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Ron Zimmer
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 →
Is Reputational Pressure Enough to Create Competitive School Choice Effects? Evidence from Seoul’s School Choice Policy
Topics: School ChoiceDuring the pandemic, a number of states instituted hold-harmless funding policies to protect school district financially from declining enrollments (Center for Public Education, 2021). In addition, some school choice policies have protected traditional public schools financially from declining… more →
Cream Skimming and Pushout of Students Participating in a Statewide Private School Voucher Program
Topics: School ChoiceTags: EquityA pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream-skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less challenging, or less costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may “pushout” low-achieving, more challenging, or more costly students. Using longitudinal… more →
The Impacts of School District Consolidation on Rural Communities: Evidence from Arkansas Reform
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Rural education, School districtsOver the past fifty years, school districts have consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale. While the determinants and effects of district mergers on operations have been studied (Gordon and Knight 2006; Duncombe and Yinger 2007; Jones et al 2008), the impact on communities has not… more →
A Descriptive Analysis of Cream Skimming and Pushout in Choice versus Traditional Public Schools
Topics: School ChoiceOne of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either “cream skim” high-performing students from traditional public schools or “pushout” low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most… more →
Nearly three decades into the charter school movement, what has research told us about charter schools?
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, School reformWhen charter schools first entered the landscape, the debate was contentious, with both advocates and critics using strong rhetoric. Advocates often sold charter schools as a silver bullet solution for not only the students who attend these schools, but the broader traditional public school… 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 →