Proponents of charter schools argue that contracting out schools to management organizations can improve student performance and decrease costs by giving schools autonomy in exchange for accountability. Little evidence exists, however, on how contracts are determined, whether contracting is an effective policy in education, and the effects of terminating contracts. In New Orleans, most of the public schools have been contracted out to nonprofit management organizations over the past ten years. Several of those contracts have been terminated and schools are then contracted out to new management organizations. The empirical analysis of how authorizers make decisions about which charter schools are allowed into the market, and which schools have their contracts terminated revealed that initial approval decisions were strongly predicted by the subjective ratings of the outside charter application evaluator, but not by other application characteristics derived directly from the applications. Schools were renewed for operation if they had high test levels and/or value added, but family preferences were not taken into consideration (as measured by enrollment levels and growth). The results of the difference-in-differences and matching analysis used to analyze the effect that district-to-charter and charter-to-charter restarts and closures have on student performance indicated that elementary student test scores increase by the second year after both types of restart. The scores increase even sooner, after only one year for charter-to-charter restarts. However, if failing schools are closed instead of being contracted out, students do not experience any change in test scores. High school students experience decreases in test scores and in the probability of graduating following restarts and closures. / 1 / Whitney Ruble
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_58001 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Contributors | Ruble, Whitney (author), Harris, Douglas (Thesis advisor), School of Liberal Arts Economics (Degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Tulane University Digital Library |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Embargo |
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