Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are pleased to present a Contributor Column from Amanda Schmidt, the Senior Policy Research and Communications Associate at Blueprint Labs.
We provide a bio for Amanda below.
Amanda Schmidt is the Senior Policy and Communications Associate at Blueprint Labs, where she supports policy partnerships, leads Blueprint’s social media strategy, and communicates the lab’s research to a policy audience. Prior to joining the Blueprint team, she worked as a Senior Analyst in economic consulting at Cornerstone Research. She received her BA in Economics from Colby College, where she minored in Creative Writing and Cinema Studies.
Advancing Rigorous and Actionable Charter School Research
Over the past 30 years, charter schools have expanded nationwide. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, charter schools enrolled 7 percent of U.S. public school students in 2021, up from 4 percent in 2010. Amid this growth, families and policymakers want to better understand charter school performance and its systemic impacts. While researchers have evaluated charter schools’ short-term effects on student outcomes, significant knowledge gaps remain.
In fall 2023, MIT Blueprint Labs launched the Charter School Research Collaborative to address those gaps.
Blueprint Labs is a non-partisan research lab that aims to use data and economics to help policymakers design more equitable education systems. The Charter School Research Collaborative aims to connect practitioners, policymakers, funders, and researchers to make charter school research more actionable and rigorous. To achieve these goals, the Collaborative supports new research-practice partnerships, funds policy-relevant charter school research, and shares findings among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to encourage evidence-based decision-making.
Joshua Angrist, MIT Ford Professor of Economics and Blueprint Labs Co-Founder and Co-Director, is enthusiastic about the future of the Collaborative. “The debate over charter schools is not always fact-driven,” he states. “Our goal at the lab is to bring convincing evidence into these discussions.”
Developing a Research Agenda
The Collaborative began with a two-day kickoff in November 2023. Blueprint convened over 80 researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers to discuss pressing charter school questions and how to include diverse voices in the research process. Blueprint Affiliate Susha Roy presented a new paper, co-authored by Affiliate Sarah Cohodes and commissioned by the Charter Collaborative, which summarizes existing lottery-based research on charter school effectiveness. She highlighted the gaps in the current research. This presentation, along with several panel discussions between leading charter stakeholders, laid the groundwork for the Collaborative’s research agenda, a collection of integral, understudied charter school questions. The agenda covers:
- The long-term effects of charter schools
- Charters’ impacts on non-test score outcomes
- Which charter school practices have the largest effect on performance
- Variation in charter performance across different contexts
- How charter school effects vary with demographic characteristics and student background
- Charter schools’ impacts on outcomes for not just students, but teachers and communities
- How system-level factors, such as authorizing practices, affect charter school performance
Since the kickoff convening, the Collaborative’s research agenda has expanded. As diverse stakeholders’ priorities shift, the research agenda will continue to evolve.
Supporting New Research
To answer the questions posed in this research agenda, the Collaborative funds high-quality, policy-relevant charter research. The Collaborative’s third request for proposals (RFP) opened in December, with letters of inquiry due on February 5, 2025. Blueprint aims to fund actionable research aligned with the research agenda. Grants range from $10,000 to $250,000, depending on project scope and size.
In July 2024, Blueprint announced the results of the Collaborative’s first RFP. “Our Charter Collaborative RFP generated a truly spectacular response with many strong proposals for exciting new projects,” stated Angrist. MIT Class of 1922 Professor of Economics and Blueprint Co-Founder and Co-Director Parag Pathak was also enthusiastic about the pool of proposals, noting that he was “impressed by how many high-quality proposals we received across such a wide range of topics.”
Ultimately, the Collaborative funded 11 proposals in the first RFP that span all seven of the Collaborative’s research agenda questions. Projects include short proposal development projects that scope the feasibility of larger studies, small-scale pilot studies, and full research projects that will answer large-scale questions over several years. The 11 projects include:
Benefits for Life: Effects of Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools on Long-Term Social and Academic Student Outcomes (Pilot Study)
- How does attending an intentionally diverse charter school impact students’ long-term outcomes? This pilot study will build the infrastructure for a large-scale lottery-based study of intentionally diverse charter schools’ impacts on long-term student outcomes like post-secondary success, civic engagement, health, and the extent to which graduates live in diverse neighborhoods. Researchers at Columbia University’s Teachers College will partner with the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition to study at least ten of its member Charter Management Organizations.
Beyond the Test: Understanding How Charter Schools Impact College Outcomes (Full Research Project)
- What impact do urban and nonurban charter schools have on college preparation, enrollment, and graduation, and what school and contextual factors explain these patterns? In a mixed-methods study of Massachusetts charter schools that combines qualitative case studies with lottery-based estimates of charter effectiveness, researchers at the University of Michigan seek to understand the pathways of urban and nonurban charter school students to and through college.
Development of a Study to Assess Kansas City Charter School Effectiveness (Proposal Development)
- How do charter schools impact students’ behavioral and long-term outcomes? For this project, researchers at the University of Missouri – Kansas City will partner with Show Me KC Schools to assess the feasibility of studying the impact of Kansas City charter schools on factors such as students’ attendance, discipline, college enrollment, and college major choice.
Does More Money Make a Difference for Charter Schools? (Pilot Study)
- How do increases in funding for charter schools affect students’ outcomes? The Thomas B. Fordham Institute plans to collaborate with researchers at St. Louis University, and Ohio State University to study how different charter schools allocate increased funds and how these funds impact students’ academic and behavioral outcomes in Missouri and Ohio.
Equitable Access in Washington, DC (Pilot Study)
- How do policy adjustments to a unified school lottery system affect charter enrollment patterns, retention, student access, and preferences? This pilot study will explore the “equitable access” priority system introduced to the Washington, DC centralized school lottery, which allows schools to prioritize disadvantaged students. Researchers at Syracuse University will work with the Washington, D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education to evaluate the entire DC public school system, with particular attention to its charter schools.
Evidence from Rochester, NY, on the Long-Run Impacts of Charter Schools (Proposal Development)
- How do charter schools impact students’ long-term outcomes in Rochester, New York? This University of Rochester project will scope the feasibility of estimating charter school attendance’s impact on student outcomes, including higher education attainment, employment outcomes post-schooling, and interactions with the criminal justice system.
Examining the Effects of Charter Schools on Student Non-Test and Postsecondary Outcomes (Pilot Study)
- How does charter school attendance impact K-12 and postsecondary outcomes in Camden, New Jersey? This pilot study will establish partnerships and data use agreements with stakeholders in New Jersey that can be used to facilitate future charter school research. Specifically, through partnerships with One Camden, NJSMART, and New Jersey’s Statewide Data System (NJSDS), RAND researchers will create a student-level panel dataset that can be used to study the effect of charter school attendance on a range of understudied outcomes, such as non-test outcomes and long-term effects, and explore differential effects across charter school models. Researchers at RAND will utilize student data from One Camden, including ranked school preferences, lottery, and enrollment data; K-12 student outcomes from NJSmart; and post-secondary and labor market outcomes from the NJSDS.
From Markets to Minds: The Role of Accountability and Authorization in School Competition (Pilot Study)
- How is school competition affected by authorizer policies? In this pilot study, Olivia Edwards at Texas A&M will work with the Education Research Alliance in New Orleans to evaluate how authorizer renewal and accountability policies impact charter school competition and performance. She will examine the extent to which policies impact schools through increased market power and the threat of school closures.
Non-cognitive and Long-term Effects of KIPP Charter Schools (Pilot Study)
- What impacts do KIPP Atlanta charter schools have on students? Researchers at Florida State University and the RAND Corporation will partner with KIPP Atlanta to conduct a pilot study that evaluates long-term and behavioral student outcomes, including college enrollment and labor market outcomes.
Permanent School Closures and the Charter Sector: Evidence from St. Louis and Kansas City Teachers and Students (Full Research Project)
- How do charter school closures affect teachers and students? In this project, researchers at Lehigh University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Missouri Public Education Foundation study the impact of permanent school closures on student outcomes like academic achievement, attendance, and discipline. They also look at teacher outcomes, including attrition and turnover. Researchers will work with the Missouri DESE to study charter and traditional public schools in St. Louis.
Scaling Virtual Tutoring for New Mexico Charter Schools (Full Research Project)
- How effective is high-dosage tutoring in reducing pandemic learning loss in charter schools? Seeking to solve the scale-up challenge for New Mexico charter schools, researchers at the University of Chicago Education Lab have partnered with the New Mexico Public Education Department to experimentally evaluate two virtual math tutoring models for middle school students.
Get Involved
Are you interested in learning about charter schools’ effects, receiving funding for your charter school research, or building new research-practice partnerships? Get involved in the Charter School Research Collaborative:
- Learn more about how to apply for funding.
- Find a research-practice partner at one of the Collaborative’s quarterly matchmaking sessions. Matchmaking sessions provide charter school researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with the opportunity to develop new research partnerships. Over the last year, over 100 charter stakeholders have attended matchmaking events, resulting in over 70 matches.
- Join our mailing list to receive regular announcements about funding opportunities, Collaborative updates, and new charter school research findings.