School turnaround in North Carolina: A regression discontinuity analysis

Heissel, Jennifer A.; Ladd, Helen F.

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.08.001

Cited by 46 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Three other regression-discontinuity studies find such reforms resulted in zero or even negative achievement effects. Studying turnaround efforts in North Carolina implemented as part of the state's Race-to-the-Top application, Heissel and Ladd (2016) find that students in the affected schools actually experienced a decline in math and reading scores. Interestingly, most schools in this study opted for the less severe transformation model of reform.…”

Section: Strunk Et Al (2016) Present a Similarly Mixed Assessment Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differentiated Accountability and Education Production: Evidence from NCLB Waivers

Hemelt¹,

Jacob²

2017

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In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education granted states the opportunity to apply for waivers from the core requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In exchange, states implemented systems of differentiated accountability in which they identified and intervened in their lowestperforming schools ("Priority" schools) and schools with the largest achievement gaps between subgroups of students ("Focus" schools). We use administrative data from Michigan in a series of regression-discontinuity analyses to study the effects of these reforms on schools and students. Overall, we find that neither reform had appreciable impacts on various measures of school staffing, student composition, or academic achievement. We find some evidence that the Focus designation led to small, short-run reductions in the within-school math achievement gap-but that these reductions were driven by stagnant performance of lower-achieving students alongside declines in the performance of their higher-achieving peers. These findings serve as a cautionary tale for the capacity of the accountability provisions embedded in the recent reauthorization of NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), to meaningfully improve student and school outcomes.

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Section: Strunk Et Al (2016) Present a Similarly Mixed Assessment Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differentiated Accountability and Education Production: Evidence from NCLB Waivers

Hemelt¹,

Jacob²

2017

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“…Further, these findings are also consistent with the results of a broad array of well-evaluated educational interventions that indicate that even the most promising interventions produce highly uneven effects when implemented in disparate educational settings. The growing literature on the uneven effects of federally funded school improvement grants is instructive (see, for example, Dee 2012; Heissel and Ladd 2018; Schueler, Goodman, and Deming 2017; Strunk et al 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Civil Society Goes to School: Parent-Teacher Associations and the Equality of Educational Opportunity

Murray

Domina

Renzulli³

et al. 2019

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

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Where do parent-teacher associations (PTAs) and other similar school-linked nonprofits form? What role do PTAs play in distributing educational opportunities between and within public schools? In this paper, we link IRS data describing nonprofit organizations associated with North Carolina public schools to school- and student-level administrative data in order to answer these questions. Our analyses suggest PTAs form in a wide variety of school contexts, but high-revenue PTAs form primarily in affluent, predominantly white schools. Students in schools with active PTAs enjoy relatively strong achievement growth compared to their peers in schools without active PTAs. However, our analyses suggest that in reading, the benefits associated with PTAs flow disproportionately to nonpoor students.

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“…Specifically, we included the following variables as moderators: (a) the specific turnaround model (all inclusive, transformation, turnaround, restart, closure, and state turnaround); (b) the treatment year (Year 1 vs. Years 2, 3, and 4); (c) change in governance or management; and (d) the methods employed to obtain the estimate such as regression discontinuity (RD). Research suggests the effectiveness of school turnaround may also be moderated by other factors, including the quality of implementation (Dragoset et al, 2017), urbanicity (Ayers, 2011; Heissel & Ladd, 2018), and program costs (Dee, 2012). Unfortunately, these additional moderators were not systematically examined in the studies included in this meta-analysis, thus limiting this analysis to the four aforementioned moderators.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When replacing teachers, the idea is that newly hired teachers will not only be more effective at improving student outcomes, but they will also be more willing to adopt school practices linked to improved organizational performance (Malen et al, 2002). Current evidence is mixed in terms of the degree to which turnaround schools have an adequate supply of qualified and committed personnel (Hamilton et al, 2014; Le Floch et al, 2016) and suggests that replacement teachers are more effective but possibly less experienced (Heissel & Ladd, 2018; Strunk, Marsh, Hashim, Bush-Mecenas, & Weinstein, 2016; Sun et al, 2017).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between School Turnaround and Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

Redding

Nguyen

2020

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

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School turnaround has emerged as a predominant strategy to improve chronically low-performing schools, although the approach remains controversial. This meta-analysis synthesizes results from 35 studies to examine the relationship between school turnaround and various student outcomes. We find that school turnaround is associated with improved attendance, standardized test scores, and graduation rates. When separating the results by the different turnaround models, transformation, turnaround, and restart models are associated with improvements in student test scores. We find no evidence of a significant relationship between school closure or state turnaround conducted under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers and student test scores. We describe how changes in organizational operations, human capital, and the governance and/or management of low-performing schools might have contributed to this observed relationship.

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School turnaround in North Carolina: A regression discontinuity analysis

Cited by 46 publications

References 28 publications

Differentiated Accountability and Education Production: Evidence from NCLB Waivers

Differentiated Accountability and Education Production: Evidence from NCLB Waivers

Civil Society Goes to School: Parent-Teacher Associations and the Equality of Educational Opportunity

The Relationship Between School Turnaround and Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

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