Search and Filter
School reform
The Lasting Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on K-12 Schooling: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Teacher Survey
This paper reports findings from a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers in May 2023 that examines the potential long-term impacts of COVID-19 on public schooling. The findings suggest fundamental ways in which school operations, instructional practice and parent-teacher interaction… more →
How do hybrid school leaders measure program success? Experimental evidence from a national sample of hybrid schools
Hybrid school enrollments are trending up and many parents express a diverse range of reasons for enrolling their children in hybrid schools. Yet little is known about the pedagogical goals pursued by hybrid schools. We aim to help close this gap in the literature with a stated preferences… more →
Beyond the silver bullet: Unveiling multiple pathways to school turnaround
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceResearch on school improvement has accumulated an extensive list of factors that facilitate turnarounds at underperforming schools. Given that contextual or resource constraints may limit the possibilities of putting all of these factors in place, an important question is what is necessary and… more →
The Long Shadow of School Closures: Impacts on Students’ Educational and Labor Market Outcomes
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceEach year, over a thousand public schools in the US close due to declining enrollments and chronic low performance, displacing hundreds of thousands of students. Using Texas administrative data and empirical strategies that use within-student across-time and within-school across-cohort variation… more →
The Effect of Taxpayer-Funded Education Savings Accounts on Private School Tuition: Evidence from Iowa
Topics: School ChoiceTags: School reformDoes state implementation of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are voucher-like taxpayer-funded subsidies for children to attend private schools, increase tuition prices? We analyze a novel longitudinal dataset for all private schools in Iowa and Nebraska, neighboring states that adopted… more →
Next-Generation Teacher Evaluation in Rural Missouri: Main and Moderated Effects on Student Achievement and Effects-to-Expenditure Ratios
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: School reform, Rural educationWe extend teacher evaluation research by estimating a reformed evaluation system's plausibly causal average effects on rural student achievement, identifying the settings where evaluation works, and incorporating evaluation expenditures. That the literature omits these contributions is… more →
How the Engagement of High-Profile Partisan Officials Affects Education Politics, Public Opinion, and Polarization
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformWhat happens to public opinion when prominent partisan officials intervene in education policy debates? We analyzed the results of 18 survey experiments conducted between 2009 and 2021 with nationally representative samples of U.S. adults. Each experiment explored the effect of an endorsement of… more →
Bending Without Breaking - COVID-19 Tests the Resilience of State Education Policymaking Institutions
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Covid-19 recovery, School reformCOVID-19 upended schooling across the United States, but with what consequences for the state-level institutions that drive most education policy? This paper reports findings on two related research questions. First, what were the most important ways state government education policymakers… more →
Can States Sustain and Replicate School District Improvement? Evidence from Massachusetts
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districts, School reformLimited scholarship examines school districtwide turnaround reforms beyond the first few years of implementation or efforts to replicate successes in new contexts. We study Massachusetts, home to a state takeover of the Lawrence district that led to academic gains in early reform years, and… more →
Beyond Prescriptive Reforms: An Examination of North Carolina’s Flexible School Restart Program
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformWhile multiple studies have examined the impact of school turnaround, less is known about reforms under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). To advance this literature, we examine North Carolina’s Restart (NCR) model. NCR aligns with ESSA by giving school leaders increased flexibility. Also,… more →
How Free Market Logic Fails in Schooling— and What It Means for the Role of Government
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformMarket-based policies, especially school vouchers, are expanding rapidly and shifting students out of traditional public schools. This essay broadens, deepens, and updates prior critiques of the free market logic in five ways. First, while prior articles have pointed to some of the conditions… more →
State School Accountability Decisions and the Implications for School Ratings
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformState school accountability systems have been a constant in educational policy since before federal law required them. Currently, state systems must include multiple measures of school quality but states otherwise have considerable leeway in measuring schools. We simulate school ratings using… 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 →
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 →