We estimate the longitudinal effects of charter schools authorized by different authorizing bodies on student achievement by using student-level data from Indiana. The results of our analysis point to substantial variation, especially between the state's two largest authorizers: Ball State University and the Indianapolis Mayor's Office. Some of the variation is driven by the types of operators these bodies authorize to run charter schools. However, operator effects are not consistent across authorizers, suggesting a more complex story about how authorization affects student achievement. These results point to the ways that public and private interests in charter schools may complicate the work of authorizers and suggest a need for policymakers to offer more guidance in how authorizers carry out their various accountability mandates.

Scholars have examined the effects of same-gender teachers on student achievement, but the findings are mixed. In this study, we use 7 years of administrative data from students in elementary and middle schools (i.e., Grades 3 through 8) in Indiana to test links between gender matching and student achievement. We find that female teachers are better at increasing both male and female students’ achievement than their male counterparts in elementary and middle schools. The positive effects of having female math teachers are particularly large for female students’ math achievement, but we do not find evidence for a positive gender matching effect in English language arts. In addition, contrary to popular speculation, boys do not exhibit higher academic achievement when they are assigned to male teachers. Our findings suggest that the effects of teacher gender on student learning vary by subject and gender, but the effect sizes are small.

Parents and educators commonly assume that male teachers serve as more effective disciplinarians for boys than female teachers. Do schools tend to assign male teachers to teach boys with perceived behavioral issues? Our study uses administrative data in Indiana to investigate male teacher assignment in elementary school. We find that boys with at least one suspension record in the previous year are 12% more likely to be assigned to a male teacher than boys without suspensions, whereas girls' suspension histories do not predict assignments to male teachers. In addition, teachers who have 10% or more of students with suspension histories are 19.5% more likely to migrate to another school and 16.2% more likely to leave the state's teacher workforce. Our study suggests that male teachers have an elevated risk of being assigned to teach male students with suspension histories, which may contribute to teacher turnover.

As researchers continue to examine the growing number of charter schools in the United States, they have focused attention on the significant heterogeneity of charter effects on student achievement. Our article contributes to this agenda by examining the achievement effects of virtual charter schools vis-à-vis brick-and-mortar charters and traditional public schools and whether characteristics of teachers and classrooms explain the observed impacts. We found that students who switched to virtual charter schools experienced large, negative effects on mathematics and English/language arts achievement that persisted over time and that these effects could not be explained by observed teacher or classroom characteristics.

Research on college admissions shows that all students tend to benefit from overmatching, but high-status students are most likely to be overmatched, and low-status students are most likely to be undermatched. This study examines whether mismatching takes place when students are sorted into classrooms in middle school. Given prior research on effectively maintained inequality, we theorize that classroom sorting acts as an opportunity for privileged parents to obtain a qualitative advantage for their children. Our research uses administrative data from Indiana and hierarchical linear models to analyze classroom mismatch in sixth through eighth grades. We find that privileged students are more likely to be overmatched in both math and English language arts (ELA) classrooms but that overmatching is beneficial in math but detrimental in ELA. This suggests that inequality can be effectively maintained only if parents have an accurate understanding of what constitutes an advantage.