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School reform
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 →
From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice in Schools
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Absenteeism, Counseling, Culturally responsive schooling, Curriculum, Elementary schools, High schools, Human capital, Juvenile justice, Learning environments, School climate and culture, School districts, School reform, Social and emotional learning, Student discipline, Student well-beingSchool districts historically approached conflict-resolution from the perspective that suspending disruptive students was necessary to protect their classmates, even if this caused harm to perceived offenders. Restorative practices (RP) – focused on reparation, accountability, and shared… more →
Experimental education research: clarifying why, how and when to use random assignment
Topics: MethodsTags: Efficacy, School reformOver the last twenty years, education researchers have increasingly conducted randomised experiments with the goal of informing the decisions of educators and policymakers. Such experiments have generally employed broad, consequential, standardised outcome measures in the hope that this would… more →
When Does School Autonomy Improve Student Outcomes?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reform, PrincipalsThis paper presents new evidence on the benefits of decentralization in public education, focusing on a Chicago policy that granted school principals more control over budgeting and operations. Meta-analysis of similar policies shows a small average effect with significant … more →
The Effects of Comprehensive Educator Evaluation and Pay Reform on Achievement
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: School reformA fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study… more →
How Context Shapes the Relationship between School Autonomy and Test-Scores: An Explanatory Analysis using PISA 2015
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool autonomy has been and continues to be one of the most important education reform strategies around the world despite ambiguity about its theoretical and empirical effects on students learning. We use international data from PISA to test three country-level factors that might account for… more →
Discipline Reform, School Culture, and Student Achievement
Topics: Student LearningDoes relaxing strict school discipline improve student achievement, or lead to classroom disorder? We study a 2012 reform in New York City public middle schools that eliminated suspensions for non-violent, disorderly behavior, replacing them with less disruptive interventions. Using a difference… more →
How Do Homeowners, Teachers, and Students Respond to a Four-Day School Week?
Topics: Families and CommunitiesFaced with decreasing funds and increasing costs, a growing number of school districts across the United States are switching to four-day school weeks (4DSWs). Although previously used only by rural districts, the policy has begun to gain traction in metropolitan districts. We examine homeowner… more →
U.S. School Finance: Resources and Outcomes
Tags: School districts, School reformThe impact of school resources on student outcomes was first raised in the 1960s and has been controversial since then. This issue enters into the decision making on school finance in both legislatures and the courts. The historical research found little consistent or systematic relationship of… more →
How State Takeovers of School Districts Affect Education Finance, 1990 to 2019
Tags: School districts, School reformState takeover of school districts—a form of political centralization that shifts decision-making power from locally elected leaders to the state—has increased in recent years, often with the purported goal of improving district financial condition. Takeover has affected millions of students… more →
The politics of progressivity: Court-ordered reforms, racial difference, and school finance fairness
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis paper contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intra-state changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends… more →
The Enduring Struggle of Standards-Based Reform: Lessons from a National Research Center on College and Career-Ready Standards
Morgan S. Polikoff, Laura M. Desimone, Andrew C. Porter, Michael S. Garet, Amy Stornaiuolo, Katie Pak, Toni M. Smith, Mengli Song, Nelson Flores, Lynn S. Fuchs, Douglas Fuchs, T. Philip Nichols.Standards have been at the heart of state and federal efforts to improve education for several decades. Most recently, standards-based reforms have evolved with a focus on more ambitious "college- and career-ready" (CCR) standards. This paper synthesizes the results of a seven-year national… more →
What is a School Finance Reform? Uncovering the ubiquity and diversity of school finance reforms using a Bayesian changepoint estimator
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformSchool finance reforms are not well defined and are likely more prevalent than the current literature has documented. Using a Bayesian changepoint estimator, we quantitatively identify the years when state education revenues abruptly increased for each state between 1960 and 2008 and then… more →
The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring and Turnover
Min Sun, Christopher A. Candelaria, David Knight, Zachary LeClair, Sarah E. Kabourek, Katherine Chang.Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K-12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in… more →
Fiscal Federalism and K-12 Education Funding: Policy Lessons from Two Educational Crises
Tags: School reform, Covid-19 recoveryWe synthesize and critique federal fiscal policy during the Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic. First, the amount of aid during both crises was inadequate to meet policy goals. Second, the mechanisms used to distribute funds was disconnected from policy goals and provided different levels of… more →
Whose Turn Now? The Enactment & Expansion of Private School Choice Programs across the US
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformPrivate school choice policies have been enacted and expanded across the United States since the 1990s. By January 2021, 30 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico hosted 67 distinct private school choice policies. Why have some states adopted and expanded this education reform… more →
Taking Teacher Evaluation to Scale: The Effect of State Reforms on Achievement and Attainment
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: School reformFederal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting their staggered implementation across… more →
The Role of State Education Regulation: Evidence from the Texas Districts of Innovation Statute
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformTraditional public schools in the United States must comply with a variety of regulations on educational inputs like teacher certification, maximum class sizes, and restrictions on staff contracts. Absent regulations, policymakers fear that troubled districts would make inappropriate decisions… more →
Evaluating Education Governance: Does State Takeover of School Districts Affect Student Achievement?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformLocal school boards have primary authority for running educational systems in the U.S. but little is known empirically about the merits of this arrangement. State takeovers of struggling districts represent a rare alternative form of educational governance and have become an increasingly common… more →
The Kids on the Bus: The Academic Consequences of Diversity-Driven School Reassignments
Thurston Domina, Deven Carlson, James S. Carter III, Matthew A. Lenard, Andrew McEachin, Rachel Perera.Topics: School ChoiceTags: School reform, EquityMany public school diversity efforts rely on reassigning students from one school to another. While opponents of such efforts articulate concerns about the consequences of reassignments for students’ educational experiences, little evidence exists regarding these effects, particularly in… more →