Leanna Stiefel

Intradistrict Equity of Public Education Resources and Performance.

Abstract This paper presents empirical evidence on input and output equity of expenditures, teacher resources, and performance across 840 elementary and middle schools in New York City. Historically, researchers have studied interdistrict distributions, but given the large numbers of pupils and schools within many urban districts, it is important to learn about intradistrict distributions as well. The empirical work is built on a framework of horizontal, vertical, and equal opportunity equity. The results show that the horizontal equity distributions are more disparate than what would be expected relative to results of other studies, vertical equity is lacking, especially in elementary schools, and equality of opportunity is at best neutral but more often absent. Middle schools exhibit more equity than elementary schools. The paper is one of the first to measure output equity, using levels and changes in test scores to do so.

Measuring Equity at the School Level: The Finance Perspective

This article explores conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues in resource allocation at the intradistrict and school levels. With increased attention focused on policies and data related to resources within districts, it is important that analytical problems and potential solutions be debated by researchers. The article develops ways that equity concepts can apply at the school level, identifies a series of methodological issues, and includes an empirical analysis of vertical equity at the intradistrict and school levels in New York City.

IS THERE A NATIVITY GAP? NEW EVIDENCE ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS

Public schools across the United States are educating an increasing number and diversity of immigrant students. Unfortunately, little is known about their performance relative to native-born students and the extent to which the nativity gap might be explained by school and demographic characteristics. This article takes a step toward filling that void using data from New York City where 17 percent of elementary and middle school students are immigrants. We explore disparities in performance between foreign-born and native-born students on reading and math tests in three waysusing levels (unadjusted scores), value-added scores (adjusted for prior performance), and an education production function. While unadjusted levels and value-added measures often indicate superior performance among immigrants, disparities are substantially explained by student and school characteristics. Further, while the nativity gap differs for students from different world regions, disparities are considerably diminished in fully specified models. We conclude with implications for urban schools in the United States.

Cutback budgeting: The long-term consequences

This study asks whether short-term cutbacks made during a fiscal crisis become permanent once fiscal conditions improve. Hypotheses are developed to establish a framework for analyzing a time-series data set. These hypotheses address trade-offs between less essential versus more essential services, salaries versus positions, and capital versus operating expenditures. Then long-term consequences are assessed with a longitudinal, comparative case study of the effects of New York Citys mid-1970s fiscal crisis on education services in the city. Education services were cut dramatically in 1976 and 1977. The trends in those services, defined in various ways, are compared over time and in relationship to the rest of New York State. We find that less essential services, teacher positions, and capital and maintenance expenditures suffered, relative to more essential services, operating expenditures, and teacher salaries.

Immigrants and the Distribution of Resources within an Urban School District.

In New York City, where almost 14% of elementary school pupils are foreign-born and roughly half of these are “recent immigrants,” the impact of immigrant students on school resources may be important. While immigrant advocates worry about inequitable treatment of immigrant students, others worry that immigrants drain resources from native-born students. In this article, we explore the variation in school resources and the relationship to the representation of immigrant students. To what extent are variations in school resources explained by the presence of immigrants per se rather than by differences in student educational needs, such as poverty or language skills, or differences in other characteristics, such as race? Our results indicate that, while schools resources decrease with the representation of immigrants, this relationship largely reflects differences in the educational needs of immigrant students. Although analyses that link resources to the representation of foreign-born students in 12 geographic regions of origin find some disparities, these are again largely driven by differences in educational need. Finally, we find that some resources increase over time when there are large increases in the percentage of immigrants in a school, but these results are less precisely estimated. Thus, elementary schools appear not to be biased either against or for immigrants per se, although differences in the needs of particular groups of immigrant students may lead to more (or fewer) school resources.

So Many Children Left Behind: Segregation and the Impact of Subgroup Reporting in No Child Left Behind on the Racial Test Score Gap

Although the No Child Left Behind Act was intended to help “all students meet high academic standards,” it is focused on subgroups of low-achieving students. The authors analyze the possible impact of the legislations requirement for performance reporting by racial subgroup in light of the considerable racial segregation in U.S. schools. In particular, using data on elementary and middle schools in New York State, the authors show that the schools are so highly segregated that more than half are too homogeneous to report test scores for any racial or ethnic subgroups. In addition, they show that the racial achievement gap is greatest across segregated schools rather than within integrated ones. The authors analyze the characteristics of schools that are and are not accountable for subgroups, finding that urban schools and large schools are particularly likely to be accountable, and conclude with implications for the reach of the law and for incentives for school segregation.

The path not taken: How does school organization affect eighth-grade achievement?

Although rearranging school organizational features is a popular school reform, little research exists to inform policymakers about how grade spans affect achievement. This article examines how grade spans and the school transitions that students make between fourth and eighth grade shape student performance in eighth grade. The authors estimate the impact of grade span paths on eighth-grade performance, controlling for school and student characteristics and correcting for attrition bias and quality of original school. They find that students moving from K-4 to 5–8 schools or in K-8 schools outperform students on other paths. Results suggest four possible explanations for the findings—the number and timing of school changes, the size of within-school cohorts, and the stability of peer cohorts.

The Multiple Dimensions of Student Mobility and Implications for Academic Performance: Evidence from New York City Elementary and Middle School Students

The purpose of this report is threefold: First to develop measures of alternative types of student mobility; second to document the magnitudes of each type of mobility in aggregate and by student income, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status; and third to analyze how mobility of different types affects student academic performance. Although mobility is an oft discussed phenomenon, inadequate attention has been paid to the alternative ways that it can be defined, how the alternatives differ and which alternatives appear to be of sufficient size to be of consequence to policy and practice. Previous research on mobility often focuses on the impact of changing schools on an individual’s academic achievement. As an example, Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin (2004) find that switching schools is harmful to student growth in performance in the year following a switch, even when switching is required because students reach the top grade offered at their school. Other researchers find that academic performance is lower among students who have changed schools in previous years, whatever the reason, (Alexander et al, 1996; Rumberger and Larson, 1998; Swanson and Schneider, 1999). Relatively little attention has been paid in the existing quantitative analyses to distinguishing between different types of mobility i.e., midyear vs. between year; annual vs. cumulative. By providing district level statistics on alternative types of student mobility, this report may help policymakers decide which types of student mobility are important for districts to report regularly. Defining alternative measures may help both policymakers and researchers identify the types of mobility that are the most harmful to student performance and effectively design and target interventions. The main findings of this study are that there is considerable mobility into grades 2 through 8 from outside the New York City school district, across schools, across years for students staying in the district, and some mobility even across schools within academic years. Furthermore, over time, between 6% and 7% enter into each grade of a cohort, and students move several times over their schooling history in the city district. In addition, the entrants and frequent movers have characteristics that are generally associated with harder to educate children. Finally, student mobility has a consistently negative effect, ceteris paribus, on 8th grade reading scores, although the statistical significance of the effect is sensitive to the specification used in the analysis. The report is organized as follows. In the second section, we describe the sources of data. In this section, as throughout the report, we present more detailed information in a separate box in the text. The third section introduces alternative measures of student performance, the fourth section presents magnitudes of annual mobility, and the fifth section does a cumulative mobility analysis. The sixth section analyzes moves in terms of the characteristics of new schools and moves coincident with significant moves in student residence, as measured by zip code changes. The seventh section analyzes the effects of alternative measures of mobility on student performance for New York City (NYC) elementary and middle school (hereafter primary schools) students and the last section concludes.

Spending, Size, and Grade Span in K-8 Schools.

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to 2002 and exploiting within-school variations, we examine relationships among grade span, spending, and size. We find that school grade span is associated with differences in school size, class size, and grade size, though generally not with spending and other resources. In addition, we find class size and grade size differences in the same grade level at schools with different configurations, suggesting that school grade span affects not only school size but also class size and grade size. We find few relationships, though, between grade span and school-level performance, pointing to the need to augment these analyses with pupil-level data. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

The effect of immigrant communities on foreign-born student achievement

This paper explores the effect of the human capital characteristics of co-ethnic immigrant communities on foreign-born students’ math achievement. We use data on New York City public school foreign-born students from 39 countries merged with census data on the characteristics of the immigrant household heads in the city from each nation of origin and estimate regressions of student achievement on co-ethnic immigrant community characteristics, controlling for student and school attributes. We find that the income and size of the co-ethnic immigrant community has no effect on immigrant student achievement, while the percent of college graduates may have a small positive effect. In addition, children in highly English proficient immigrant communities test slightly lower than children from less proficient communities. The results suggest that there may be some protective factors associated with immigrant community members’ education levels and use of native languages.