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School reform
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 →
Operator versus Partner: A Case Study of Blueprint School Network’s Model for School Turnaround
Numerous high-profile efforts have sought to “turn around” low-performing schools. Evidence on the effectiveness of school turnarounds, however, is mixed, and research offers little guidance on which models are more likely to succeed. We present a mixed-methods case study of turnaround efforts… more →
Heroes, Villains, or Something In Between? How “Right to Work” Policies Affect Teachers, Students, and Education Policymaking
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAlthough the Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision fundamentally changed the institutional context for U.S. teachers’ unions by placing all public school teachers in a “Right to Work” (RTW) framework, little research exists to conceptualize the effects of such policies that hinder… 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 →
Climbing the College Ladder? The Effects of New Orleans School Reforms on College Outcomes and the Quality of Colleges that Students Attended
Multiple studies have documented the positive effect of school choice on college attendance. We focus instead on the quality of colleges, which is linked to higher graduation rates and later-in-life wages, especially for Black and Hispanic students. We examine the effect of the New Orleans… more →
Learning Lessons from Instruction: Descriptive Results from an Observational Study of Urban Elementary Classrooms
Background:
For nearly three decades, policy-makers and researchers in the United States have promoted more intellectually rigorous standards for mathematics teaching and learning. Yet, to date, we have limited descriptive evidence on the extent to which reform-oriented… more →Moving On Up? A Virtual School, Student Mobility, and Achievement
Topics: School ChoiceVirtual charter schools provide full-time, tuition-free K-12 education through internet-based instruction. Although virtual schools offer a personalized learning experience, most research suggests these schools are negatively associated with achievement. Few studies account for differential… 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 →
Improving Low-Performing Schools: A Meta-Analysis of Impact Evaluation Studies
Tags: School reformThe public narrative surrounding efforts to improve low-performing K-12 schools in the U.S. has been notably gloomy. Observers argue that either nothing works or we don’t know what works. At the same time, the federal government is asking localities to implement evidence-based interventions. But… more →
How Increased School Choice Affects Public School Enrollment and School Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceWe investigate the determinants and consequences of increased school choice by analyzing a 22-year school panel matched to county-level demographic, economic, and political data. Using an event-study design exploiting the precise timing of charter school enrollment change, we provide… 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 →
Is the Rise of High School Graduation Rates Real? High-Stakes School Accountability and Strategic Behavior
Tags: High schools, School reformHigh school graduation rates have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Some skepticism has arisen, however, because of the confluence of the graduation rise and the starts of high-stakes accountability for graduation rates with No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this study we provide… more →
A Political Framework on How ESSA’s Devolved Federal Authority Influences State Policymaking Toward Educationally Disadvantaged Students
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformThe Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) grants states unprecedented discretion in implementing many of the federal law’s requirements concerning the needs of the nation’s educationally disadvantaged students. This theoretical paper addresses a void in the policy implementation literature… more →
Investing for Student Success: Lessons From State School Finance Reforms
Tags: School reformRecent research demonstrates that, when more money is spent on education for students from low-income families, achievement and graduation rates improve. So, too, do life outcomes such as employment, wages, and reduced poverty rates. Investments in instruction, especially high-quality teachers,… more →
Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It
Without changes in current policies, U.S. teacher shortages are projected to grow in the coming years. Teacher turnover is an important source of these shortages. About 8% of teachers leave the profession each year, two-thirds of them for reasons other than retirement. Another 8% shift to… 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 →
Deeper Learning Networks: Taking Student-Centered Learning and Equity to Scale
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceOne of the mysteries of education reform is how leaders and educators can successfully instantiate, sustain, and spread student-centered pedagogical practices from a few schools to many others. Advocates for deeper learning grapple with this mystery as they seek to transform teaching and… more →