Three essays on the economics of education

The implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has prompted efforts to hold schools accountable for meeting high standards. This has led to an increased emphasis on improving the quality of schools. I have been studying the recent education reforms directed towards that.;The first essay studies which types of charter schools are effective utilizing longitudinal data from the large school district of Milwaukee. Using student fixed effects to deal with self-selection, I find that charter schools, on average, have no effect on student achievement. However, this masks important heterogeneity in the effectiveness of charter schools. Charter schools with higher autonomy from the district are effective. I show that students in these charter schools would read at a grade level higher than students in traditional public schools (TPS) in three years.;Essay 2 estimates the competitive effects of these different types of charter schools on the outcomes of students attending TPS. Identification comes from the longitudinal variation in competition levels generated by the entry and exit of these different types of charter schools. I find that MPS charter schools with higher autonomy from the district and non-MPS charter schools have significant positive effect on students' outcomes in neighboring TPS. I conclude that a competitive school market with high autonomous charter schools is beneficial to all students, even those who remain in TPS.;Under NCLB, school districts are required to rely on the private sector to provide supplemental educational services (SES) to students in failing schools. In the third essay with Carolyn Heinrich, we estimate provider effects in a large school district of Chicago. We find that the district provider is more effective, on average, than non-district providers and other on-site providers. On average, students attending SES with online and for-profit providers gain less than those attending with other providers. We identify specific providers that are effective, and observe some consistency across years.;I expect this research to not only inform education policy as NCLB comes up for reauthorization, but to also address the viability of interventions that employ a private market model to improve public sector outcomes.