Injecting Successful Charter School Strategies into Traditional Public Schools: Early Results from an Experiment in Houston

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Roland G. Fryer, Jr.
Harvard University, EdLabs, and NBER
May 2012

Abstract
In the 2010-2011 school year, we implemented five strategies gleaned from practices in successful
charter schools – increased instructional time, a more rigorous approach to building human capital,
high-dosage tutoring, frequent use of data to inform instruction, and a culture of high expectations –
in nine of the lowest performing schools in Houston, Texas. We show that the average impact of
these changes on student achievement is 0.277 standard deviations in math and 0.061 standard
deviations in reading, which is strikingly similar to reported impacts of attending the Harlem
Children’s Zone and Knowledge is Power Program schools – two widely lauded charter
organizations.

http://conference.nber.org/confer/2012/SI2012/LS/Fryer.pdf