New schools, new students, new teachers: Evaluating the effectiveness of charter schools

It is widely acknowledged that charter schools tend to have less experienced teachers and higher teacher turnover, but to date, little effort has been made to identify the contribution of faculty experience and retention to overall charter effectiveness. I do so using a twelve-year panel of charter and mainstream student achievement in North Carolina, focusing on the state’s middle schools. Indeed, new charter schools had twice the rate of new teachers as new mainstream schools, as well as lower rates of faculty retention. Consistent with past research, I find significant returns to charter school age in terms of math and reading achievement, and I rule out the possibility that charter maturation was driven by higher-achieving students selecting into older schools. Faculty development explains, at best, a small share of the observed maturation over the initial years of charter schools’ operation. Charters of all ages were relatively ineffective at improving math achievement, but were on par with mainstream schools at improving reading achievement by their sixth year of operation.

► Faculty development explains a small share of returns to charter school age.
► Dynamic panel methods are preferred to student fixed effect estimators in this context.
► North Carolina charters reduced math achievement, less so in older schools.
► North Carolina charters reduced reading achievement up to their sixth year of operation.
► Students did not positively select into older charters schools.
► Students positively selected into charters with higher teacher retention.