Dr. Anastasia Semykina, Florida State University

Abstract Economic theory predicts that, by aligning household preference with the education production, more choice and competition would lead to an improvement in school quality and student outcomes. However, empirical studies of the competition effects have obtained mixed results, ranging from negative or insignificant effects, to significant positive effects. In this paper we use travel time to measure charter school penetration, which, we argue, more accurately reflects the ease of access to charter schools. We further combine the instrumental variables approach with student and school fixed effects to account for non-randomness in charter location and student mobility. Our school level analysis shows that charter penetration leads to an improvement in teacher qualifications in nearby traditional public schools. Our student level analysis shows that charter competition leads to systematic positive gains in math score gains, but not in reading. The improvements are mostly concentrated in middle schools and among white students.