Do Charter Schools Improve Students’ College Preparation, Enrollment, and Degree Completion?

Cohodes and Pineda (2025) ask whether attending Massachusetts charter schools affects students’ college preparation, enrollment, and degree completion, and whether these effects differ between urban and nonurban schools. They analyze randomized admission lottery data from Massachusetts charter schools between 2002 and 2014, linked to state education records and National Student Clearinghouse college data. They find that urban charter schools substantially increase test scores and raise bachelor’s degree completion by about 4 percentage points. Nonurban charter schools do not raise test scores but increase four-year college enrollment by roughly 10 percentage points and bachelor’s degree attainment by nearly 12 percentage points, more than double the urban effect.

Why This Article Was Selected for The Policy Scientist

This article addresses a central policy question: how K–12 school models shape long-run educational attainment rather than short-term test performance. That focus is especially timely as policymakers increasingly question the adequacy of standardized tests as the dominant accountability metric. Cohodes and Pineda have contributed extensively to the charter school literature, and this study builds directly on widely cited Massachusetts lottery-based work while extending the outcome window to college completion. The use of linked administrative, College Board, and National Student Clearinghouse data is a major strength, allowing credible measurement of long-term trajectories. The randomized admissions lotteries provide strong causal identification, well aligned with rigorous causal inference standards. While the institutional context is Massachusetts-specific, the findings plausibly generalize to other states with heterogeneous charter models and robust postsecondary data systems.

Full Citation and Link to Article

Cohodes, S. R., & Pineda, A. (2025). Different paths to college success: The impact of Massachusetts’ charter schools on college trajectories. American Economic Review: Insights. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20240391

Central Research Question

This article asks whether attending a Massachusetts charter school causally affects students’ long-run educational trajectories, particularly college preparation, enrollment, persistence, and degree completion, and whether these effects differ systematically between urban and nonurban charter schools. The authors are especially interested in whether test score impacts are reliable indicators of later success, and whether charter schools that do not raise standardized test scores nonetheless improve postsecondary outcomes. By disaggregating charter effects by locality and school model, the study examines whether different educational approaches generate distinct pathways to college success.

Previous Literature

The study builds directly on a large and influential literature evaluating charter schools using randomized admissions lotteries, most prominently work by Angrist, Pathak, and Walters on Massachusetts charter schools. That literature consistently finds large test score gains in urban “No Excuses” charter schools and weaker or negative test score effects in nonurban charters. Subsequent work has linked urban charter attendance to improved college enrollment and related outcomes, particularly in Boston. However, evidence on college completion is more limited, and even scarcer for nonurban charter schools and alternative charter models. The authors contribute to debates about whether test scores are an adequate proxy for long-term outcomes and whether successful charter models are narrowly defined by urban, No Excuses practices. Their work also engages broader research showing that school effects on test scores and on longer-term attainment may diverge.

Data

The analysis uses administrative data from Massachusetts charter school admission lotteries between 2002 and 2014, covering student cohorts projected to graduate high school from 2006 through 2018. These lottery records are linked to rich state administrative data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, including standardized test scores, course-taking, Advanced Placement and SAT outcomes, high school graduation, and demographic characteristics. Postsecondary outcomes are drawn from the National Student Clearinghouse, allowing observation of college enrollment, persistence, institutional characteristics, and degree attainment up to six years after expected high school graduation. The sample includes 15 urban charter schools and 9 nonurban charter schools that offered middle or high school entry grades and were oversubscribed, ensuring randomized admission. Match rates across datasets exceed 99 percent, and coverage of college outcomes is nearly complete, strengthening confidence in the observed long-run results.

Methods

The authors exploit randomized charter school lottery offers as instruments for charter attendance in a two-stage least squares framework. Separate indicators are used for attendance at urban and nonurban charter schools, allowing direct comparison of effects by locality. The empirical strategy includes lottery risk-set fixed effects to account for application patterns and school-specific admission probabilities, along with baseline student characteristics to improve precision. This design yields local average treatment effects for students induced to attend charter schools by lottery offers. The authors conduct extensive checks on balance, attrition, and first-stage strength, and apply Lee bounds where necessary for outcomes with modest differential attrition. For college outcomes, attrition is minimal, and no bounding is required. Overall, the statistical approach is firmly grounded in causal inference and aligns with best practices in the experimental and quasi-experimental education literature.

Findings/Size Effects

The results reveal sharply different patterns for test scores and long-run attainment. Urban charter schools increase standardized test scores substantially, raising math scores by roughly 0.48 standard deviations and English language arts scores by about 0.32 standard deviations after two years. Nonurban charter schools, by contrast, reduce test scores modestly, by approximately 0.11 to 0.14 standard deviations. Despite this divergence, both types of charter schools improve college preparation, though through different mechanisms. Urban charters increase AP participation, SAT taking, SAT scores, and completion of a college-ready curriculum, while nonurban charters reduce AP participation but significantly increase completion of the state’s MassCore college-preparatory curriculum.

Turning to postsecondary outcomes, both urban and nonurban charter schools raise four-year college enrollment. Within two years of expected high school graduation, urban charter attendance increases four-year enrollment by about 8 percentage points, while nonurban charter attendance increases it by roughly 10 percentage points. More strikingly, both types of schools increase college completion, but the effects differ in magnitude. Urban charter attendance raises bachelor’s degree attainment by about 4.2 percentage points within six years, relative to a comparison mean of roughly 22 percent. Nonurban charter attendance raises bachelor’s degree attainment by approximately 11.9 percentage points, relative to a comparison mean near 47 percent, more than twice the urban effect. The authors also show that urban charter gains in completion are largely explained by enrollment in higher-graduation-rate institutions, whereas nonurban charter gains reflect both institutional quality and higher within-college persistence and completion.

Conclusion

The study demonstrates that charter schools can improve long-run educational attainment through multiple pathways and that standardized test score gains are not a necessary condition for college success. By extending the outcome horizon to degree completion and comparing urban and nonurban charter models, the authors show that alternative educational approaches can yield substantial benefits even when short-term test scores do not improve. The findings challenge the practice of evaluating schools primarily on test performance and underscore the importance of measuring outcomes that align more closely with long-term human capital formation. Methodologically, the use of randomized lotteries and linked administrative data provides strong causal evidence. Substantively, the results broaden the understanding of how different K–12 institutional designs influence college trajectories, with implications for education research and policy well beyond the Massachusetts context.