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Expanding Outcomes In Educational Program Evaluation: Student Outcomes, Systemic Effects, And Policy Implications, Heidi Lauren Holmes
Expanding Outcomes In Educational Program Evaluation: Student Outcomes, Systemic Effects, And Policy Implications, Heidi Lauren Holmes
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Education policy debates over the last twenty years have focused on the need to increase students’ test scores. The federal government and states have implemented and expanded a variety of test-based, school accountability policies. Accountability pressures have incentivized schools to narrow their curriculum, decrease time allocated to extracurricular activities, and focus on short-term student outcomes. This dissertation focuses on expanding outcomes in educational program evaluations and demonstrates the value of looking beyond the goal of increasing student test scores. The first chapter, using random assignment, estimates the causal effects of culturally enriching field trips on various student outcomes. Such field …
Arts Smarts Or Random Visits: Arts Field Trips In The American Education Policy Context, Angela R. Watson
Arts Smarts Or Random Visits: Arts Field Trips In The American Education Policy Context, Angela R. Watson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The school field trip is as much a part of the American educational experience as letter grades and recess. However, in response to a variety of pressures such as accountability, safety, and funding, the school field trip is reported to be in decline. Traditional field trip destinations, like museums and zoos, claim that attendance has declined. Further, these institutions feel pressure to connect field trips directly to state educational standards, or even design field trips to meet state standards that may be outside their areas of expertise, in order to justify a field. In this collection of three studies, I …
Assessing The Impact Of Holocaust Education On Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence From Arkansas, Mathew Lee, Molly I. Beck
Assessing The Impact Of Holocaust Education On Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence From Arkansas, Mathew Lee, Molly I. Beck
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
American adults overwhelmingly agree that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, yet few studies investigate the potential benefits of Holocaust education. We evaluate the impact of Holocaust education on several civic outcomes, including “upstander” efficacy (willingness to intervene on behalf of others), likelihood of exercising civil disobedience, empathy for the suffering of others, and tolerance of others with different values and lifestyles. We recruit students from two local high schools and randomize access to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Conference, where students have the chance to hear from a Holocaust survivor and to participate in breakout sessions with leading Holocaust …
Does Art Make You Smart? A Longitudinal Experiment Of The Effects Of Multiple Arts- Focused Field Trips, Heidi Holmes Erickson, Jay Greene, Angela Watson, Molly I. Beck
Does Art Make You Smart? A Longitudinal Experiment Of The Effects Of Multiple Arts- Focused Field Trips, Heidi Holmes Erickson, Jay Greene, Angela Watson, Molly I. Beck
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
This paper presents second year results from the first ever multi-visit, longitudinal experiment on the benefits from arts-focused field trips. Students in fourth and fifth grades in ten elementary schools in a large urban school district were randomly assigned to receive three arts-related field trips throughout the school year, including an art museum, a live theater production, and a symphony performance or to serve as a control. We find that treatment students exhibit higher levels of school engagement as measured by students’ behavioral infractions and self-reported engagement. We also find that treatment students perform significantly better on their end of …