Education Policy Research

"Achievement and Attainment in Chicago Public Schools." Kevin Booker, Brian Gill, Ron Zimmer, and Tim R. Sass, May 2008. During the past decade, charter schools have been one of the fastest growing segments of the K–12 education sector. This is the first report to examine how charter schools may affect long-term attainment, including high-school graduation and college entry. The authors find that Chicago's multi-grade charter high schools (those that include grades 6-12, 7-12, or K-12) appear to produce substantial positive effects on ACT scores, probability of graduating, and probability of enrolling in college. The large positive results suggest promise for multi-grade charter high schools (and perhaps charter high schools more generally) and demonstrate that evaluations limited to test scores may fail to capture important benefits of charter schools.

"Title I School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services: Interim Report." Brian Gill, Jennifer Sloan McCombs, Scott Naftel, Karen Ross, Mengli Song, Jennifer Harmon, and Georges Vernez. State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act: Volume IV, 2008. This report presents findings on the implementation of parental choice options from the first year of two national studies of No Child Left Behind. In 2004-2005, nearly 6.2 million students were eligible for Title I school choice and as many as 1.8 million were eligible for supplemental educational services. Only about one percent took advantage of the school choice option, and about 17 percent took advantage of supplemental services. In a subsample of large urban districts, the average achievement of the schools chosen by students using the school choice option was consistently higher than the average achievement of the schools they came from, and their parents were largely satisfied with the new schools. The report also notes that low participation rates in Title I school choice and supplemental educational services may be related to problems communicating with parents.

"National Assessment of Title I Final Report. Volume II, Closing the Reading Gap: Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers." Joseph Torgesen, Allen Schirm, Laura Castner, Sonya Vartivarian, Wendy Mansfield, David Myers, Fran Stancavage, Donna Durno, Rosanne Javorsky, and Cinthia Haan, October 2007. This report details findings from an experimental evaluation of four widely used programs for elementary school students with reading problems—Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading. Conducted just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, the evaluation explored the extent to which the programs affect both word-level reading and reading comprehension skills of students in grades three and five identified as struggling readers. This report presents impacts on reading test scores one year after the interventions ended, when most of the students were in fourth and sixth grade, as well as impacts on state reading and mathematics test scores from the previous year. Key findings show that the interventions improved some reading skills but did not improve state test scores. Furthermore, younger students benefited more, and the interventions narrowed some reading gaps. Appendices

“The Postsecondary Achievement of Participants in Dual Enrollment: An Analysis of Student Outcomes in Two States.” Melinda Mechur Karp, Juan Carlos Calcagno, Katherine L. Hughes, Dong Wook Jeong, and Thomas R. Bailey, October 2007. Dual enrollment programs enable high school students to enroll in college courses and earn college credit. Once limited to high-achieving students, such programs are increasingly seen as a means to support the postsecondary preparation of average-achieving students. Moreover, though dual enrollment programs typically have been reserved for academically focused students, increasing numbers of career and technical education (CTE) programs are providing such opportunities to their students. In this report, the authors examine the impact of dual enrollment participation for students in Florida and New York City, examining postsecondary outcomes for participating CTE students in both locations and outcomes of participation for all students in Florida. The report notes that dual enrollment is a useful strategy for encouraging postsecondary success for all students, including those in CTE programs.

"Upward Bound Math-Science: Program Description and Interim Impact Estimates." Robert Olsen, Neil Seftor, Tim Silva, David Myers, David DesRoches, and Julie Young, April 2007. In 1990, the U.S. Department of Education established a math and science initiative within Upward Bound, a federal grant program designed to provide disadvantaged high school students with skills and experiences that will prepare them for college success. The Upward Bound Math-Science (UBMS) initiative awards grants to colleges and universities to provide participants with hands-on experience in laboratories, computer facilities, and at field sites, as well as opportunities to learn from mathematicians and scientists at host institutions. By 2004, there were 127 UBMS projects serving nearly 7,000 students at a total cost of $33 million. This report is based on participant surveys and student transcripts collected between 1998 and 1999, and again between 2001 and 2002. The evaluation found that UBMS provides intensive academic instruction in math and science, and impact estimates suggest that it improves several student outcomes in high school and college. In addition, preliminary estimates suggest that participation increases the odds of majoring in math or science. Executive Summary

Rhetoric vs. Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools. Brian Gill, P. Mike Timpane, Karen Ross, Dominic Brewer, and Kevin Booker, August 2007. Vouchers and charters are two of the most ambitious attempts to improve school performance through parental choice and privatization of governance. The updated edition of this book (which was first released in 2001) summarizes new empirical evidence on the achievement impacts of voucher programs and charter schools operating in various locations across the country (and, to some extent, around the world). It concludes that neither the hopes of the supporters nor the fears of the skeptics have been realized, but that well-designed voucher and charter programs have shown promising signs, while few have shown any evidence of substantial harms to student achievement. The authors note that the details of policy design are likely to be critical to the effects produced by choice programs: not all voucher programs and charter laws are alike, and different programs will produce different effects. They call for additional research to help clarify the importance of specific policy elements and to assess a deeper and wider range of student outcomes.

More Reports

"Expanding Beyond Academics: Who Benefits and How?" John Deke and Joshua Haimson, September 2006. The growing use of math and reading scores to measure school and student performance, spurred by the No Child Left Behind Act, has heightened an old debate about which competencies public schools should encourage students to develop. This issue brief looks at how students' competencies in high school relate to postsecondary educational attainment and earnings later in life. These competencies include academic achievement (as measured by test scores), leadership skills, sports-related skills, work habits, prosocial behavior, and locus of control (a measure of students' belief that they control their future). The brief concludes that many of these competencies appear to predict students' later success in higher education and the labor market. It also concludes that not all students would benefit from improving the same competencies, suggesting that an individualized approach to education may be preferable to a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Full Report


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