Assessment
Higher-Quality Elementary Schools Sustain the Prekindergarten Boost: Evidence from an Exploration of Variation in the Boston Prekindergarten Program’s Impacts
Topics: Student LearningWhile there is a consensus that attending preschool better prepares children for kindergarten, evidence on the factors that sustain the preschool boost into the early elementary years is still emerging. To add to this literature, we use lottery data from applicants to oversubscribed… more →
The Effects of Financial Aid Loss on Persistence and Graduation: A Multi-Dimensional Regression Discontinuity Approach
Tags: Higher education, AssessmentFor years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full… 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 →
Education Leaders’ Knowledge of Causal Research Design: A Measurement Challenge
Federal policy has both incentivized and supported better use of research evidence by educational leaders. However, the extent to which these leaders are well-positioned to understand foundational principles from research design and statistics, including those that underlie the What Works… more →
The role of student effort on performance in PISA: Revisiting the gender gap in achievement
International assessments are important to benchmark the quality of education across countries. However, on low-stakes tests, students’ incentives to invest their maximum effort may be minimal. Research stresses that ignoring students’ effort when interpreting results from low-stakes assessments… more →
How Can Released State Test Items Support Interim Assessment Purposes in an Educational Crisis?
Tags: Covid-19 recovery, AssessmentState testing programs regularly release previously administered test items to the public. We provide an open-source recipe for state, district, and school assessment coordinators to combine these items flexibly to produce scores linked to established state score scales. These would enable… more →
Test-Based Accountability and the Effectiveness of School Finance Reforms
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reform, AssessmentA recent literature provides new evidence that school resources are important for student outcomes. In this paper, we show that school finance reform-induced increases in student performance are driven by those states that had test-based accountability policies in place at the time. By… more →
Sibling Effects on High School Exam Taking and Performance
Tags: High schools, AssessmentYounger siblings take more advanced high school course end of year exams when their older siblings perform better in those same exams. Using a regression discontinuity and data from millions of siblings who take Advanced Placement (AP) exams, we show that younger siblings with older siblings who… more →
Ordinal Approaches to Decomposing Between-group Test Score Disparities
Topics: MethodsTags: Assessment, EquityThe estimation of test score “gaps” and gap trends plays an important role in monitoring educational inequality. Researchers decompose gaps and gap changes into within- and between-school portions to generate evidence on the role schools play in shaping these inequalities. However, existing… more →
Coal Use and Student Performance
Tags: Neighborhoods, AssessmentWe examine the effect of air pollution from power production on students' cognitive outcomes by leveraging year-to-year production variation, wind patterns, and plant closures. We find that every one million megawatt hours of coal-fired power production decreases student performance in schools… more →
Experimental Effects of “Achievement Gap” News Reporting on Viewers’ Racial Stereotypes, Inequality Explanations, and Inequality Prioritization
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe “achievement gap” has long dominated mainstream conversations about race and education.
The Design of Clustered Observational Studies in Education
Topics: MethodsTags: Assessment, EfficacyClustered observational studies (COSs) are a critical analytic tool for educational effectiveness research. We present a design framework for the development and critique of COSs. The framework is built on the counterfactual model for causal inference and promotes the concept of… more →
The learning curve: Revisiting the assumption of linear growth across the school year
Topics: Student LearningImportant educational policy decisions, like whether to shorten or extend the school year, often require accurate estimates of how much students learn during the year. Yet, related research relies on a mostly untested assumption: that growth in achievement is linear throughout the entire… more →
Does the Common Core Have a Common Effect?: An Exploration of Effects on Academically Vulnerable Students
Tags: Assessment, EquityPolicymakers have sought to increase the rigor of content standards since the 1990s. However, the literature examining the effects of reforms to content standards on student outcomes is still developing. This study examines the extent to which the Common Core State Content Standards (CC)… more →
Long-run Trends in the U.S. SES-Achievement Gap
Topics: Student LearningTags: Assessment, PovertyRising inequality in the United States has raised concerns about potentially widening gaps in educational achievement by socio-economic status (SES). Using assessments from LTT-NAEP, Main-NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA that are psychometrically linked over time, we trace trends in achievement for U.S.… more →
Testing, Teacher Turnover and the Distribution of Teachers Across Grades and Schools
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTeacher turnover has adverse consequences for student achievement and imposes large financial costs for schools. Some have argued that high-stakes testing may lower teachers’ satisfaction with their jobs and could be a major contributor to teacher attrition. In this paper, we exploit changes in… more →
Can Camp Get You Into a Good Secondary School? A Field Experiment of Targeted Instruction in Kenya
Access to quality secondary schooling can be life-changing for students in developing contexts. In Kenya, entrance to such schools has historically been determined by performance on a high-stakes exam. Understandably then, preparation for this exam is a high priority for Kenyan families and… more →
Teacher Effects on Student Achievement and Height: A Cautionary Tale
Topics: MethodsTags: AssessmentEstimates of teacher “value-added” suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the… more →
Ever Failed, Try Again, Succeed Better: Results from a Randomized Educational Intervention on Grit
We show that grit, a skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, is malleable in childhood and can be fostered in the classroom environment. We evaluate a randomized educational intervention implemented in two independent elementary school samples. Outcomes are measured via… more →
Trends in Children’s Academic Skills at School Entry: 2010 to 2017
Topics: Student LearningStudents’ level of academic skills at school entry are a strong predictor of later academic success, and focusing on improving these skills during the preschool years has been a priority during the past ten years. Evidence from two prior nationally representative studies indicated that incoming… more →