Estimating the Direct and Indirect Effects of Major Education Reforms

Abstract

We propose an approach for credibly estimating indirect sorting effects of major education reforms and placing them alongside the reforms' direct and persistent effects for the first time. Applying our approach to California's statewide class size reduction program, we estimate a large positive direct effect of smaller classes on test scores and an even larger indirect effect due to demographic changes as private school students switch into public schools; both effects also persist. Accounting for sorting using these estimates raises the program's benefit-cost ratio significantly. Further, our analysis indicates that indirect sorting is likely relevant in policy evaluations more generally.

Parents’ Online School Reviews Reflect Several Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in K–12 Education

“…Indeed, prior work has highlighted links between PTAs and affluence, describing how active PTAs often mobilize to untap new funding streams that fill budget gaps and help expand the set of activities and resources available to students and their families (Murray et al, 2019). Parents at Whiter schools are also distinguished by reviews containing the phrase “small school,” perhaps reflecting a concern about class sizes that has been shown, when allayed, to drive parents from private back to public schools (Gilraine et al, 2018). Once again, phrases like “we, us” positively predict the percentage of White and affluent at schools, whereas phrases containing “my” generally have the opposite correlations.…”

Dynamic Treatment Effects of Teacher's Aides in an Experiment With Multiple Randomizations

“…These facts suggest that pooling the full‐time teacher's aide classes with those of regular classes in econometric specifications, as is done frequently in the literature, may lead to incorrect conclusions if the results are sensitive to this pooling. Future research should split the regular and full‐time aide groups; alternatively, observations in the full‐time aide group can simply be dropped (as was done in Gilraine ) because random assignment guarantees this will not bias the estimates of interest. In addition, since the treatment effects estimated in this study for first grade are relative to a part‐time aide, they likely constitute a good estimate of the lower bound of the benefits of a full‐time aide in first grade relative to a class without an aide if we make the plausible assumption that teacher's aides do not decrease academic achievement.…”

Redrawing Attendance Boundaries to Promote Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Elementary Schools

“…Still, changing attendance boundaries within districts continues to be a highly contentious topic, especially when issues of diversity are also at stake (McMillan, 2018). Parents may fear that rezoning students will increase travel times through longer "busing" (Frankenberg & Jacobsen, 2011), reduce quality of education (Zhang, 2008)-which they often define vis-á-vis test scores (Abdulkadiroglu et al, 2019) and class sizes (Gilraine et al, 2018)-produce unsafe school environments (The Baltimore Sun Staff, 2019), drop property values (Black, 1999;Bridges, 2016;Kane et al, 2005), fragment communities (Bridges, 2016;Staff, 2019), and require a number of other sacrifices.…”

“…Maximum school size increases. We use the total population at a given school as a proxy for a quantity parents often care about in their children's schools-class sizes (Gilraine et al, 2018)-and require that this total does not exceed Y% of its current population.…”