Child Engagement Questionnaire (CEQ)
Category: Families and Communities
Community schools offer supports such as health and social services, extended school days, and family education, to improve the performance of students whose learning may be disrupted by challenges related to poverty. In 2015, the New York City Community Schools Initiative was implemented in conjunction with the NYC Renewal Schools program to turnaround the city’s lowest performing schools. Using a novel method that combines multiple rating regression discontinuity design with machine learning techniques, we estimate the causal effect of this effort on elementary and middle school student attendance and academic achievement. We find an immediate reduction in chronic absenteeism of 5.6 percentage points, which persists over the following three years. We also find large improvements in math and ELA test scores – an increase of 0.26 and 0.16 standard deviations by the third year after implementation – although these effects took longer to manifest than the effects on attendance. Our findings suggest that improved attendance is a leading indicator of success of this turnaround model and may be followed by longer-run improvements in academic achievement.
Keywords
community schools; program evaluation; regression discontinuity design
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/59q2-ek65
