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Expanding Outcomes In Educational Program Evaluation: Student Outcomes, Systemic Effects, And Policy Implications, Heidi Lauren Holmes May 2019

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 …


Heterogeneous Impacts Across Schools In The First Four Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Patrick J. Wolf Apr 2019

Heterogeneous Impacts Across Schools In The First Four Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a school voucher initiative that offers publicly- funded scholarships to students from economically-disadvantaged families to attend a participating private school of their choice. While school choice theory suggests that market- based reforms such as the LSP should improve student outcomes, experimental evaluations of the program instead find significant negative effects of the program on math and reading scores after its first year. Those effects diminish to insignificant differences by the end of the third year before becoming negative again in the fourth year. Our study builds on previous work with an exploratory analysis of …


The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Four Years, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf Apr 2019

The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Four Years, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) offers publicly-funded vouchers to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line, allowing them to enroll in participating private schools. Established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. In this study, we estimate the achievement impacts of ever using an LSP voucher to enroll in one’s first-choice private school over the four year period spanning from 2012-13 (Year 1) through 2015-16 (Year 4). In contrast to our previous research, which indicated large initial negative achievement effects of the …


The Effect Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On College Entrance, Heidi Holmes Erickson, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf Apr 2019

The Effect Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On College Entrance, Heidi Holmes Erickson, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a private school voucher program available to families who have incomes no greater than 250 percent of the federal poverty line and whose children attend a low performing public school. It began as a pilot program in New Orleans in 2008 and was expanded statewide in 2012. Previous evaluations of the LSP generally found negative impacts of the program on math and English language arts test scores. In this study, we evaluate the effects of the program on college enrollment for the first cohort of students eligible to enter college by 2017-18. Using lottery …


The Effects Of Regulations On Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence From California And New York, Corey Deangelis, Lindsey Burke, Patrick J. Wolf Mar 2019

The Effects Of Regulations On Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence From California And New York, Corey Deangelis, Lindsey Burke, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Although private school voucher programs provide subsidies to students for tuition and other education-related costs, private school leaders weigh program participation against any associated regulatory costs. The higher the regulatory costs of participation, the less likely a private school is to participate in a school voucher program. Since we do not know with certainty which regulations will be viewed by school leaders as more or less costly, we explore whether specific regulations that are common to private school choice programs do or do not deter likely voucher program participation.

We use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 4,825 private …


The Effects Of Regulations On Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence From Florida, Corey Deangelis, Lindsey Burke, Patrick Wolf Oct 2018

The Effects Of Regulations On Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence From Florida, Corey Deangelis, Lindsey Burke, Patrick Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

When deciding whether to participate in a private school choice program, private school leaders weigh additional financial benefits against additional regulatory costs. In theory, raising the costs associated with entering private school choice programs should reduce the likelihood that individual schools participate in those programs. However, very little empirical evidence exists evaluating this idea. While a few studies suggest that more highly regulated programs are correlated with lower levels of school participation, none have established causal relationships between these factors, and none have determined which program regulations are the most costly. Because it is nearly impossible to randomly assign program …


Will Democracy Endure Private School Choice? The Effect Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program On Adult Voting Behavior, Corey Deangelis, Patrick Wolf May 2018

Will Democracy Endure Private School Choice? The Effect Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program On Adult Voting Behavior, Corey Deangelis, Patrick Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We employ probit regression analysis to compare the adult voting activity of students who participated in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to their matched public school counterparts. We use a sophisticated matching algorithm to create a traditional public school student comparison group using data from the state-mandated evaluation of the MPCP. By the time the students are 19-26 years old, we do not find evidence that private school voucher students are more or less likely to vote in 2012 or 2016 than students educated in public schools. These results are robust to all models and are consistent for all …


What Leads To Successful School Choice Programs? A Review Of The Theories And Evidence, Corey A. Deangelis, Heidi Holmes Erickson Sep 2017

What Leads To Successful School Choice Programs? A Review Of The Theories And Evidence, Corey A. Deangelis, Heidi Holmes Erickson

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

There is a large body of thorough research showing many positive benefits of school choice. However, many questions remain on how school choice works. Rigorous school choice experiments can only determine if access to school choice programs alters student outcomes; they cannot confidently identify the specific mechanisms that mediate various outcomes. Two commonly theorized mechanisms in school choice programs that lead to positive outcomes are (1) an increased access to higher-quality schools and (2) an improved match between schools and students. We examine the existing empirical evidence and the theoretical arguments for these two primary mechanisms. While there is evidence …


Does Regulation Induce Homogenization? An Analysis Of Three Voucher Programs In The United States, Corey A. Deangelis, Lindsey Burke Sep 2017

Does Regulation Induce Homogenization? An Analysis Of Three Voucher Programs In The United States, Corey A. Deangelis, Lindsey Burke

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We employ school and year fixed-effects regression to determine the effect of voucher programs on the supply of private schools. In particular, we examine individual private schools in Washington, D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana as they transition into voucher program environments. We leverage the Private School Universe Survey to examine how schools self-identify before and after switching into voucher environments. We find that upon switching into school voucher programs, private schools in more heavily regulated programs are more likely to identify as less specialized than they were prior to entering the program, and that those schools in more lightly regulated environments …


The Wisconsin Role In The School Choice Movement, John F. Witte, Patrick J. Wolf May 2017

The Wisconsin Role In The School Choice Movement, John F. Witte, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson led a Midwestern policy revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s centered on providing parents with more school choices. Since those early years, school choice in the forms of private school vouchers, public charter schools, and public school open enrollment have spread across almost all of the country. Longitudinal evaluations of the effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the voucher program initiated by Governor Thompson, indicate that student achievement outcomes were not consistently affected by vouchers but other vital student outcomes, including educational attainment, civic values, criminal proclivities as well as parent and …


Evaluating School Vouchers: Evidence From A Within-Study Comparison, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Patrick J. Wolf Apr 2017

Evaluating School Vouchers: Evidence From A Within-Study Comparison, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are the “gold-standard” for estimating causal impacts of educational programs. Students subject to lotteries, however, often are not representative of the broader population of students experiencing the educational treatment. With few exceptions, researchers are not able to determine how much selection bias exists when various quasi-experimental approaches are used in place of experimental ones within a school choice context. We are left wondering about the magnitude of the internal-for-external validity tradeoff that education researchers often face. This study assesses the extent to which methods such as propensity score matching or observational models with control variables can …


More Graduates, Less Criminals? The Economic Impacts Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Will Flanders, Corey A. Deangelis Feb 2017

More Graduates, Less Criminals? The Economic Impacts Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Will Flanders, Corey A. Deangelis

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Although an abundance of research indicates that private schooling can benefit individual children through higher test scores, the effects on society are less clear. We monetize and forecast the social impacts of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) in the United States. We use existing literature on the impacts of the MPCP on criminal activity and graduation rates. Between 2016 and 2035, students who use a voucher in the MPCP will generate additional economic benefits of $473 million associated with higher graduation rates, and $26 million associated with fewer felonies and misdemeanors, relative to their traditional public school peers.


The Fiscal Effects Of Eliminating The Louisiana Scholarship Program On State Education Expenditures, Julie R. Trivitt, Corey A. Deangelis Apr 2016

The Fiscal Effects Of Eliminating The Louisiana Scholarship Program On State Education Expenditures, Julie R. Trivitt, Corey A. Deangelis

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Eliminating the Louisiana Scholarship Program has been proposed as a way to reduce state education expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year. Drawing upon Louisiana’s education funding formulas, we determine that the overall effect of removing the program will increase state education expenditures. It is true that the state would avoid $41.6 million of spending if the voucher program is eliminated. However, each current voucher student who returns to a public school increases the local district’s necessary education expenditures without increasing the local tax revenue for schools, obligating the state to provide increased funding to the district. While our results depend …


Measures Of Student Non-Cognitive Skills And Political Tolerance After Two Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Jonathan N. Mills, Albert Cheng, Collin Hitt, Patrick J. Wolf, Jay P. Greene Feb 2016

Measures Of Student Non-Cognitive Skills And Political Tolerance After Two Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Jonathan N. Mills, Albert Cheng, Collin Hitt, Patrick J. Wolf, Jay P. Greene

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This report examines the short-term effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on students’ non-cognitive skills and civic values. While a growing number of studies have evaluated K-12 school voucher programs along academic dimensions, few have focused on the development of non-cognitive skills and civic values. This study aims to address that gap by providing the first analysis of differences in self-reported measures of grit, locus of control, self esteem, and political tolerance associated with the LSP. Using results from a phone survey of applicants to the program, we find little evidence of differences between LSP scholarship recipients and non-recipients. …


The Impact Of The Louisiana Scolarship Program On Racial Segregation In Louisiana Schools, Anna J. Egalite, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick Wolf Feb 2016

The Impact Of The Louisiana Scolarship Program On Racial Segregation In Louisiana Schools, Anna J. Egalite, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The question of how school choice programs affect the racial stratification of schools is highly salient in the field of education policy. We use a student-level panel data set to analyze the impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on racial segregation in public and private schools. This targeted school voucher program provides funding for low-income, mostly minority students in the lowest-graded public schools to enroll in participating private schools. Our analysis indicates that the vast majority (82%) of LSP transfers have reduced racial segregation in the voucher students’ former public schools. LSP transfers have marginally increased segregation in the …


The Competitive Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Public School Performance, Anna J. Egalite Feb 2016

The Competitive Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Public School Performance, Anna J. Egalite

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Given the significant growth rate and geographic expansion of private school choice programs over the past two decades, it is important to examine how traditional public schools respond to the sudden injection of competition for students and resources. This article uses 1) a school fixed effects approach, and 2) a regression discontinuity framework to examine the achievement impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). This targeted school voucher program has provided public funds for low-income students in low-performing public schools to enroll in participating private schools since the 2012-13 school year. The main findings of the competitive effects analysis reveal …


The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Two Years, Jonathan N. Mills Feb 2016

The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Two Years, Jonathan N. Mills

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide initiative offering publicly-funded vouchers to enroll in local private schools to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This paper examines the experimental effects of using an LSP scholarship to enroll in a private school on student achievement in the first two years following the program’s expansion. Our results indicate that the use of an LSP scholarship has negatively impacted both ELA and math achievement, …


The Effectiveness Of Cash Transfers As A Policy Instrument In K-16 Education, Jonathan Norman Mills Jul 2015

The Effectiveness Of Cash Transfers As A Policy Instrument In K-16 Education, Jonathan Norman Mills

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cash transfers, defined as direct transfers of purchasing power from an institution or individual to another individual, are an increasingly popular policy instrument both abroad and in the United States. This dissertation investigates how two educational interventions utilizing cash transfers affect participating students. The first, the Louisiana Scholarship Program, is a statewide program offering publicly financed scholarships for low income students attending poorly performing public schools to attend K-12 private schools. The second program, the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship, is a state financed broad-based merit-aid scholarship for students in college within the state of Arkansas. In general, the results presented …


Does Mission Matter? Examining The Role Of Organizational Mission And Religious Identity In Schools Participating In The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Michael Mcshane May 2013

Does Mission Matter? Examining The Role Of Organizational Mission And Religious Identity In Schools Participating In The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Michael Mcshane

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For decades, theories of bureaucracy have emphasized the importance of organizational mission in thriving organizations. This dissertation will examine the role of organizational mission in schools, particularly, a sample of schools that participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation's oldest and largest school voucher program. Using teacher and school leader survey data, coupled with measures of student achievement, it will measure mission coherence and correlate it with a variety of outcome variables of interest. It will also take a particularly close look at the role of mission in religious schools.