PRIISM faculty members Ying Lu, Sharon Weinberg and Meryle Weinstein along with PRIISM/A3SR alum Dorothy Seaman provide a comprehensive examination of school choice patterns and student achievement across the elementary years by following a cohort of students from kindergarten in 2012 through 5th grade in 2017. While existing literature often relies on a traditional charter versus zoned school dichotomy, this study fills a notable research gap by accounting for the diverse spectrum of available school types. The study examines student achievement in New York City across the array of school types in which parents choose to enroll their children: assigned schools (zoned school), unassigned public schools including intra-district and inter-district schools and magnet schools, charter schools, and gifted and talented programs offered by the NYC DOE. By explicitly incorporating these alternative school choice types in their design, the authors were able to contrast outcomes between different non-assigned choice types and produce estimates of achievement differences that are more robust to selection bias. They found that charter school students outperform peers in zoned or unassigned public schools by 0.25–0.50 standard deviations. For Black and Hispanic students, charter enrollment yielded substantial academic gains, with math achievement often matching or exceeding that of White students in traditional public schools. Greater achievement differences between charter and non-charter students were observed in the most racially segregated neighborhoods. Their findings contribute to the ongoing debate over school choice by highlighting specific areas where charter schools may offer accelerated growth in math and English Language Arts, while also noting the complexities and institutional differences that influence these outcomes across the diverse NYC educational landscape.