Education Policy Research

Reports

• "Charter-School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts." Joshua Furgeson, Brian Gill, Joshua Haimson, Alexandra Killewald, Moira McCullough, Ira Nichols-Barrer, Bing-ru Teh, Natalya Verbitsky-Savitz, Melissa Bowen, Allison Demeritt, Paul Hill, and Robin Lake, January 2012. A new analysis from the National Study of Charter Management (CMO) Effectiveness provides the first systematic evidence available on the effects of CMOs on the critical long-term outcomes of high school graduation and college entry. The study shows that some—but not all—CMOs substantially boost students' chances of graduating from high school and enrolling in postsecondary education. The study also shows that each CMO's impact on test scores is typically consistent across schools, suggesting that CMOs are having some success in promoting uniformity (whether in a positive or negative direction). Further, some CMOs have implemented policies, programs, and procedures that enable them to outperform other CMOs.
• "Teacher and Principal Value-Added: Research Findings and Implementation Practices." Stephen Lipscomb, Bing-ru Teh, Brian Gill, Hanley Chiang, and Antoniya Owens, September 2010. This report summarizes research findings and implementation practices for teacher and principal value-added models (VAM) as a first step in the Team Pennsylvania Foundation’s pilot project to inform the development of a full, statewide model evaluation system. The report selected 21 empirical studies that describe key issues and findings in the literature and examined varying degrees of value-added implementation in seven school districts or states. It presents information aimed at VAM development: typical data elements, important modeling considerations, features specific to teachers or principals, and broad implementation features.
• "The Impacts of Philadelphia's Accelerated Schools on Academic Progress and Graduation." Hanley Chiang and Brian Gill, November 2010. This report evaluates the impacts of Philadelphia’s accelerated schools—alternative high schools serving students at high risk of dropping out—on enrollees’ graduation rates and on rates of credit accumulation for recent enrollees.
• "Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value Added." Steven Glazerman, Susanna Loeb, Dan Goldhaber, Douglas Staiger, Steven Raudenbush, and Grover Whitehurst, November 2010. This paper clarifies four areas of confusion about value-added methodology and its role in teacher evaluation: (1) use of value-added information; (2) consequences for teachers versus those for students of classifying and misclassifying teachers as effective or ineffective; (3) reliability of value-added measures of teacher performance and standards for evaluations in other fields; and (4) reliability of teacher evaluation systems that include value-added versus those that do not.
• "Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula: Findings for First and Second Graders." Roberto Agodini, Barbara Harris, Melissa Thomas, Robert Murphy, and Lawrence Gallagher, October 2010. This report, the second from a large-scale study for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences of four early math programs, shows that the curriculum used by the study schools mattered. The study examined (1) Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (Investigations), (2) Math Expressions, (3) Saxon Math (Saxon), and (4) Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics (SFAW).
• "Precision Gains from Publically Available School Proficiency Measures Compared to Study-Collected Test Scores in Education Cluster-Randomized Trials." John Deke, Lisa Dragoset, and Ravaris Moore, October 2010. This paper compares the precision gains from adjusting impact estimates for student-level pretest scores (which can be costly to collect) with the gains associated with using publically available school-level proficiency data (available at low cost), using data from five large-scale randomized control trials conducted for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. On average, adjusting for school-level proficiency does not increase statistical precision as well as student-level baseline test scores. The number of schools included in studies would have to nearly double to compensate for the loss in precision of using school-level instead of student-level data.

Journal Articles

• "Links Between Young Children's Behavior and Achievement: The Role of Social Class and Classroom Composition." Annie Georges, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Lizabeth M. Malone. American Behavioral Scientist, December 2011 (subscription required). This article examines the association between attentive and aggressive behavior (at the child- and class-level) and individual child achievement. Children with low attention, alone or in combination with aggressive behavior, made fewer gains in test scores during kindergarten. Additionally, having more children in the classroom with low attention was linked with lower achievement gains, even for children who did not themselves demonstrate problem behaviors.
• "The Effectiveness of Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing: A Cluster Randomized Trial." Susanne James-Burdumy, Brian Goesling, John Deke, and Eric Einspruch. Journal of Adolescent Health, October 2011 (subscription required). This article presents findings from the largest experimental evaluation to date of school-based mandatory-random student drug testing (MRSDT) and its effectiveness in reducing substance use among high school students. The study found that students who were subject to MRSDT reported less substance use in the past 30 days than comparable students in schools without MRSDT.
• "Do Typical RCTs of Education Interventions Have Sufficient Statistical Power for Linking Impacts on Teacher Practice and Student Achievement Outcomes?" Peter Z. Schochet. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, August 2011(subscription required). For randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of education interventions, estimates of associations between student and mediating teacher practice outcomes can help examine the extent to which the data support the study's conceptual model. They can also identify mediators most associated with student learning. This article develops statistical power formulas for such exploratory analyses under clustered school-based RCTs using ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimators and uses the formulas to conduct a simulated power analysis.
• "Using Lotteries to Evaluate Schools of Choice: Evidence from a National Study of Charter Schools." Christina Clark Tuttle, Philip Gleason, and Melissa Clark. Economics of Education Review, July 2011. This article draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts to describe challenges associated with lottery-based research. It presents evidence on the prevalence of oversubscribed charter middle schools and compares their features to charter schools that are not oversubscribed. It also describes the lotteries charter schools conduct and procedures for admitting students from waiting lists, as well as lessons for researchers for using lotteries to estimate impacts of schools on student outcomes.
• "Estimation and Identification of the Complier Average Causal Effect Parameter in Education RCTs." Peter Z. Schochet and Hanley S. Chiang. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, June 2011 (subscription required). In randomized control trials (RCTs) in the education field, the complier average causal effect (CACE) parameter is often of policy interest, because it pertains to intervention effects for students who receive a meaningful dose of treatment services. This article uses a causal inference and instrumental variables framework to examine the identification and estimation of the CACE parameter for two-level clustered RCTs. The authors use data from 10 large-scale RCTs to compare significance findings for the CACE estimator based on correct variance formulas with those based on commonly used formulas that ignore certain sources of error. These formulas lead to very similar significance findings.
• "Funding Special Education by Capitation: Evidence from State Finance Reforms." Elizabeth Dhuey and Stephen Lipscomb. Education Finance and Policy, spring 2011 (subscription required). This study examined responses to state capitation policies for special education finance between 1991 to 1992 and 2003 to 2004. Capitation refers to distributing funds based on the entire student enrollment. Disability rates tended to fall following capitation reforms, primarily in more subjectively diagnosed categories and more quickly in less severe categories. Capitation was also associated with a rising share of local funding.
• "The Effects of Charter High Schools on Educational Attainment." Kevin Booker, Tim R. Sass, Brian Gill, and Ron Zimmer. Journal of Labor Economics, April 2011 (subscription required). This article analyzes the relationship between charter high school attendance and educational attainment in Florida and Chicago. Students who attended a charter middle school and went on to attend a charter high school were 7 to 15 percentage points more likely to earn a standard diploma than students who transitioned to a traditional public high school and 8 to 10 percentage points more likely to attend college.

• "Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Public Schools Keeping Their Best?" Dan Goldhaber, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, winter 2011. This paper examines the mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality—measured using value-added methods—and focuses on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. On average, more effective teachers remain in the profession and stay in their initial schools. But there appears to be heterogeneity in mobility behavior across the performance distribution and evidence that student demographics and achievement levels affect teacher mobility.

Issue Briefs

• "Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?" Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max, April 2011. Most research on equal educational opportunity has focused on inputs like teacher experience and degrees. This brief estimated teachers’ value added (contribution to student achievement growth) and measured access to highest-performing teachers in high- and low-poverty schools. Across 10 selected districts in seven states students in the highest-poverty schools had unequal access, on average, to the district’s highest-performing middle school teachers. The pattern for elementary school was less clear. The degree of equal access varied by district. Technical Appendix.
• "Infusing Academics into Career and Technical Education." Trends in Education Research, Issue Brief #3. Joshua Haimson, James R. Stone, III, and Donna Pearson, December 2008. Integrating academic learning into career and technical education (CTE) classes can be challenging for educators and curriculum developers but can be aided by securing detailed feedback from CTE teachers. Drawing on a recent study, this issue brief identifies challenges developers faced in infusing more math into CTE curricula and notes that incorporating academic learning into CTE requires substantial time, effort, and other resources.

Working Papers

• "Do Charter Schools Improve Student Achievement? Evidence from a National Randomized Study." Melissa A. Clark, Philip Gleason, Christina Clark Tuttle, and Marsha K. Silverberg, December 2011. This paper looks at findings from the first national randomized study of the impacts of charter schools on student achievement.
• "False Performance Gains: A Critique of Successive Cohort Indicators." Steven M. Glazerman and Liz Potamites, December 2011. There are many ways to use student test scores to evaluate schools. This paper defines and examines different estimators including regression-based value-added indicators, average gains, and successive cohort differences in achievement levels. The paper helps assess which methods provide useful information for school accountability and why.
• "High School Dual Enrollment Programs: Are We Fast-Tracking Students Too Fast?" Cecilia Speroni, December 2011. This study tracked a subset of Florida's 2000–2001 and 2001–2002 high school seniors who took a college algebra placement test. Students who passed the test (with a score very near the cut-off for eligibility) and enrolled in a rigorous dual enrollment college algebra class were 16 percent more likely to go to college and 23 percent more likely to earn a college degree than similar students who did not take the class.
• "Determinants of Students' Success: The Role of Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment Programs." Cecilia Speroni, November 2011. This study tracked all of Florida's 2000–2001 and 2001–2002 high school seniors and found that students who participated in dual enrollment classes on college campuses were 12 percent more likely to go to college and 7 percent more likely to earn a bachelor's degree than similar students who did not participate. Students who took these classes exclusively on the high school campus showed no statistically significant gains. The study found that dual enrollment and Advanced Placement participation also had similarly positive impacts.
• "Student Selection, Attrition, and Replacement in KIPP Middle Schools." Ira Nichols-Barrer, Christina Clark Tuttle, Brian P. Gill, and Philip Gleason, April 2011.Using longitudinal, student-level data, this American Educational Research Association conference paper examines the entry and exit of students in KIPP middle schools, comparing KIPP’s rates of attrition and replacement with rates in nearby district-run schools.

Other

• "Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems." Steven Glazerman, Dan Goldhaber, Susanna Loeb, Stephen Raudenbush, Douglas O. Staiger, Grover J. Whitehurst, and Michelle Croft, April 2011. This report addresses the comparison of teacher evaluation systems and proposes ways to achieve a uniform standard for dispensing funds to districts to recognize exceptional teachers without imposing a uniform evaluation system on those districts. The report provides practical procedures to determine reliable local teacher evaluation systems. It also demonstrates how the reliability of the evaluation system determines the proportion of teachers who can be identified as exceptional.
• "Student Selection, Attrition, and Replacement in KIPP Middle Schools: Working Paper Presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association." Ira Nichols-Barrer, Christina Clark Tuttle, Brian P. Gill, and Philip Gleason, April 2011. Using longitudinal, student-level data, this American Educational Research Association conference paper examines the entry and exit of students in KIPP middle schools, comparing KIPP’s rates of attrition and replacement with rates in nearby district-run schools.
• "Estimating the Return to College Selectivity Over the Career Using Administrative Earning Data." Stacy Dale and Alan B. Krueger, February 2011. This paper uses administrative earnings data to the effect of attending a highly selective college on future earnings. It extends the work of a previous paper—that examined the 1995 earnings of a cohort of students who entered college in 1976. Using earnings data from a longer time horizon (from 1983 through 2007) as well as data for a more recent cohort of students who entered college in 1989, the researchers found that estimates of the return to college selectivity fell substantially, often to near zero. However, for black, Hispanic, and students from less-educated families (in terms of their parents’ education), the estimates of the return to college selectivity remained large.

• "Charter School Authorizers and Student Achievement." National Charter School Research Project. Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, and Kaitlin Obenauf, December 2010. This paper examines the charter school authorizing process using student-level data from Ohio, a state with a range of public and private authorizers. The study found charters authorized by nonprofits are less effective in promoting student achievement than other charter schools (though there are likely to be more differences among individual authorizers than across authorizer types).

• "Linking Induction to Student Achievement." Eric Isenberg, Steven Glazerman, Amy Johnson, Sarah Dolfin, and Martha Bleeker. Chapter in Past, Present, and Future Research on Teacher Induction: An Anthology for Researchers, Policy Makers, and Practitioners, edited by Jian Wang, Sandra J. Odell, and Renee T. Clift, June 2010. The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial, which showed that during the first year of a teacher’s career, students of teachers in comprehensive induction programs scored no better on achievement tests than students of teachers in their school’s usual induction support. A nonexperimental analysis suggested that content-oriented induction may help raise student achievement, while data gathered from focus groups offered insight on how teachers felt induction support affected their performance.
• What Works Clearinghouse (WWC)
• Administered by Mathematica for the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, the WWC produces a variety of reports that assess and summarize education research. WWC reports can help educators make important decisions about what curriculums to implement, what products to purchase, and what methods to use in their classrooms and schools.
  
  See the WWC's latest releases at whatworks.ed.gov and explore available Practice Guides, Intervention Reports, and Quick Reviews or take a guided tour of the site.