How Charter Schools Affect Future Earnings

Charter schools—publicly funded schools of choice that operate outside the direct control of traditional school districts—have grown rapidly since their inception two decades ago. More than 6,000 schools operate in more than 40 states, serving over 2 million students. Most of the research on charter schools’ efficacy has focused on short-term effects on student test scores. This paper makes new contributions to a much thinner literature on the longer-term effects of charter schools. Using longitudinal data from Chicago and Florida, this study extends our prior research (Booker, Sass, Gill, & Zimmer, 2011) on the effects of attending charter schools on educational attainment, and it is the first study to estimate the long-term effects of charter schools on earnings in adulthood