TY  - BOOK
AU  - Dobbie,Will
AU  - Fryer,Roland G,Jr
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City 
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2011///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - December 2011; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible estimates of each school's effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures -- class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no certification, and the fraction of teachers with an advanced degree -- are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by over forty years of qualitative research -- frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations -- explains approximately 50 percent of the variation in school effectiveness. Our results are robust to controls for three alternative theories of schooling: a model emphasizing the provision of wrap-around services, a model focused on teacher selection and retention, and the "No Excuses'' model of education.  We conclude by showing that our index provides similar results in a separate sample of charter schools
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w17632
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w17632
ER  -