The Impact of School Improvement Grants on Student Outcomes: Findings From a National Evaluation Using a Regression Discontinuity Design

From High School Access to Postsecondary Success: An Exploratory Study of the Impact of High-Rigor Coursework

“…The HSGPA was a significant predictor of postsecondary success in models that were created to investigate the data that did not include immediate college enrollment or college persistence. These findings substantiate previous research that indicates that academic preparation as represented by cumulative grade point average was positively related to college graduation [20][21][22][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]. Counter to the findings of DesJardins et al but in keeping with more recent findings of Pike et al, the impact of high school performance stays relatively constant for all benchmarks of postsecondary success [20,23].…”

“…Given that the for-all approach to school reform has had spurious results, the Obama administration made it a priority to target underperforming schools for reform. This was largely supported through an influx of competitive funds [55]. The largest ever federal investment in school reform encouraged school leaders to adopt internationally benchmarked standards and assessment that would prepare students for success in college and the workplace [55].…”

“…This was largely supported through an influx of competitive funds [55]. The largest ever federal investment in school reform encouraged school leaders to adopt internationally benchmarked standards and assessment that would prepare students for success in college and the workplace [55]. Despite the $4.35 billion investment to support the lowest performing schools, the implementation of School Improvement Grants models of reform did not produce any significant impact on high school graduation or college enrollment [55].…”

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

“…For math test scores, only one estimate by Engberg et al (2012) for the closure intervention reports a statistically significant negative effect, whereas the vast majority of the studies report null results or positive significant results. For instance, Dragoset et al (2017) and Heissel and Ladd (2018) report that school turnaround has little to no effect on math test scores. However, their results are imprecise, and their confidence intervals indicate a possible range of −0.13 to 0.14 standard deviations in math test scores.…”

“…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.…”