Gary T. Henry
Do the Effects Persist? An Examination of Long-term Effects After Students Leave Turnaround Schools
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWhole-school reforms have received widespread attention, but a critical limitation of the current literature is the lack of evidence around whether these extensive and costly interventions improve students’ long-term outcomes after they leave reform schools. Leveraging Tennessee’s statewide… more →
Accountability-Driven School Reform: Are There Unintended Effects on Younger Children in Untested Grades?
Topics: Student LearningTest-based accountability pressures have been shown to result in transferring less effective teachers into untested early grades and more effective teachers to tested grades. In this paper, we evaluate whether a state initiative to turnaround its lowest performing schools reproduced a similar… more →
An Evaluation of Credit Recovery as an Intervention for High School Students Who Fail Courses
Credit recovery (CR) refers to online courses that high school students take after previously failing the course. Many have suggested that CR courses are helping students to graduate from high school without corresponding increases in academic skills. This study analyzes administrative data from… more →
The Effects of Race to the Top School Turnaround in North Carolina
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Assessment, School reformFederal education policies gave political and financial support for state education agencies to turnaround low-performing schools on an unprecedented scale. North Carolina’s ambitious program turned around over half of all schools nationwide that underwent turnaround funded by Race to the Top.… more →
The Next Generation of State Reforms to Improve their Lowest Performing Schools: An Evaluation of North Carolina’s School Transformation Initiative
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIn contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression… more →
Turnover at the Top: Estimating the Effects of Principal Turnover on Student, Teacher, and School Outcomes
Tags: Principals, School districtsOne in five schools loses its principal each year. Despite the prevalence of principal turnover, little empirical research has examined its effects on school outcomes. Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a… more →
General Equilibrium Effects of Recruiting High-Performing Teachers for School Turnaround: Evidence from Tennessee
Many districts and states have begun implementing incentives to attract high-performing teachers to low-performing schools. Previous research has found that these incentives are effective. However, effects on the schools and students these teachers leave behind has not been examined… more →
Push or Pull: School-Level Factors That Influence Teacher Mobility in Turnaround Schools
Recruiting and retaining teachers can be challenging for many schools, especially in low-performing urban schools in which teachers turn over at higher rates. In this study, we examine three types of school-level attributes that may influence teachers’ decisions to enter or transfer schools:… more →
Peeking into the Black Box of School Turnaround: A Formal Test of Mediators and Suppressors
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceA growing body of research evaluates the effects of turnaround on chronically low-performing schools. We extend this research to formally test factors that either mediate or suppress the effects of two turnaround initiatives in Tennessee: the Achievement School District (ASD) and local… more →