Success Academy is a rapidly expanding charter school network in New York City, with schools located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. In the 2016-2017 school year, Success Academy served roughly 14,000 students across 41 elementary, middle, and high schools, which at the time was about 13 percent of the students attending charter schools in the city and equivalent to about 1.2 percent of all New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) students.

MDRC looks back to the beginning of Success Academy and uses naturally occurring lotteries for the seven Success Academy schools in operation during the 2010- 2011 school year to estimate the difference in students’ academic achievement caused by the opportunity to enroll in a Success Academy school. The educational outcomes of elementary students who received placements in their local Success Academy schools by being selected in lotteries are compared with the outcomes of students who entered these lotteries but were not selected for their local Success Academy schools. Because not all students selected in lotteries enrolled in Success Academy schools and some of those not selected through lotteries for their local (or closest) Success Academy school ended up enrolling in a different Success Academy school, MDRC also estimates the effects of enrolling in a Success Academy school (for the lottery sample). A statistical adjustment makes it possible to compare those who won their lotteries and did enroll in Success Academy schools with those who lost their lotteries and did not enroll in Success Academy schools.

Read the full research article by Rebecca Unterman about charter schools from MDRC