Who Chooses DonorsChoose? Submission and Funding Patterns on the Nation’s Largest Education Crowdfunding Platform

Crowdfunding platforms direct millions of dollars annually to schools across the country, but the scholarly and policy communities have a limited understanding of their operations. In this paper we leverage data from DonorsChoose and the Common Core of Data to examine the characteristics of schools whose teachers do and do not submit projects to DonorsChoose, the subject areas and resource requests of these projects, and the characteristics of projects that achieve full funding. We find that teachers in schools serving disadvantaged student populations in the lowest-spending states are most likely to post projects on DonorsChoose. Despite accounting for a majority of submitted projects, math and reading projects are less likely to reach full funding than those in other subject areas.

Effects of Schooling on Reading Performance, Reading Engagement, and Reading Activities of 15-Year-Olds in England

This article reports the findings of an analysis into the effect of one year’s schooling for 15-year-olds in England on reading performance, reading engagement, and reading activities. The analyses were done on PISA 2000 data by applying a regression discontinuity approach within a multilevel framework. The effect of schooling is estimated as the difference between students from two consecutive grades minus the effect of age. A remarkably modest effect on reading performance was found, and no significant effects were found for the other two measures. The effect on reading performance was found to be somewhat stronger in schools with disadvantaged student populations.