Evaluating a state-sponsored school improvement program through an improved school finance lens

Journal of Education Finance

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 395-419

  Goe, Laura ^a  

^a EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250673574     PISSN: 00989495     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. See J. R. Betts, K. S. Rueben, and A. Danenberg, Equal Resources, Equal Outcomes? The Distribution of School Resources and Student Achievement in California (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2000);
2. B. W. Brown and D. H. Saks, "The Microeconomics of the Allocation of Teachers' Time and Student Learning," Economics of Education Review 6(4) (1987): 319-332;
3. P. Dolton and A. Vignoles, "The Effects of School Quality on Pupil Outcomes: An Overview," in Education, Training and Employment in the Knowledge Based Economy, ed. H. Heijke and J. Muyksen (London: AEA Macmillan, 2000): 91-117;
4. K. Ellinger,"Brains for the Bucks? School Revenue and Student Achievement in Oklahoma," Social Science Journal32()) (1995): 299-309;
5. M. Elliott,"School Finance and Opportunities to Learn: Does Money Well Spent Enhance Students' Achievement?" Sociology of Education 71 (1998): 223-245;
6. R. F. Ferguson and H. Ladd, "How and Why Money Matters: An Analysis of Alabama Schools," in Holding Schools Accountable: Performance Based Reform in Education, ed. H. Ladd (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1996): 265-298;
7. R. Greenwald, L. V. Hedges, and R. D. Laine,"The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement," Review of Educational Research 66(3) (1996): 361-396;
8. D. Grissmer, A. Flanagan, and S. Williamson, "Does Money Matter for Minority and Disadvantaged Students? Assessing the New Empirical Evidence," in Developments in School Finance 1997, ed. W. J. Fowler Jr. (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 1997): 13-30;
9. E. A. Hanushek, "The Impact of Differential Expenditures on School Performance," Educational Researcher 18(4) (1989): 45-51;
10. E. A. Hanushek, "School Resources and Student Performance," in Does Money Matter? The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement and Adult Success, ed. G.T. Burtless (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996): 43-73;
11. E. A. Hanushek and S. G. Rivlcin, "Understanding the Twentieth-Century Growth in US School Spending," Journal of Human Resources 32(1) (1997): 35-68;
12. E. Harter, "How Educational Expenditures Relate to Student Achievement: Insights from Texas Elementary Schools," Journal of Education Finance 24(3) (1999): 281-302;
13. R. D. Laine, R. Greenwald, and L. V. Hedges, "Money Does Matter: A Research Synthesis of a New Universe of Education Production Function Studies," in Wiere Does the Money Go?, ed. L. O. Picus and J. L. Wattenbarger (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 1995): 44-70;
14. R. J. Murnane and F. Levy,"Evidence from Fifteen Schools in Austin, Texas," in Burtless, 93-96;
15. R. C. Nyhan and M. G. Alkadry, "The Impact of School Resources on Student Achievement Test Scores," Journal of Education Finance 25(2) (1999): 211-228;
16. A. Odden and C. Busch, "Reallocating Education Dollars to Improve Results," in Financing Schools for High Performance: Strategies for Improving the Use of Educational Resources, ed. A Odden and C. Busch (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998): 163-186;
17. U.S. Department of Education, Impact of Inadequate School Facilities on Student Learning (Washington, DC: Author, 2000);
18. and H. Wenglinksy, Wheen Money Matters: How Educational Expenditures Improve Student Performance and How They Don't (Princeton, NJ:ETS,1997). For an overview of school resources literature,
19. see D. Card and A. B. Krueger, "School Resources and Student Outcomes: An Overview of the Literature and New Evidence from North and South Carolina," Journal of Economic Perspectives 10(4) (1996): 31-50.
20. See the articles by Grubb; Grubb, Huerta, and Goe; and Huerta in this issue.
21. Grubb, this issue.
22. M. W. McLaughlin, "Learning from Experience: Lessons from Policy Implementation," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 9(2) (1987): 171-178. For purposes of this research, the individual implementers are teachers and principals.
23. K. D. Geiser and P. Berman, Building Implementation Capacity for Continuous Improvement (Emeryville, CA: RPP International, 2000).
24. Consortium for Policy Research in Education, U.S. Department of Education Regional Forum on Turning Around Low-Performing Schools: Implications for Policy (Philadelphia: Author, 2001).
25. See A. S. Bryk, P. B. Sebring, D. Kerbow, S. Rollow, and J. Q. Easton, Cliarting Chicago School Reform: Democratic Localism as a Lever for Change (Boulder, CO:Westview, 1998);
26. J. L. David, "Educators and Parents as Partners in School Governance," in All Children Can Learn: Lessons from the Kentucky Reform Experience, ed. R. S. Pankratz and J. M. Petrosko (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000): 207-224;
27. and D. Ruff, D. Smith, and L. Miller, "The View from Maine: Developing Learner-Centered Accountability in a Local Control State," in Accountability, Assessment, and Teacher Commitment: Lessons from Kentucky's Reform Efforts, ed. B. L. Whitford and K. Jones (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000): 163-178.
28. K. McKnight and L. Sechrest, Evaluation of the Quality of Action Plans (Tucson: University of Arizona, 2001);
29. H. Mintrop, State Oversight and the Improvement of Low-Performing Schools in California (Los Angeles: UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, 2002).
30. For an enlightened view of capacity and its role in interventions, see D. K. Cohen and D. L. Ball, Instruction, Capacity, and Improvement (Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, 1999).
31. Note that if you compare 1I/USP school gains with all schools in California, it appears that the II/USP schools gained more in terms of API. However, the true comparison group for these schools is other underperforming schools, that is, schools from the lower five deciles of the API.
32. For each cohort, the set of comparison schools was determined to be all schools that were eligible for participation in the II/USP but either elected not to participate or were not selected for the program.
33. T-tests show no significant differences between the group means from the II/USP first cohort and non-II/USP schools when all schools are from first five API deciles.
34. J.O'Day and C. Bitter, Evaluation Study of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program and the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999: Final Report (Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research, 2003).
35. Contact the author to obtain tables or see L. Goe, An Evaluation of California's Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) in Middle Schools (dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2004).
36. The list of schools was published on the California Department of Education's Web site.
37. Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Solano.
38. Because I am a former middle school teacher, I chose to focus on middle schools in this study.
39. R. S. Brown and M. M. Ing, Exploring Sustained Improvement in Low Performing Schools (Irvine: University of California, Irvine, 2002);
40. Institute for Education Reform, Immediate Intervention Under-performing Schools Program (Sacramento: California State University, 2001);
41. A. E. Just, L. E. Boese, R. Burkhardt, L. J. Carstens, M. Devine, and T. Gaffney, Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP): How Low Performing Schools in California Are Facing the Challenge of Improving Student Achievement (Sacramento: California Department of Education, Division of Policy and Evaluation, 2001);
42. McKnight and Sechrest, Evaluation; Mintrop, State Oversight; O'Day and Bitter, Evaluation Study.
43. J. B. Diamond and J. P. Spillane, High Stakes Accountability in Urban Elementary Schools: Challenging or Reproducing Inequality? (Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research, 2002);
44. R. F. Elmore, C. H. Abelmann, and S. H. Fuhrman, "The New Accountability in State Education Reform: From Process to Performance," in Ladd, 65-98; S. H. Fuhrman, The New Accountability (Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, 1999);
45. H. F. Ladd, "School-Based Education Accountability Systems: The Promise and the Pitfalls," National Tax Journal 54(2) (2001): 385-400;
46. H. Mintrop, "The Limits of Sanctions in So-Called Failing Schools" (paper presented to the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 2002);
47. J. O'Day, Complexity, Accountability, and School Improvement (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2002);
48. B. L. Whitford and K. Jones, "Kentucky Lesson: How High Stakes School Accountability Undermines a Performance-Based Curriculum Vision," in Whitford and Jones, 9-24.
49. Publicly available on the California Department of Education Web site.
50. McKnight and Sechrest, Evaluation, 7.
51. K. G. Laguarda, "State-Sponsored Technical Assistance to Low-Performing Schools: Strategies from Nine States" (paper presented at the AERA, Chicago, April 21-25, 2003).
52. The reason given in both schools was that the school already had a plan for raising student achievement, and they thought that they did not need a program that they believed to be intrusive and timeconsuming. Moreover, they did not think that the money was sufficient to counteract the negative aspects of participation, primarily the paperwork and the need to work with an external evaluator.
53. McKnight and Sechrest, Evaluation; O'Day and Bitter, Evaluation Study.
54. Mintrop, State Oversight, 2.
55. O'Day and Bitter, Evaluation Study.
56. Just et al., Immediate Intervention.
57. G. J. A. Guth, D. J. Holtzman, S. A. Schneider, L. Carlos, J. R. Smith, G. C. Hayward, and N. Calvo, Evaluation of California's Standards-Based Accountability System (San Francisco: WestEd, 1999).