The Effect of a Charter School in Peru (Fe Y AlegrÍA) on School Achievement:Exploiting a School Lottery Selection as a Natural Experiment

Abstract

Abstract This study estimates the effect of one charter school (a public-private partnership) on mathematics and reading comprehension among second grade students in Peru between 2007 and 2012. The study uses an identification strategy to estimate the causal effect of a charter school. The strategy is based on a natural experiment of an admission lottery to determine which students would be accepted into second grade at the charter school. The results show that the charter school achieved substantial gains in the scores of the lottery winners that are equivalent to 0.4 standard deviations. We also find that this effect has increased over time.