Rigorous research is telling the story of whether or not charter schools work in various contexts in the U.S. (see, for example, lottery-based studies including: Abudlkadiroglu et al., 2011; Angrist, Pathak, and Walters, 2011; Dobbie and Fryer, 2011, and Gleason, Tuttle, and Dwyoer, 2010; and Hoxby, Muraka, and Kang, 2009). However, little work has been done that moves beyond test score impacts into a more nuanced view of how charter schools influence their students. This panel refines our understanding of charter school effectiveness by asking and answering three important questions. 1) Are urban charter school gains due to human capital accumulation or teaching to the test? 2) How does charter school expansion impact a district as a whole, and particularly, racial achievement gaps? and 3) How does the Harlem Children's Zone's Promise Academy charter school influence students on a multitude of long-term impacts, and what are the mediators of those impacts? Together, these papers will go beyond the basic impact of charter schools on test score results and will examine how successful charter schools influence students.