Specifically, the study found that charter high school attendance is associated with an increase of about $2,300 in maximum annual earnings for students between ages 23 and 25—or roughly 12 percent higher earnings than comparable students who attended a charter middle school but then switched to a regular public school for high school.
It also found that charter higher school students are six percentage points more likely to persist in college for two years, even after controlling for postsecondary enrollment. That’s significant, the study states, because most students who drop out of college do so during their freshman year, which means making it to the second year makes it more likely that students will earn a college degree and reap the economic benefits that go along with being a college graduate.
The study, which was published this week in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, is titled “Charter High Schools’ Effects on Long-Term Attainment and Earnings.”
The authors of the study say the positive relationships between charter high school attendance and long-term outcomes are “striking” in light of the fact that charter schools in the same jurisdiction—in this case, Florida—have not been shown to have a large positive impact on students’ test scores.
“To the degree that our findings hold up in a broader set of charter students, locations, and different analytical approaches, a natural question to ask is what is leading to these positive associations for educational attainment and earnings,” the team of researchers who authored the study wrote.
The team included Tim R. Sass, a distinguished university professor in policy studies at Georgia State University, and Ron W. Zimmer, an associate professor of public policy at Vanderbilt University.
