Robert Bifulco

The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina

Using an individual panel data set to control for student fixed effects, we estimate the impact of charter schools on students in charter schools and in nearby traditional public schools. We find that students make considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in public schools. The large negative estimates of the effects of attending a charter school are neither substantially biased, nor substantially offset, by positive impacts of charter schools on traditional public schools. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that about 30 percent of the negative effect of charter schools is attributable to high rates of student turnover.

Estimating School Efficiency: A Comparison of Methods Using Simulated Data.

Abstract Developing measures of school performance is crucial for performance-based school reform efforts. One approach to developing such measures is to apply econometric and linear programming techniques that have been developed to measure productive efficiency. This study uses simulated data to assess the adequacy of two such methods, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Corrected Ordinary Least Squares (COLS), for the purposes of performance-based school reform. Our results suggest that in complex data sets typical of education contexts simple versions of DEA and COLS do not provide adequate measures of efficiency. In data sets simulated to contain both measurement error and endogeneity, rank correlations between efficiency estimates and true efficiency values range from 0.104 to 0.240. In none of these data sets were either DEA and COLS able to place more than 31% of schools in their true performance quintile.

The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina

Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of ones geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfactual scenario in which all students attend their geographically assigned schools. We find that many advantaged students have used school choice programs in Durham to opt out of assigned schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students and to attend schools with higher achieving students. Comparisons of actual peer compositions with the counterfactual scenario indicate only small differences in peer composition for nonchoosers on average. More substantial differences in peer environment emerge, however, for students in schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students and schools located near choice schools attractive to high achievers. The results suggest that expansions of parental choice may have significant adverse effects on the peer environments of a particularly vulnerable group of students.

Can Interdistrict Choice Boost Student Achievement? The Case of Connecticut’s Interdistrict Magnet School Program

Connecticut’s interdistrict magnet schools offer a model of choice-based desegregation that appears to satisfy current legal constraints. This study presents evidence that interdistrict magnet schools have provided students from Connecticut’s central cities access to less racially and economically isolated educational environments and estimates the impact of attending a magnet school on student achievement. To address potential selection biases, the analyses exploit the random assignment that results from lottery-based admissions for a small set of schools, as well as value-added and fixed-effect estimators that rely on pre–magnet school measures of student achievement to obtain effect estimates for a broader set of interdistrict magnet schools. Results indicate that attendance at an interdistrict magnet high school has positive effects on the math and reading achievement of central city students and that interdistrict magnet middle schools have positive effects on reading achievement.

The Effect of Classmate Characteristics on Individual Outcomes: Evidence from the Add Health

We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effects of classmate characteristics on economic and social outcomes of students. The unique structure of the Add Health allows us to estimate these effects using comparisons across cohorts within schools, and to examine a wider range of outcomes than other studies that have used this identification strategy. This strategy yields variation in cohort composition that is uncorrelated with student observables suggesting that our estimates are not biased by the selection of students into schools or grades based on classmate characteristics. We find that increases in the percent of classmates whose mother is college educated has significant, desirable effects on educational attainment and substance use. We find no evidence that in-school achievement, student attitudes, or behaviors serve as mechanisms for this effect. The percent of students from disadvantaged minority groups does not show any negative effects on the post-secondary outcomes we examine, but is associated with students reporting less caring student-teacher relationships and increased prevalence of some undesirable student behaviors during high school.

Fiscal Impacts of Charter Schools: Lessons from New York

This brief argues that charter school programs can have direct fiscal impacts on school districts for two reasons. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, we demonstrate how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated. We find that charter schools have had fiscal impacts on these two school districts. Finally, we argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives.

Response to comment on estimating school efficiency

Abstract After correcting errors in our paper ( Econ. Educ. Rev. 20 (2001) 417 ), Ruggiero (Econ. Educ. Rev. 22 (2003) forthcoming ) finds that efficiency estimates provided by DEA and COLS have higher correlations with true efficiency values than indicated in our analysis. However, because Ruggiero only considers cases without measurement error, his analysis leaves the primary question of our study unanswered. Using the corrected data generation process proposed by Ruggiero, we find that the presence of measurement error substantially reduces the correlations between estimates of efficiency provided by DEA and COLS and true efficiency. Thus, the primary conclusions of our original study remain. If the administrative data sets used in school accountability programs have significant amounts of measurement error, and if the methods used to estimate efficiency require exogenous inputs, than measures of school efficiency can be quite misleading.

Budget Deficits in the States: New York

New York faces large projected budget shortfalls. Although the recession has contributed, a large part of the shortfalls are due to long standing structural imbalances. The structural imbalances result from high spending levels, particularly on Medicaid and education, a volatile revenue structure, and political forces that make it difficult to achieve recurring spending reductions. In the most recent budget session, federal stimulus money allowed legislators to avoid the tough decisions needed to move the state toward long-run fiscal balance, and the adoption of increased income tax rates for high earners is likely to increase revenue volatility moving forward.

Can Propensity Score Analysis Replicate Estimates Based on Random Assignment in Evaluations of School Choice? A Within-Study Comparison

The ability of propensity score analysis (PSA) to match impact estimates derived from random assignment (RA) is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within study comparisons, the estimates provided by PSA and RA differ substantially when PSA is implemented using comparison groups that are not similar to the treatment group and without pretreatment measures of academic performance. Adding pretreatment measures of the performance to the PSA, however, substantially improves the match between PSA and RA estimates. Although the results should not be generalized too readily, they suggest that nonexperimental estimators can, in some circumstances, provide valid estimates of the causal impact of school choice programs.

Identifying low-performance public schools

‐ The growing emphasis on performance in public organizations has reached public schools. In contrast to past attempts to reform process and government, present efforts to reform American schools have focused more directly on performance. Key features of these performance‐based reforms in schools as well as other public organizations include: establishing clear, measurable performance standards; granting local actors the autonomy to find the best means of achieving these standards; providing rewards for local actors that achieve performance goals; and developing remedies for cases when goals are not met (King & Mathers, 1997). A majority of states now prepare report cards on individual schools which include test scores and other outcome measures, and a growing number of states use this information to rank, reward or sanction schools and districts (Jerald, 2000). While receiving less media attention, an important element in performance‐based reforms is the identification and improvement of organizations with the lowest performance. In the case of education, at least 19 states have established procedures for identifying low‐ performance schools and districts (Jerald & Boser, 1999). The 1994 reauthorization of the federal Title I program encouraged more programs of this sort by requiring states and districts that receive Title I money to establish systems, based primarily on student achievement on state‐wide assessments, for identifying and improving low‐performance schools (Advisory Council to New York State Board of Regents, 1994). Programs to rank schools on student performance and identify those with low performance face two controversial and difficult sets of issues. The first set of issues concerns how to identify which schools should be classified as having low performance. Although not without critics, the idea that low‐performance schools should be identified primarily on the basis of educational outcomes, such as achievement test scores is generally accepted by states with such programs (King & Mathers, 1997). However, several important issues concerning