Resource- and Approach-Driven Multidimensional Change: Three-Year Effects of School Improvement Grants

Abstract

Hoping to spur dramatic school turnaround, the federal government channeled resources to the country’s lowest-performing schools through School Improvement Grants (SIG). However, prior research on SIG effectiveness is limited and focuses primarily on student achievement. This study uses a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate program impacts on multiple dimensions across the 3-year duration of the SIG award in one urban school district. Following 2 years of modest improvement, we find pronounced, positive effects of SIG interventions on student achievement in Year 3, consistent with prior literature indicating that improvements from comprehensive school turnarounds emerge gradually. We also identify improvements indicating the process through which change occurred, including reduced unexcused absences, increased family preference for SIG schools, improved retention of effective teachers, and greater development of teacher professional capacity.

Monte Journal Volume 7, No.2 (2020): April

“…When it comes to grants in education according to Carneiro et al (2020) sometimes government and authorities does not know the needs of the schools and universities and therefore we do not see improvement in their general scores .whilst when comes to the labor market to select and retain a satisfying employee there are some issues that needs to be developed as training and development and interaction of organizations strategy with human resources development , in order to reach competitive advantage in the field that they are working Holland et al (2007). Sun, M., Penner, E. K., & Loeb, S. (2017). Whilst Sun & Loeb (2017) in their research analyzing grants for low performance schools found that the improvements in the success of schools takes long time and improvements in the performance of the schools can be seen only in the third year of grants .…”

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

“…When replacing teachers, the idea is that newly hired teachers will not only be more effective at improving student outcomes, but they will also be more willing to adopt school practices linked to improved organizational performance (Malen et al, 2002). Current evidence is mixed in terms of the degree to which turnaround schools have an adequate supply of qualified and committed personnel (Hamilton et al, 2014; Le Floch et al, 2016) and suggests that replacement teachers are more effective but possibly less experienced (Heissel & Ladd, 2018; Strunk, Marsh, Hashim, Bush-Mecenas, & Weinstein, 2016; Sun et al, 2017).…”

“…The two defining practices of school transformation are to implement a set of practices to improve organizational performance and to replace the principal. Although the specific practices meant to improve organizational performance are quite varied, commonly adopted practices include using data to inform instruction, increasing teacher technology access, providing ongoing professional development on student learning needs, and using benchmark assessments (Herrmann et al, 2014; Le Floch et al, 2016; Sun et al, 2017). The efficacy of school transformation, however, may not come from the adoption of a set of scripted practices but the appointment of a new school leader who is better positioned to rebuild organizational capacity than the outgoing principal (Duke, 2015).…”

Using Administrative Data for Social Science and Policy

“…This approach can provide both better policy and better research and serves as a model for how to accumulate and incorporate knowledge beyond simply conducting a series of single-policy evaluations. Although shortening the feedback loop among implementation, research, and redesign is likely to be positive overall, one challenge of this linkage is that long-term outcomes by definition cannot be observed quickly, and many policies—particularly those aimed at implementing organizational changes—have effects that take time to emerge or vary across different stages of the implementation cycle (Mills and Wolf 2017; Sun, Penner, and Loeb 2017).…”