States have invested heavily in accountability dashboards since No Child Left Behind. More recently, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has required states to rethink how they hold districts accountable for various measures of student performance. New state accountability dashboards prompt considerations about the psychometric properties of the included measures, particularly as these dashboards are used to inform state interventions in underperforming districts. In this paper, I employ psychometric methods to analyze the new California School Dashboard. I find that among the current dashboard measures, ELA and mathematics provide more information about district performance relative to the other measures. My findings suggest that a more efficient California School Dashboard could use ELA and math performance to identify districts and schools for targeted assistance. California might also re-evaluate its scoring procedures to ensure the measures provide maximum information. These findings suggest that other states should leverage psychometric techniques to improve measurement efficiency in the use of multiple accountability measures.

Identifying effective ways to manage student behavior has been a consistent policy concern, even becoming a focus of US DOE and US DOJ guidance to states and school districts. In this study, I evaluate the efforts in Massachusetts to implement legislative reform, Chapter 222, to reduce student discipline incidents and of out-of-school suspensions. I leverage a difference-in-differences and event study design to compare the outcomes between high and low discipline incident rate school grades before and after the implementation of Chapter 222. In high-incident school grades, Chapter 222 caused significant reductions in student incidents and suspensions, particularly for students at high risk of committing incidents or being suspended (i.e., students with disabilities and Black, Hispanic, and students in low-income households). In high-incident school grades, Chapter 222 also contributed to improvements in ELA achievement, absences, and dropout rates. This study highlights how rather than inducing negative spillovers on learning, reductions in student discipline incidents and suspensions can potentially improve academic performance for at-risk students.

Managing unproductive behavior is an integral part of human capital development, which we study in the context of cell phone usage in schools. We study the impact on student behavior and school culture of NYC DOE's 2014-15 lifting of its cell phone ban, identifying causal effects by comparing changes in schools with and without metal detectors that were effective at enforcing the ban. Lifting the cell phone ban reduced student suspensions. However, it negatively impacted students’ perceptions of school culture, including respect, behavior, and safety. Teacher perceptions of job satisfaction and school safety were unaffected. Other districts considering cell phone use policy should consider these trade-offs.

 

Education leaders must identify valid metrics to predict student long-term success. We exploit a unique dataset containing data on cognitive skills, self-regulation, behavior, course performance, and test scores for 8th-grade students. We link these data to data on students' high school outcomes, college enrollment, persistence, and on-time degree completion. Cognitive tests and survey-based self-regulation measures predict high school and college outcomes. However, these relationships become small and lose statistical significance when we control for test scores and a behavioral index. For leaders hoping to identify the best on-track indicators for college completion, the information collected in student longitudinal data systems better predicts both short- and long-run educational outcomes than these survey-based measures of self-regulation and cognitive skills.

 

State standardized tests are woven into our accountability systems and research evaluation fabric. However, while many factors influence standardized academic tests, they are primarily considered a reflection of students’ academic skills and underlying cognitive ability, which research has shown is less malleable after age 10. We leverage a unique data set of over 5,000 students that combines assessments of cognitive skills with state test scores across subjects and grades. We find the relationship between cognitive skills and state test scores is one-third and half as large in 10^th grade compared to 5^th grade in ELA and Math, respectively. We also provide novel evidence on how achievement on different item types is associated with cognitive skills. Questions that require judgment and application to real-world context are more cognitively demanding. Our results suggest that improvements in state standardized tests might be more malleable to instruction as students grow older, and in particular subjects.

Gifted education is a contested policy due to concerns about racial and socioeconomic inequities in identification procedures and unclear evidence of gifted programs’ efficacy for improving student outcomes. In this context, New York City has provided PK to 2^nd grade students the opportunity to apply for District and Citywide gifted and talented (GT) programs based upon meeting an eligibility test threshold. I evaluate the impacts of District and Citywide GT participation through regression discontinuity and lottery-based designs. I show that acceptance into a District or Citywide GT program induces non-NYC enrolled and already-NYC-enrolled wealthier, White, Asian, and Black applicants to enroll in public school compared to ineligible and non-offer receiving applicants. I also show that District and Citywide GT participation have positive effects on early grade absences, but imprecise effects on ELA and math achievement. This study highlights the need for districts to consider how specialized programs can be leveraged to attract families into public schools but can also separate students in public schools based upon ability, race, and class.

A growing body of research shows that students benefit when they demographically match their teachers. However, little is known about how matching affects social-emotional development. We use student-fixed effects to exploit changes over time in the proportion of teachers within a school grade who demographically match a student to estimate matching's effect on social-emotional measures, test scores, and behavioral outcomes. We find improvements for students in grit and interpersonal self-management when matched to teachers of their race and gender. Black female students drive these effects. We also find that matching reduces absences, especially for Black students. Our findings add to the emerging teacher diversity literature by showing its benefits for Black and female students during a critical stage of development.

Between 1935-1940 the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) assigned A (minimal risk) to D (hazardous) grades to neighborhoods that reflected their lending risk from previously issued loans and visualized these grades on color-coded maps, which arguably influenced banks and other mortgage lenders to provide or deny home loans within residential neighborhoods. In this study, we leverage a spatial analysis of 144 HOLC-graded core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) to understand how HOLC maps relate to current patterns of school and district funding, school racial diversity, and school performance. We find that schools and districts located today in historically redlined D neighborhoods have less district per-pupil total revenues, larger shares of Black and non-White student bodies, less diverse student populations, and worse average test scores relative to those located in A, B, and C neighborhoods. Conversely, at the school level, we find that per-pupil total expenditures are better for those schools operating in previously redlined D neighborhoods. Consequently, these schools also have the largest shares of low-income students. Our nationwide results are, on the whole, consistent by region and after controlling for CBSA. Finally, we document a persistence in these patterns across time, with overall positive time trends regardless of HOLC security rating but widening gaps between D vs. A, B, and C outcomes. These findings suggest that education policymakers need to consider the historical implications of redlining and past neighborhood inequality on neighborhoods today when designing modern interventions focused on improving the life outcomes of students of color and students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds.

Education Combination

Diagnostic

Guidebooks

• Dimension 1: School Funding
• Dimension 2: Teaching Quality & Diversity
• Dimension 3: School Leadership Quality & Diversity
• Dimension 4: Empowering, Rigorous Content
• Dimension 5: Instructional Time & Attention
• Dimension 6: Positive & Inviting School Climate
• Dimension 7: Student Supports & Intervention
• Dimension 8: High-Quality Early Learning
• Dimension 9: Learning-Ready Facilities
• Dimension 10: Diverse Classrooms & Schools

This brief examines how 3rd grade standardized test failure is associated with special education identification within Massachusetts between 2006 and 2014. This analysis identifies that:

1. Black and Hispanic students have higher 3rd and 4th grade special education identification rates than other racial/ethnic groups.

 2. Black and Hispanic students fail 3rd grade MCAS at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups.  

3. White students who fail 3rd grade MCAS are more likely to receive special education services in 4th grade than other racial/ethnic groups.  

4. Student and school contextual factors including grade retention, special education rates, and MCAS failure rates are contributing factors to special education identification patterns.

Policymakers should consider whether to account for differences in student demographics, student performance, and school performance when evaluating disproportionality in special education identification rates by race/ethnicity.

Strengthening core instruction and blurring the often-sharp divide that exists between general education and special education can help better serve students with disabilities. Explore key tactics that include involving general education teachers in the special education process; providing instructional coaching to support general education teachers; providing rigorous grade-level content for all students; and modifying schedules so that intervention is not provided on a pull-out basis during core instruction.