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Charter schools in Massachusetts have significantly accelerated student learning over the last quarter century, a newly released study shows. Compared with their counterparts in the state鈥檚 traditional public schools, charter students earned higher marks on state exams and the SAT, with particularly large gains in cities like Boston.

Notably, however, these effects fluctuated over time. After consistently outperforming district schools for more than a decade, MIT researcher Geoffrey Kocks found that charters forfeited their relative advantage entirely between 2015 and 2019, only to bounce back during the pandemic. By 2022, charters statewide once again enjoyed a meaningful edge, though not one as great as they exhibited before the slowdown. 

The shifts depicted in could reframe perceptions of a school choice sector that has for . They also offer a more textured picture of how one of the most influential education initiatives of the 21st century has evolved during a period of major social and economic changes, including the COVID shock and a lengthy period of academic stagnation that has been felt around the country. 

鈥淚 found it really interesting to refresh our understanding of what’s taking place, and to see that these effects were not static,鈥� said Kocks, a doctoral student working under the auspices of MIT鈥檚 . 鈥淚t’s not some kind of fixed charter effect that’s going to be large no matter what.鈥�

A half-decade slide

To track those effects over time, Kocks gathered data from admissions lotteries for 32 Massachusetts charter schools between 2002 and 2025. When charters receive more applications than they have seats, those lotteries determine which families are offered a place. They also create a natural experiment, effectively assigning otherwise-similar students to either charters or their local public school on a random basis. 

Prior lottery-based research 鈥� conducted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joshua Angrist, who helped oversee Kocks鈥檚 work at MIT 鈥� has demonstrated powerful gains accruing to students enrolled at urban charters embracing the so-called No Excuses model of high academic standards, rigorous behavioral codes, and supplemental instruction through tutoring and extended school days. But much of that literature was published during the Bush and Obama presidencies, with fewer follow-up studies through the 2020s.

Kocks broadly points to similar benefits. By combining the lottery outcomes with students鈥� academic records from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, he also estimated large improvements to learning in the charter sector. For each year of attendance at a charter middle or high school, he estimated that students鈥� scores on the state鈥檚 mandated MCAS exam rose by six percentile points in math and three points in reading. 

Composite scores on the SAT also rose by 11.5 points per year of exposure to a Massachusetts charter school 鈥� a phenomenon driven almost entirely by charters in Boston and a ring of communities in its immediate vicinity, which lifted SAT scores by 25.7 points annually. Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged children also experienced an especially large boost, ascending by an average of 8鈥�11 points in math and 5鈥�6 points in reading on the MCAS.

Yet those impressive results began a steady decline in 2013, eventually receding to the point that charter performance was statistically indistinguishable from that of neighborhood public schools. Again, the trends were highly place-specific, with steep declines in urban charters and much gentler ones elsewhere; SAT scores for Boston-area charter students fell by a disquieting 43.1 points per year of charter enrollment between 2015 and 2019. 

The latest lottery and testing data offers signs of a strong rebound. Boston charters have reversed most of the damage sustained during the late 2010s, with the average student in the 2020s actually outpacing the annual literacy gains seen from 2010 to 2014.That movement is variable, though, with top-performing schools pulling away from scuffling ones.

Jim Peyser, who served a long stint as Massachusetts secretary of education during the period included in the study, said he was glad to see Boston students bouncing back. But he described the recovery in the state capital as 鈥渁 tale of two cities.鈥�

鈥淪ome of the charter schools that fell off a lot between 2019 and 2021 have come back pretty strongly,鈥� Peyser said. 鈥淏ut then you’ve got others that were struggling before COVID. They lost ground during the pandemic, and they haven’t necessarily recovered even back to where they were before.鈥�

Searching for explanations

But what could have caused the mysterious, half-decade slide in relative charter performance?

Kocks first ruled out a set of possible explanations, including modifications to state tests (Massachusetts shuffled through several assessments during this time) and transformations to student demographics (which were mostly small). Instead, he detected two important changes to charter school personnel at a critical time.

First, he found that principals at Boston-area charter schools turned over somewhat faster than those employed by Boston Public Schools in each year from 2015 to 2018. Greater churn was also evident when examining charters in and around Boston against those scattered further afield; just 20% of Boston-area charters were still led by their original CEO as of 2017, compared with 60% in others across the state.

Even more suggestive was a long-running trend in teacher qualifications: Boston-area charters were initially more likely to hire teachers who majored in, or were specifically licensed to teach, their classroom subject. But between 2012 and 2017, the percentage of their teachers with domain-specific knowledge fell from 55% to 40%, while the share of those teachers stayed flat in non-Boston charters.聽

Kocks noted that these findings did not represent causal proof. Yet several sources noted the potential importance of changes to Boston鈥檚 charter workforce around the time learning began to slip.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Orin Gutlerner led a teacher residency program at the highly regarded . During that time, he said there was no difficulty signing up would-be educators with sterling academic credentials. With unemployment still high in the wake of the Great Recession, and the education reform era approaching its zenith, he sometimes received 20 or more applications for each slot.

But as the labor market recovered, many young employees chafed at the long hours and tough expectations at No Excuses schools. Testing evidence was promising, but school leaders were concerned enough about burnout to consider changing their practices. Gutlerner cited the example of a charter that quietly abandoned a requirement that teachers make at least 10 check-in calls to families each week, reasoning that it didn鈥檛 rise to the importance of their other commitments.

鈥淲hen we saw those strong academic results, and the teacher attrition, we said, 鈥榃e need to go all the way in the other direction and be much more mindful of teacher sustainability,鈥� 鈥� recalled Gutlerner, who now leads in the city鈥檚 Roxbury neighborhood. 鈥淚t’s not that that’s necessarily bad, but these things are very delicate balances, and it started to tip more in that direction.”

At the same time, Boston Public Schools was becoming more aggressive at recruiting high-level talent. In 2014, BPS that it had hired for 82% of its open positions by the end of June 鈥� a startling increase from just 9% the year before.聽

Sarah Cohodes, a professor of education policy at the University of Michigan who has published a string of influential studies on Boston charter schools, observed that the district鈥檚 generous compensation package also helped draw job seekers away from alternatives like Match, Bridge Boston, and Uncommon Schools.

鈥淭he BPS salary scale gets you close to $100,000 in nine years,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o people wanted those jobs, and once BPS got it together in terms of hiring, that was much more appealing than the charters.鈥�

鈥楢ntiracist鈥� policies under scrutiny

Kocks鈥檚 paper does not directly address another prominent hypothesis for charters鈥� temporary swoon.

In for The Boston Globe, education advocate Steven Wilson asserted that a sector-wide embrace of 鈥渁ntiracist鈥� policies聽led to the drop in achievement. The former charter leader 鈥� who was from the high-performing network he founded after authoring a blog post calling for more rigor in classrooms 鈥� last year making the same case in a national context.

The implementation of equity-focused initiatives, such as restorative justice or culturally responsive curricula, can be difficult to document over time. The MIT study did consider the possibility that Boston charters鈥� gradually decreasing rates of out-of-school suspension harmed learning, but ultimately showed that suspensions fell at BPS schools at the same time (albeit from a lower baseline). 

Gutlerner called Wilson鈥檚 views 鈥渁 pretty narrow analysis,鈥� while noting that increasing skepticism toward many aspects of school reform led to a reconsideration of discipline in some campuses. Charter teachers themselves suddenly became conversant on topics like the then-ubiquitous 鈥�,鈥� spurring dissent within schools, he remembered.

鈥淚nstead of methodically evaluating and shifting practices and making improvements, there were some wholesale calls to just rip out the entire behavior management system,鈥� he said. 鈥淥r to stop retaining students, ever.鈥澛�

Besides suspensions, a raft of stringent expectations and customs came to define many successful charters, such as silent hallway transitions and . The , and other moment-to-moment techniques used by school staff to keep instruction running smoothly, could have played a more important role than disciplinary penalties like suspension and detention, Gutlerner reflected. 

Peyser added that, as charter leaders became more distantly removed from the generation of founders who established the schools鈥� cultures, some of the organizations鈥� urgency and vision dissipated as well.

鈥淭hat [turnover] is associated with a weakening of the ‘No-Excuses’ culture, which many of the schools had adopted,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat possibly led to a general relaxation of school culture, which had been so important to their success.鈥�

Kocks said those historic observations, along with the drifting trajectory of learning outcomes at charter schools, indicated that much of their striking benefits could be contingent upon their own policies and implementation, along with conditions far outside their walls.

鈥淲hat surprised me was seeing how unstable these effects were, both in terms of the decline and the eventual rebound,鈥� he concluded. 鈥淭hat means that these inputs matter a lot, and we have the potential to make big changes in how effective schools are within a relatively short period of time.鈥�

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