Charter Schools

Mathematica has been awarded a contract of approximately $4 million to evaluate the impact of KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). KIPP is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college preparatory public schools in underserved communities throughout the United States. Read more.

Mathematica and the Center on Reinventing Public Education have been selected to conduct a national study on charter school management organization effectiveness. Read more.

Building Strong Families

“Implementation of the Building Strong Families Program.” M. Robin Dion, Alan M. Hershey, Heather H. Zaveri, Sarah A. Avellar, Debra A. Strong, Timothy Silman, and Ravaris Moore, January 2008. Building Strong Families (BSF) is a large-scale demonstration and rigorous evaluation of marriage and relationship education programs that has now enrolled more than 5,000 low-income, romantically involved, unmarried couples. At enrollment, all couples were expecting or recently had a child together. This report highlights key findings from an implementation analysis of BSF’s seven program sites in Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Texas during the evaluation's first 6 to 14 months. The analysis documents recruitment and enrollment practices, describes the characteristics of enrolled couples, provides data on program participation, and summarizes the experiences of couples participating in the intervention. Individuals who enrolled in the program were typically in their mid-twenties, and often had children from prior relationships. While most had a high school education, earnings and income were low. Over half the recruited sample members were African American, about one-quarter were Hispanic, and about 14 percent were non-Hispanic white. The average couple had known each other for several years, was cohabiting, and had high hopes for marrying their partner.

Food Stamp Program

“Modernization of the Food Stamp Program in Florida.” Scott Cody, Renée Nogales, and Emily Sama Martin, February 2008. In 2004, Florida’s Department of Children and Families modernized its approach to administering the food stamp, cash assistance, and Medicaid programs by replacing the caseworker model with ACCESS Florida, a technology-driven system  emphasizing self-service. This report examines ACCESS Florida early in its implementation—July through September 2006. Initial findings indicate that cost savings are substantial, but that there may be some reduction in participation in areas where customer service centers closed. Other states can use these results to understand the types of changes they may experience if they adopt Florida’s modernization model, which was both comprehensive and integrated.  Executive Summary.

“Sources of Variation in State-Level Food Stamp Participation Rates.” Scott Cody, Allen Schirm, Elizabeth Stuart, Laura Castner, and Alan Zaslavsky, November 2007. Food stamp participation rates vary substantially from state to state. This report looks at the two factors most likely to cause this variation—the characteristics of those eligible to receive food stamps, as well as the economic and policy conditions, in each state. The authors found that differences across states in the characteristics of those eligible to participate contribute to differences in participation rates. However, these differences are not the only explanation for variation in state participation rates—even if the characteristics of those eligible to receive food stamps were identical from state to state, participation rates would still vary. However, there is little evidence that this remaining variation is explained by differences in state economic and policy conditions.

Teacher Incentives

“Missouri’s Teacher Career Ladder Program.” Kevin Booker and Steven Glazerman, February 2008. Although Missouri has had a Career Ladder program for teachers since 1987, there has been little research examining the program’s effects. This working paper, presented at a National Center on Performance Incentives conference, examines effects on student achievement, using longitudinal data on district math and reading scores for 524 Missouri school districts over a nine-year period. The paper compares achievement levels in participating districts with those of a matched group of nonparticipating districts. The estimated effects range from small positive effects to no effect. The authors conclude that, if the Career Ladder has a positive effect on test scores, it is probably very small. A soon-to-be-completed companion paper will explore program operations, and another will examine the relationship between Career Ladder participation and teacher retention.

Science and Education Research

“Statistical Power for Random Assignment Evaluations of Education Programs.” Peter Z. Schochet, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, March 2008. This article examines theoretical and empirical issues related to the statistical power of impact estimates for experimental evaluations of education programs. The author considers designs where random assignment is conducted at the school, classroom, or student level, and employs a unified analytic framework using statistical methods from the literature. Focusing on standardized test scores of elementary school students, this article discusses appropriate precision standards and, for each design, the required number of schools to achieve those standards using empirical values of intraclass correlations, regression R2 values, and other parameters. Clustering effects vary by design but are typically large. As a result, large school samples are required for education trials, and many evaluations will have sufficient power to detect precise impacts only for relatively large subgroups of sites.

After-School Issues

“After-School Program Effects on Behavior: Results from the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program National Evaluation.” Susanne James-Burdumy, Mark Dynarski, and John Deke, Economic Inquiry, January 2008. This paper presents evidence on after-school programs’ effects on behavior from the national evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program. Findings come from both of the study’s components: (1) an elementary-school component based on random assignment of 2,308 students in 12 school districts, and (2) a middle-school component based on a matched comparison design including 4,264 students in 32 districts. Key findings include higher levels of negative behavior for elementary students and some evidence of higher levels of negative behaviors for middle school students.