A final strand of my work is focused on school-based education interventions, with the main focus behind on community school based interventions in which the "whole child" school improvement strategy. Two papers are listed below, with ongoing work being done to study Los Angeles Unified School District's implementation of the intervention.
RAND Reports and Working Papers:
Illustrating the Promise of Community Schools: An Assessment of the Impact of the New York City Community Schools Initiative (with William R. Johnston, John Engberg, Lisa Sontag-Padilla, and Lea Xenakis), RAND Report 3245, 2020
Select Media: Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Wall Street Journal; Education Week; Chalkbeat; The 74; RAND Policy Currents
Abstract: With the launch of the New York City Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS) in 2014, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has increased its focus on the implementation of a holistic strategy of education reform to address the social consequences of poverty as a means to improving student outcomes. NYC-CS is a strategy to organize resources in schools and share leadership among stakeholders so that academics, health and wellness, youth development, and family engagement are integrated into the fabric of each school. New York City is implementing this strategy at a scale unmatched nationally. In this study, the authors assessed the impact of the NYC-CS through the 2017–2018 school year. The authors assessed the effects along seven outcome domains and explored the extent to which there is heterogeneity in programmatic impact based on student- and school-level characteristics. The authors leveraged innovative quasi-experimental methodology to determine whether students in the community schools are performing better than they would be had their schools not been designated as Community Schools. The findings of this report will contribute to the emerging evidence base on the efficacy of the community school strategy and will be useful for other school district– and state-level policymakers interested in developing or refining similar interventions that support students' and communities' academic, social, and emotional well-being.
Leading Indicators of Long-Term Success in Community Schools: Evidence from New York City (with Lauren Covelli and John Engberg), Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness
Select Media: New York Times; Chalkbeat
Abstract: Community schools are an increasingly popular strategy used to improve the performance of students whose learning may be disrupted by non-academic challenges related to poverty. Community schools partner with community based organizations (CBOs) to provide integrated supports such as health and social services, family education, and extended learning opportunities. With over 300 community schools, the New York City Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS) is the largest of these programs in the country. Using a novel method that combines multiple rating regression discontinuity design (MRRDD) with machine learning (ML) techniques, we estimate the causal effect of NYC-CS on elementary and middle school student attendance and academic achievement. We find an immediate reduction in chronic absenteeism of 5.6 percentage points, which persists over the following three years. We also find large improvements in math and ELA test scores – an increase of 0.26 and 0.16 standard deviations by the third year after implementation – although these effects took longer to manifest than the effects on attendance. Our findings suggest that improved attendance is a leading indicator of success of this model and may be followed by longer-run improvements in academic achievement, which has important implications for how community school programs should be evaluated.