase college attendance rates and improve the quality of colleges that their graduates […]
[…] Learners, African-Americans and Latinos. There’s also mounting evidence that charter schools decrease dropout rates, increase college attendance rates and improve the quality of colleges that their graduates […]
[…] Learners, African-Americans and Latinos. There’s also mounting evidence that charter schools decrease dropout rates,increase college attendance rates and improve the quality of colleges that their graduates […]