[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v62y2018icp302-320.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

School turnaround in North Carolina: A regression discontinuity analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Heissel, Jennifer A.
  • Ladd, Helen F.
Abstract
This paper examines the effect of a federally supported school turnaround program in North Carolina elementary and middle schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the turnaround program did not improve, and may have reduced, average school-level passing rates in math and reading. One potential contributor to that finding appears to be that the program increased the concentration of low-income students in treated schools. Based on teacher survey data, we find that, as was intended, treated schools brought in new principals and increased the time teachers devoted to professional development. At the same time, the program increased administrative burdens and distracted teachers, potentially reducing time available for instruction, and increased teacher turnover after the first full year of implementation. Overall, we find little evidence of success for North Carolina's efforts to turn around low-performing schools under its Race to the Top grant.

Suggested Citation

  • Heissel, Jennifer A. & Ladd, Helen F., 2018. "School turnaround in North Carolina: A regression discontinuity analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 302-320.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:62:y:2018:i:c:p:302-320
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.08.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716303156
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.08.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric A. Hanushek & EJohn F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin, 2004. "Why Public Schools Lose Teachers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    2. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    3. Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, 2008. "Regression–Discontinuity Analysis: A Survey of Recent Developments in Economics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(2), pages 219-245, June.
    4. Cowen, Joshua M. & Butler, J.S. & Fowles, Jacob & Streams, Megan E. & Toma, Eugenia F., 2012. "Teacher retention in Appalachian schools: Evidence from Kentucky," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 431-441.
    5. Peter Z. Schochet, 2009. "Statistical Power for Regression Discontinuity Designs in Education Evaluations," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 34(2), pages 238-266, June.
    6. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    7. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    8. Thomas Dee, 2012. "School Turnarounds: Evidence from the 2009 Stimulus," NBER Working Papers 17990, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. C. Kirabo Jackson, 2009. "Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the End of School Desegregation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 213-256, April.
    10. Gregory F. Branch & Eric A. Hanushek & Steven G. Rivkin, 2012. "Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals," NBER Working Papers 17803, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    12. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    13. Charles T. Clotfelter & Helen F. Ladd & Jacob L. Vigdor, 2010. "Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement in High School: A Cross-Subject Analysis with Student Fixed Effects," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(3).
    14. Rebecca A. Maynard & Kenneth A. Couch & Coady Wing & Thomas D. Cook, 2013. "Strengthening The Regression Discontinuity Design Using Additional Design Elements: A Within‐Study Comparison," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(4), pages 853-877, September.
    15. Clotfelter, Charles T. & Ladd, Helen F. & Vigdor, Jacob L., 2007. "Teacher credentials and student achievement: Longitudinal analysis with student fixed effects," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 673-682, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steven W. Hemelt & Brian A. Jacob, 2020. "How Does an Accountability Program that Targets Achievement Gaps Affect Student Performance?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(1), pages 45-74, Winter.
    2. Kurtz, Michael D. & Conway, Karen Smith & Mohr, Robert D., 2020. "Weekend feeding (“BackPack”) programs and student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Harbatkin, Erica & Strunk, Katharine O. & McIlwain, Aliyah, 2023. "School turnaround in a pandemic: An examination of the outsized implications of COVID-19 on low-performing turnaround schools, districts, and their communities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Mark Chin & Thomas J. Kane & Whitney Kozakowski & Beth E. Schueler & Douglas O. Staiger, 2019. "School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-School Changes in Achievement Growth," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(2), pages 323-354, March.
    5. Lisa Dragoset & Jaime Thomas & Mariesa Herrmann & John Deke & Susanne James-Burdumy & Cheryl Graczewski & Andrea Boyle & Rachel Upton & Courtney Tanenbaum & Jessica Giffin, "undated". "School Improvement Grants: Implementation and Effectiveness (Final Report)," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 76bce3f4bb0944f29a481fae0, Mathematica Policy Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berlinski, Samuel & Ramos, Alejandra, 2020. "Teacher mobility and merit pay: Evidence from a voluntary public award program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    2. Jeffrey Smith & Arthur Sweetman, 2016. "Viewpoint: Estimating the causal effects of policies and programs," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 871-905, August.
    3. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    4. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Hiraga, Masako & Viet Nguyen, Cuong, 2022. "Childcare and maternal employment: Evidence from Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    5. Seth Gershenson & Stephen B. Holt & Nicholas Papageorge, 2015. "Who Believes in Me? The Effect of Student-Teacher Demographic Match on Teacher Expectations," Upjohn Working Papers 15-231, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    6. Abdurrahman Aydemir & Murat G. Kirdar, 2017. "Low Wage Returns to Schooling in a Developing Country: Evidence from a Major Policy Reform in Turkey," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(6), pages 1046-1086, December.
    7. Heissel, Jennifer, 2016. "The relative benefits of live versus online delivery: Evidence from virtual algebra I in North Carolina," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 99-115.
    8. Cuong Viet Nguyen & Finn Tarp, 2023. "Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: New Evidence on Impacts and Mechanisms," DERG working paper series 23-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Development Economics Research Group (DERG).
    9. Kettlewell, Nathan & Siminski, Peter, 2020. "Optimal Model Selection in RDD and Related Settings Using Placebo Zones," IZA Discussion Papers 13639, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Donna Feir & Thomas Lemieux & Vadim Marmer, 2016. "Weak Identification in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 185-196, April.
    11. Andrew E. Clark & Elena Stancanelli, 2016. "Individual Well-Being and the Allocation of Time Before and After the Boston Marathon Terrorist Bombing," PSE Working Papers hal-01302843, HAL.
    12. Ari Hyytinen & Jaakko Meriläinen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Otto Toivanen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 1019-1051, July.
    13. Thomas Dee, 2012. "School Turnarounds: Evidence from the 2009 Stimulus," NBER Working Papers 17990, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Luis Felipe Batista de Oliveira & Rafael Terra, 2016. "Impact of school day extension on educational outcomes: evidence from Mais Educação in Brazil," Working Papers 147, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    15. Andrew E Clark & Rong Zhu, 2024. "Taking Back Control? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Retirement on Locus of Control," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1465-1493.
    16. Feng, Andy & Graetz, Georg, 2017. "A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 140-161.
    17. Slotwinski, Michaela & Schmidheiny, Kurt, 2014. "Behavioral Responses to Local Tax Rates: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Foreigners Tax Scheme in Switzerland," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100292, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Matti Sarvimäki & Kari Hämäläinen, 2016. "Integrating Immigrants: The Impact of Restructuring Active Labor Market Programs," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 479-508.
    19. Egger, Peter H. & Wamser, Georg, 2015. "The impact of controlled foreign company legislation on real investments abroad. A multi-dimensional regression discontinuity design," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 77-91.
    20. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Accountability; Educational reform; Elementary schools; Middle schools; Regression discontinuity; State and federal aid;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:62:y:2018:i:c:p:302-320. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.