Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston’s Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools
January 6, 2009
On January 6, 2009, the Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released a groundbreaking report by a team of Harvard and MIT researchers at an Understanding Boston forum that, for the first time, effectively compares student performance at charter and pilot schools against a similar group of students attending traditional public schools in Boston. The report uses an innovative research design based on school lotteries that made possible a direct comparison of charter and pilot school students with their peers, for the first time.
