The study has received a great deal of attention, in part because it is one of the few evaluations of school resources based
on random assignment of students to test policy effects while controlling for other conditions, a method that is generally thought to be a high - quality research design.
When students» prior achievement was added as a control variable, the non-experimental methods generated impact estimates quite similar to the estimates based
on random assignment.
«Can nonexperimental estimates replicate estimates based
on random assignment in evaluations of school choice?
Not exact matches
Although there were some small - scale
random -
assignment experiments of the effects of desegregation
on test scores, most of what we know today concerns the relationship between a school outcome such as achievement
on the one hand, and racial composition
on the other.
A composite measure
on teacher effectiveness drawing
on all three of those measures, and tested through a
random -
assignment experiment, closely predicted how much a high - performing group of teachers would successfully boost their students» standardized - test scores, concludes the series of new papers, part of the massive Measures of Effective Teaching study launched more than three years ago.
And scholars will need to be careful not to make causal claims based
on data sets that aren't subject to experimental designs; the sheer quantity of data can't make up for the lack of controls and
random assignment.
One is the lesser profile accorded to curriculum and instructional practice and to what happens once the teacher closes the classroom door; another is the view that
random assignment is premature, given its dependence
on expert school management and high - quality program implementation; and another is the view that quantitative techniques have only marginal usefulness for understanding schools, since a school's governance, culture, and management are best understood through intensive case studies.
Two experimental studies of the Charlotte privately - funded scholarship program, here and here, reported clear positive effects
on student test scores but were limited to just a single year after
random assignment.
The Commission, chaired by Dr. Paul Hill of the University of Washington, carefully reviewed the research
on the impact of school choice
on student achievement and included in its report the following statement: «The most rigorous school choice evaluations that used
random assignment... found that academic gains from vouchers were largely limited to the African - American students in their studies.»
More than a dozen published analyses of
random -
assignment experiments reveal the effects of winning a voucher in a lottery
on educational achievement and attainment.
Heckman's analyses and conclusions depend
on the integrity of that
random assignment.
The only comparisons of preschool curricula using
random -
assignment experiments (the gold standard for causal conclusions) are drawn from studies begun decades ago, mainly during Lyndon Johnson's War
on Poverty.
Such a matched group design is weaker in terms of its ability to support strong causal conclusions than a
random assignment design because it doesn't eliminate the possibility that the two groups differed at the outset of the study
on variables not measured and therefore not included in the matching algorithm.
Without the benefit of
random assignment, we used a variety of statistical approaches to determine the program's impact
on student achievement immediately after its launch.
Under the assumption (for residuals) of
random assignment of students and teachers within schools, the 0.79 estimate has a structural interpretation based
on a production function, and the 0.13 estimate provides a lower bound.
The issue has been addressed in Kane and Staiger (6), using a dataset with
random assignment of teachers to classrooms, and in Chetty et al. (15), who look at effects based
on changes in teaching staff.
Anyone interested in a more complete discussion of these 10 analyses and why it is important to focus
on the
random -
assignment studies, should read Patrick Wolf's article in the BYU Law Review that has been reproduced here.
15 This produces a system that induces
random assignment with varying probabilities, conditional
on priority groups such as sibling and walk - zone status.
Here is what I believe is a complete (no cherry - picking) list of analyses taking advantage of
random -
assignment experiments of the effect of vouchers
on participants.
The full - scale
random assignment study of the impacts
on middle school students produced by PowerTeaching i3 will include 53 middle schools across five districts.
A convenient summary measure based
on cross-school variation is With
random assignment only within schools, does not have a structural interpretation.
This evaluation has demonstrated the feasibility and benefits of using a large - scale, multisite
random assignment research design to determine the impact of Career Academies
on student outcomes.
In that case In addition,
random assignment within schools implies that and are independent conditional
on, so that As above, define the factor.
We used a
random -
assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects
on student test scores.
The National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) released in December 2015 the first nationally recognized
random assignment study to ever demonstrate that a school voucher program — LSP — had a negative effect
on student achievement in its first year.
Of the 18
random -
assignment studies
on the topic, 14 show positive effects; two show no visible effect; two show negative effects.
In general, foundations and governments have not financed
random assignment experiments
on how preschool has affected more advantaged students.
As I have explored in previous posts, there is evidence of the effects of preschool
on more advantaged students from studies that use other rigorous methods, but I have not yet cited a
random assignment experiment.
While traditional research methods are based
on comparing the effects of public and private schools
on a student's test scores, EdChoice was able to compile
random -
assignment research which ensures that the results were not misconstrued by factors such as demographics or parental motivation.
In A Win - Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence
on School Choice, Friedman Foundation senior fellow Greg Forster looked at 12 empirical studies that «examined academic outcomes for school choice participants using
random assignment, the «gold standard» of social science.
Evaluations using
random assignment find few significant effects overall
on student test scores and behaviors (Zief, Lauver, & Maynard, 2006).
Specifically, we test whether a teacher's performance
on each measure under naturally occurring (i.e., non-experimental) settings predicts performance following
random assignment of that teacher to a class of students.
A composite measure
on teacher effectiveness drawing
on all three of those measures, and tested through a
random -
assignment experiment, predicted fairly accurately how much high - performing teachers would successfully boost their students» standardized - test scores, concludes the series of new papers, part of the massive Measures of Effective Teaching study launched three years ago.
Background Thirty - seven Reading Recovery teachers from different schools in 14 states submitted the names of two at - risk first - grade students to a Web - based program for
random assignment to first - or second - round Reading Recovery service, and submitted data
on those students across the school year that allowed comparison of at - risk students with and without intervention services.
A team led by Johns Hopkins University, using a
random -
assignment research design, will assess the impact of the three - state effort
on principals, teachers and students.
However, a 10 - county
random -
assignment evaluation suggested that Learnfare had no sustained effects
on school enrollment and attendance.
My claim is based
on a
random -
assignment evaluation of a large set of small schools in NYC.
Rick Hess wrote one of the more visible responses, which repeated the following from an Ed Week column last year he was a co-author
on: Among voucher programs,
random -
assignment studies generally find modest -LSB-...]
An independent,
random assignment study validates this program's impact
on both teacher and student learning.
In A Win - Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence
on School Vouchers, Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation writes: • Ten empirical studies have used
random assignment, the gold standard of social science, to examine how vouchers affect participants.
The goal of the current study was to address some of the weaknesses of previous studies, which suffered from small sample sizes, lack of long term follow up, lack of
random assignment to groups, and reliance
on owner recall rather than frequent surveys of current kitten behavior.
Each completed level gives you a spin
on the wheel that gives you a
random assignment of upgrades to choose from.
[74] Publicly accessible records of this Court demonstrate that the failure to implement and adhere to an objective protocol for the
random assignment of judges has resulted in significant discrepancies in both the number of sentencing panels
on which some judges of the Court sit and a marked difference in the number of sentence appeals heard by certain justices of the Court as compared with their colleagues.
Very early results from a
random assignment study suggest that Working toward Wellness increased the use of mental health services and had mixed effects
on depression severity.
MIHOPE - Strong Start is the largest
random assignment study to date examining the effects of home visiting services
on birth and health outcomes and health care use.
The 1 RCT
on the UCLA / Lovaas — based treatment that met inclusion criteria was considered to be of fair quality.3 This study, the first attempted replication of Lovaas» manualized intervention to use
random assignment, a standardized assessment battery, and explicit accounting of intervention hours, compared a clinic - based method to a parent program.
At the point of referral to the trial, families were randomized to either Early Start or control series based
on a computer - generated series of
random numbers, and no blinding to
assignment was undertaken.
All the studies used a rigorous
random assignment, experimental research design and the programs were classified
on the basis of three features that were viewed as especially likely to affect the experiences of children in the participating families: earnings supplements; mandatory employment services; and time limits.
A major Manpower Demonstration and Research Corporation (MDRC) project, the Next Generation, is a collaboration between researchers at MDRC and several leading research universities and draws
on 10 MDRC studies of the impact of welfare, anti-poverty, and employment policies, using
random assignment in a large controlled experiment, and does include preschool - age children aged two to five, but not infants.
Four studies were excluded because
assignment to treatment was not
random, 16 — 19 one because it was an interim analysis of an ongoing study, 20 and 11 because they involved children with depressive symptoms and not depressive disorder.21 — 31 This left six randomised trials of cognitive behaviour therapy for depressive disorder in young people.32 — 37 Two of the trials were conducted by the same research group 32 34 but it was clear from the trial descriptions that they were based
on different samples.