NEPC Resources on School Reform and Restructuring
NEPC Review: The Economic Cost of the Pandemic: State by State (Hoover Institution, January 2023)
A report calculates the future economic burden that the pandemic has imposed through reduced student achievement levels. Under a set of assumptions about the link between achievement and earnings, this economic burden is projected to be very large, persistent, and variable across states. From there, the report contends that—to offset this achievement gap—schools need to be “made better” even as the report is silent on how schools can improve or if more funding is needed. Setting aside this exhortation, however, the report actually falls short of a full accounting of the total loss in children’s human capital from the pandemic. It focuses only on achievement deficits, failing to consider the other dimensions of human—and social—capital. Unfortunately, without a full reckoning or understanding of the damage the pandemic imposed on schoolchildren, it is unlikely that any policy responses will be adequate, efficient, or equitable.
NEPC Review: The System-Level Effects of Denver’s Portfolio District Strategy: Technical Report (Center for Education Policy Analysis, University of Colorado Denver, December 2021)
This report analyzes changes in academic performance as measured by test scores and graduation rates in the Denver Public Schools versus comparable schools in Colorado over 11 years of the district’s experimenting with the “portfolio” approach to school district management. This approach includes central-office oversight of different school types (such as charter schools, innovation schools, and district-run schools), with widespread parental choice under a single enrollment system. The reported academic gains are dramatic and worth drawing attention to, but attributing them specifically to the portfolio reforms seems premature and thus not useful in showing how other districts could replicate that success.
NEPC Review: Use of Personalized Learning Platforms in One Pandemic-Era Microschool: A Case Study (Center on Reinventing Public Education, June 2022)
Families across the U.S. experimented during the COVID-19 pandemic with new educational models in response to school closures. This review examines the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s two recent reports on two related strategies that exemplify such experimentation: microschools and learning pods. The first report analyzes engagement patterns and success rates of a digital platform used at one microschool in Nevada. The second report praises learning pods’ staffing features and argues that these approaches might be adopted in traditional schools. Both reports paint the new strategies in positive light, but both have methodological and analytical shortcomings that limit their utility for policymakers.
NEPC Review: The Effect of Constitutional Provisions on Education Policy and Outcomes (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, April 2021)
A report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis examines the potential effects of amending the education clauses contained in states’ constitutions. The apparent intent of this report is to provide an empirical justification for amending the education clause of Minnesota’s constitution. Specifically, the report lays out four independent empirical analyses in an attempt to advance a theory of action for improving education quality. Unfortunately, the analyses use methods and models that exceed the capacity and quality of the data. In addition, these methods and models are inadequately linked to one another or to the theory of action. Ultimately, the report provides little evidentiary basis for the proposed theory of action or for the current campaign to amend the Minnesota constitution.
NEPC Review: The Third Way: A Guide to Implementing Innovation Schools (Progressive Policy Institute, October 2020)
A report from The Progressive Policy Institute is a “how-to” guide for entities seeking to develop innovation schools in urban communities. The guide highlights case examples of states and localities that have “successfully” implemented innovation schools, with a focus on test score data and student demographics. It argues that equitable educational opportunity is achievable when schools have complete autonomy and strong accountability to increase academic performance, adopt diverse learning models, and expand school choice. However, many of this convoluted guide’s long list of 53 detailed recommendations are improbable and overlook potential disadvantages of innovation schools. These recommendations are highly complicated, largely unexamined, and likely infeasible, especially if a district’s goal is to serve all students and their families equitably.
New Concerns Raised About a Well-Known Digital Learning Platform
NEPC Review: Comparing Ed Reforms: Assessing the Experimental Research on Nine K-12 Education Reforms (EdChoice, April 2020)
A report from EdChoice, working with Hanover Research, identifies and reviews studies that use Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to determine student achievement or educational attainment outcomes of nine broad “education reform” areas. The report presents counts of studies with positive, negative, and neutral findings across these areas. RCTs are presented in the report as “gold standard” studies for determining effects of specific treatments on measured outcomes. The main concern with this report is that the casual reader will take the table presenting the tallies out of context and use it to argue that charter schools and vouchers for private schools have been studied most (because they are most important) and that most of these studies find positive effects. If, however, the report is not misused in such a way, it offers a limited contribution for readers wanting to get an initial feel for the RCT research in these areas.
Community Research Collaboratives
Does Closing Schools Pay Off?
NEPC Review: Fiscal and Education Spillovers from Charter School Expansion (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 2018)
A paper by two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examines the consequences that follow from an expansion in the number of charter school places available for enrollment. The study uses data from Massachusetts, where charter school growth has been carefully managed and where there was significant excess demand for charter school places. In 2011, the state increased the cap on charter school enrollments in districts with low test scores, resulting in a large increase in charter school enrollment in some of these districts. The paper analyzes three outcomes: (a) changes across charter and non-charter public schools in funding (how much resource was available per student), (b) resource allocation (how schools spent their funds), and (c) achievement (how well students performed on academic tests).