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School districts
New Schools and New Classmates: The Disruption and Peer Group Effects of School Reassignment
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePolicy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate… more →
All States Close but Red Districts Reopen: The Politics of In-Person Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe COVID-19 pandemic created enormous challenges for public education. We assess the role of political factors and public health in state and local education decisions, especially the continuation of learning during COVID-19. Using an original dataset of state education policies since the start… more →
School District Revenue Shocks, Resource Allocations, and Student Achievement: Evidence from the Universe of U.S. Wind Energy Installations
Tags: School districtsWe examine the impact of wind energy installation on school district finances and student achievement using data on the timing, location, and capacity of the universe of U.S. installations from 1995 through 2017. Wind energy installation substantially increased district revenues, causing large… more →
The Effect of School District Consolidation on Student Achievement: Evidence from Arkansas
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districts, School reformSchool district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the… more →
Politics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education’s Response to COVID-19
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine how local governments respond to a public health crisis amid high levels of partisan polarization and an increasing tendency for local issues to become nationalized. As an arena that has, in recent years, been relatively separate… more →
Status, Growth, and Perceptions of School Quality
Tags: School districtsStates and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public’s perceptions of school quality. We conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to… more →
The Democratic Deficit in U.S. Education Governance
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districtsPolitical scientists have largely overlooked the democratic challenges inherent in the governance of U.S. public education—despite profound implications for educational delivery and, ultimately, social mobility and economic growth. In this study, we consider whether the interests of adult voters… more →
The Longitudinal Effects of School Improvement Grants
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reform, School districtsSchool Improvement Grants (SIG) represent one type of governments’ capacity-building investment to spur sustainable changes in America’s persistently under-performing public schools. This study examines both short- and long-run effects of the first two cohorts of SIG schools from two states and… more →
California’s Positive Outliers: Districts Beating the Odds
Despite wide achievement gaps across California between students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, some school districts have excelled at supporting the learning of all their students. This analysis identifies these positive outlier districts—those in which students of color,… more →
Who Benefits from Local Financing of Public Services? A Causal Analysis
Tags: Human capital, School districtsThe efficiency-equity trade-offs in public service delivery may be influenced by the dependency of local governments on their own resources rather than inter-governmental grants. School districts in the United States are expected both to produce human capital efficiently and to provide… more →
Local Democracy Matters: How Deliberative Culture Shapes Public Evaluations of Local Government and Local Government Performance
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districtsIs there democratic accountability to the public at the local level, and if so, how does it work? We know that a major part of democratic ability depends on citizens being able to properly evaluate government based on government performance, particularly at the local level. However, we know much… 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 →
The Effects of Student Growth Data on School District Choice: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
Topics: School ChoiceWe conduct an online survey experiment in which participants are asked to imagine that they are parents moving to a new metropolitan area. They then choose between the five largest school districts in that area. All participants receive demographic data for each district. In addition, some… more →
School Boards and Education Production: Evidence from Randomized Ballot Order
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Leadership, School districtsWe examine the causal influence of educators elected to the school board on local education production. The key empirical challenge is that school board composition is endogenously determined through the electoral process. To overcome this, we develop a novel research design that leverages… more →
The Effect of Increased Funding on Student Achievement: Evidence From Texas's Small District Adjustment
Tags: School districtsWe leverage an obscure set of rules in Texas’s school funding formula granting some districts additional revenue as a function of size and sparsity. We use variation from kinks and discontinuities in this formula to ask how districts spend additional discretionary funds, and whether these… more →
School District Operational Spending and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Tax Elections in Seven States
Tags: School districts, AssessmentWe use close tax elections to estimate the impact of school district funding increases on operational spending and student outcomes across seven states. Districts with passing levies directed new revenue toward support services and instructor salaries but did not increase teacher staffing levels… more →