The Impact of Teach for America on Non-Test Academic Outcomes

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Backes ◽  
Michael Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Teach For America ◽  
Dade County ◽  
Unexcused Absences ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Teacher Productivity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Elementary And Middle School

Recent evidence on teacher productivity suggests that teachers meaningfully influence non-test academic student outcomes that are commonly overlooked by narrowly focusing on test scores. Despite a large number of studies investigating the Teach For America (TFA) effect on math and English achievement, little is known about non-tested academic outcomes. Using administrative data from Miami-Dade County Public Schools, we investigate the relationship between being in a TFA classroom and five non-test student outcomes commonly found in administrative datasets: days absent, days suspended, GPA, classes failed, and grade repetition. We validate our use of non-test student academic outcomes to assess differences in teacher productivity using the quasi-experimental teacher switching methods of Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff ( 2014 ) and fail to reject the null hypothesis of unbiasedness in most cases in elementary and middle school, although in some cases standard errors are large. We find suggestive evidence that students taught by TFA teachers in elementary and middle schools were less likely to miss school due to unexcused absences and suspensions compared with students taught by non-TFA teachers in the same school, although point estimates are very small. Other outcomes were found to be forecast-unbiased but showed no evidence of a TFA effect.

scholarly journals The impact of school choice on student outcomes: an analysis of the Chicago Public Schools

2005 ◽  
Vol 89 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 729-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Berry Cullen ◽  
Brian A. Jacob ◽  
Steven D. Levitt
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Chicago Public Schools ◽  
The Impact

Injecting Charter School Best Practices into Traditional Public Schools: Evidence from Field Experiments *

2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 1355-1407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Fryer
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Math Achievement ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
School Level ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This study examines the impact on student achievement of implementing a bundle of best practices from high-performing charter schools into low-performing, traditional public schools in Houston, Texas, using a school-level randomized field experiment and quasi-experimental comparisons. The five practices in the bundle are increased instructional time, more effective teachers and administrators, high-dosage tutoring, data-driven instruction, and a culture of high expectations. The findings show that injecting best practices from charter schools into traditional Houston public schools significantly increases student math achievement in treated elementary and secondary schools—by 0.15 to 0.18 standard deviations a year—and has little effect on reading achievement. Similar bundles of practices are found to significantly raise math achievement in analyses for public schools in a field experiment in Denver and program in Chicago.

scholarly journals When Do the Advantaged See the Disadvantages of Others? A Quasi-Experimental Study of National Service

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
CECILIA HYUNJUNG MO ◽  
KATHARINE M. CONN
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
Teach For America ◽  
Prejudice Reduction ◽  
National Service ◽  
Service Program ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
The Impact

Are there mechanisms by which the advantaged can see the perspectives of the disadvantaged? If advantaged individuals have prolonged engagement with disadvantaged populations and confront issues of inequality through national service, do they see the world more through the lens of the poor? We explore this question by examining Teach For America (TFA), as TFA is a prominent national service program that integrates top college graduates into low-income communities for two years and employs a selection model that allows for causal inference. A regression discontinuity approach, utilizing an original survey of over 32,000 TFA applicants and TFA’s selection data for the 2007–2015 application cycles, reveals that extended intergroup contact in a service context causes advantaged Americans to adopt beliefs that are closer to those of disadvantaged Americans. These findings have broad implications for our understanding of the impact of intergroup contact on perceptions of social justice and prejudice reduction.

The Dynamic Effects of a Summer Learning Program on Behavioral Engagement in School

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-51
Author(s):  
Jaymes Pyne ◽  
Erica Messner ◽  
Thomas S. Dee
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Behavioral Engagement ◽  
Dynamic Effects ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
School Students ◽  
Summer Learning ◽  
Unexcused Absences ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Evidence that student learning declines or stagnates during summers has motivated an interest in programs providing intensive summer instruction. However, existing literature suggests that such programs have modest effects on achievement and no impact on measures of engagement in school. In this quasi-experimental study, we present evidence on the impact of a comprehensive and mature summer learning program that serves low-income middle school students and features unusual academic breadth, including a robust and well-designed social-emotional learning curriculum. Our results indicate that this program led to substantial reductions in unexcused absences, chronic absenteeism and suspensions and a modest gain in ELA test scores. We find evidence that the gains in behavioral engagement are dynamic, growing over time and with additional summers of participation.

scholarly journals Understanding a Vicious Cycle: The Relationship Between Student Discipline and Student Academic Outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlin P. Anderson ◽  
Gary W. Ritter ◽  
Gema Zamarro
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
Grade Retention ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Student Discipline ◽  
Exclusionary Discipline ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Disciplinary Referral

While numerous studies have demonstrated a correlation between exclusionary discipline and negative student outcomes, this relationship is likely confounded by other factors related to the underlying misbehavior or risk of disciplinary referral. Using 10 years of student-level demographic, achievement, and disciplinary data from all K–12 public schools in Arkansas, we find that exclusionary consequences are related to worse academic outcomes (e.g., test scores and grade retention) than less exclusionary consequences, controlling for type of behavioral infraction. However, despite controlling for a robust set of covariates, sensitivity checks demonstrate that the estimated relationships between consequences and academic outcomes may still be driven by selection bias into consequence type. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Effects of Peer Support Interventions on Students' Access to the General Curriculum and Social Interactions

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik W. Carter ◽  
Lisa S. Cushing ◽  
Nitasha M. Clark ◽  
Craig H. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Peer Support ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Severe Disabilities ◽  
General Curriculum ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moderate To Severe Disabilities ◽  
The Impact

Peer support interventions are emerging as an effective alternative to traditional paraprofessional models for assisting students with moderate to severe disabilities to access the general curriculum. To contribute to the refinement of peer support interventions, we evaluated the impact of altering the number of participating peers on the social and academic outcomes of students with and without disabilities. Our findings indicated that changes in the configuration of peer support arrangements differentially affected student outcomes. Specifically, higher levels of social interaction and contact with the general curriculum were observed when students with disabilities worked with two peers relative to one peer. The additive benefits of a second peer provide guidance to educators concerning the implementation of peer support interventions in inclusive classrooms.

scholarly journals Examining Spillover Effects From Teach For America Corps Members in Miami-Dade County Public Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Backes ◽  
Michael Hansen ◽  
Zeyu Xu ◽  
Victoria Brady
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Mathematics Achievement ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Teach For America ◽  
Dade County ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Cluster Strategy ◽  
Student Test ◽  
Over Time

This article examines Teach For America’s (TFA) placement strategy in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, in which large numbers of TFA corps members are placed as clusters into a targeted set of disadvantaged schools, to investigate whether the large-scale infusion of TFA corps members into these schools induced broader improvements across the school. Using 6 years of administrative data from the district, we exploit variation in TFA density over time within schools to measure the extent to which increases in density were associated with improvements in student test scores. We find that many of the schools chosen to participate in the cluster strategy experienced large subsequent gains in mathematics achievement. These gains were driven in part by the direct effect of having larger numbers of classrooms staffed by effective TFA teachers. However, we do not find any evidence that the clustering strategy led to any spillovers on schoolwide performance.

A Promise Kept? The Impact of the El Dorado Promise Scholarship on Student Achievement

2020 ◽  
pp. 016237372097051
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ash ◽  
Elise Swanson ◽  
Gary Ritter
Keyword(s):  
School Achievement ◽  
Literacy Achievement ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Prior Achievement ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Scholarship Program ◽  
El Dorado ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Middle School Achievement ◽  
Elementary And Middle School

We examine whether the El Dorado Promise, a guaranteed college scholarship program for students in the El Dorado School District (EDSD), affected elementary and middle school achievement using a quasi-experimental matching design. We first match the EDSD with similar districts to create a pool of potential comparison students then match students on prior achievement and demographics. The Promise leads to an estimated 0.11 standard deviation gain in math achievement; this effect is statistically significant and practically meaningful. Results are similar from district-level synthetic control and difference-in-differences analyses. We find larger effects on students with above-average prior achievement. We are unable to construct an appropriate comparison group to estimate the impact of the Promise on literacy achievement.

scholarly journals Tenure-Track Appointment for Teaching-Oriented Faculty? The Impact of Teaching and Research Faculty on Student Outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Xu ◽  
Sabrina Solanki
Keyword(s):  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Tenure Track ◽  
Fixed Effects Model ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Teaching Faculty ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Research Faculty

This article presents new quasi-experimental evidence regarding the effectiveness of teaching-oriented faculty with tenure-track appointment, a model pioneered at the University of California (UC) system. Using data from six cohorts of students at a UC campus, we examine the impact of initial course-taking with three distinct types of instructors—tenure-track research faculty, tenure-track teaching faculty, and contingent lecturers—on students’ current and subsequent academic outcomes. Descriptive analyses indicate that tenure-track teaching faculty assume a substantially larger teaching load than either research faculty or lecturers. Using a three-way fixed effects model, we find limited evidence supporting differences by faculty type on either current or downstream student outcomes.

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