The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a rapidly expanding network of public charter schools whose mission is to improve the education of low-income children. As of the 2012 -- 2013 school year, 125 KIPP schools are in operation in 20 different states and the District of Columbia (DC). Ultimately, KIPP's goal is to prepare students to enroll and succeed in college.
Prior research has suggested that KIPP schools have positive impacts on student achievement, but most of the studies have included only a few KIPP schools or have had methodological limitations. This is the second report of a national evaluation of KIPP middle schools being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research. The evaluation uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to produce rigorous and comprehensive evidence on the effects of KIPP middle schools across the country.
The study's first report, released in 2010, described strong positive achievement impacts in math and reading for the 22 KIPP middle schools for which data were available at the time. For this phase of the study, we nearly doubled the size of the sample, to 43 KIPP middle schools, including all KIPP middle schools that were open at the start of the study in 2010 for which we were able to acquire relevant data from local districts or states. This report estimates achievement impacts for these 43 KIPP middle schools, and includes science and social studies in addition to math and reading. This report also examines additional student outcomes beyond state test scores, including student performance on a nationally norm-referenced test and survey-based measures of student attitudes and behavior.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a rapidly expanding network of public charter schools whose mission is to improve the education of low-income children. As of the 2012 -- 2013 school year, 125 KIPP schools are in operation in 20 different states and the District of Columbia (DC). Ultimately, KIPP's goal is to prepare students to enroll and succeed in college.
Prior research has suggested that KIPP schools have positive impacts on student achievement, but most of the studies have included only a few KIPP schools or have had methodological limitations. This is the second report of a national evaluation of KIPP middle schools being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research. The evaluation uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to produce rigorous and comprehensive evidence on the effects of KIPP middle schools across the country.
The study's first report, released in 2010, described strong positive achievement impacts in math and reading for the 22 KIPP middle schools for which data were available at the time. For this phase of the study, we nearly doubled the size of the sample, to 43 KIPP middle schools, including all KIPP middle schools that were open at the start of the study in 2010 for which we were able to acquire relevant data from local districts or states. This report estimates achievement impacts for these 43 KIPP middle schools, and includes science and social studies in addition to math and reading. This report also examines additional student outcomes beyond state test scores, including student performance on a nationally norm-referenced test and survey-based measures of student attitudes and behavior.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities. aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform efforts. This report examines the choices and placements of New York City's lowest-achieving students: those scoring among the bottom 20 percent on standardized state tests in middle school. Focusing on data from 2007 to 2011, the report looks at who these low-achieving students are, including how their demographics compare to other students in NYC, the educational challenges they face, and where they live. The bulk of the report reviews low-achieving students' most preferred schools and the ones to which they were ultimately assigned, assessing how these schools compare to those of their higher-achieving peers. The findings show that low-achieving students attended schools that were lower performing, on average, than those of all other students. This was driven by differences in students' initial choices: low-achieving students' first-choice schools were less selective, lower-performing, and more disadvantaged. Overall, lower-achievingand higher-achieving students were matched to their top choices at the same rate. Importantly, both low- and higher-achieving students appear to prefer schools that are close to home, suggesting that differences in students' choices likely reflect, at least in part, the fact that lower-achieving students are highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where options may be more limited.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New York / New York County / New York City
Analyzing data from over 26,000 U.S. middle and high schools, the report reveals profound disparities in suspension rates when disaggregating data by race/ethnicity, gender, and disability status. The report identifies districts with the largest number of "hotspot" schools (suspending 25 percent or more of their total student body), suggests alternatives that are already in use, and highlights civil rights concerns.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor;Immigration
In February of 2011, President Barack Obama attended a small dinner with several Silicon Valley executives. Seated between Apple founder Steve Jobs and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the conversation quickly turned to the large shortage of trained engineers in the United States, according to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. Jobs reportedly put the case bluntly to the President, stating that he employs 700,000 factory workers in China because he cannot recruit 30,000 engineers in the United States.
Similar stories of skills gaps are found at companies large and small all over the US economy.
As a near term solution to fill the perceived STEM shortage, University Presidents, STEM employers, STEM workers, and others have called on Congress to reform US immigration laws to recruit and retain high-skilled foreign-born STEM workers, and members of Congress have taken up the call for reform. Both Democrats and Republicans from the US Senate and the US House of Representatives have introduced bills to provide green cards to foreign advanced degree graduates in STEM from US universities. Polls have shown broad bipartisan support for these bills across political, ideological, racial, and ethnic lines.
As these bills are considered, it is important to ask and address the following questions: (1) Does a STEM shortage exist?; (2) What is the extent of the STEM shortage, and in what fields is it most prominent?; and (3) Would hiring foreign STEM professionals displace their American counterparts?
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor;Immigration
The future of the American economy rests on our ability to innovate and invent the new products that will define the global economy in the decades ahead. This report seeks to highlight one key aspect of this challenge that is often overlooked: the crucial role that foreign scientists, engineers, and other researchers play in inventing the products and dreaming up the ideas that will power the American economy in the future.
As the magnet for the world's brightest minds, America has prospered greatly from the global innovators who have come here to do research and invent products. However, many of these innovators face daunting or insurmountable immigration hurdles that force them to leave the country and take their talents elsewhere. The problem is particularly acute at our research universities, where we train the top minds, only to send them abroad to compete against us.
This report aims to quantify both the role that foreign-born inventors play in the innovation coming out of US universities, and the costs we incur by training the world's top minds and sending them away. University research is responsible for 53% of all basic research in America. Much of this research leads to patented inventions, new companies, and jobs for American workers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Education and Literacy, Poverty
This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better off peers is large and persistent.
Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, the authors compare the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (>70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools (<70% FRL students). The results show that the average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is in general less than teachers in other schools, but only slightly, and not in all comparisons. The authors also find differences in within-school-type variation in teacher effectiveness in nearly every comparison. These differences are largely driven by the longer tail at the bottom of the teacher effectiveness distribution in high-poverty schools. Teachers at the top of the effectiveness distribution are very similar across school settings.
The observed differences in teacher quality between high-poverty and lower-poverty schools are not due to differences in the observed characteristics of teachers, such as experience, certification status and educational attainment. Rather, they appear to arise from differences in the marginal return or payoff from increases in a characteristic. In particular, the gain in productivity from increased experience is much stronger in lower-poverty schools. The lower return to experience in high-poverty schools does not appear to be a result of differences in the quality of teachers who leave teaching or who switch schools. Rather, it may be the case that the effect of experience on teacher productivity may depend on the setting in which the experience is acquired.
If there are positive spillovers among teachers that depend on teacher quality (ie. teacher "peer effects") or if exposure to challenging student populations lessens the future productivity of teachers (i.e. leads to "burn out"), teachers in schools serving large proportions of low-income students may simply not improve much as time goes by.
These findings suggest that solutions to the achievement gap between high and lower-poverty schools may be complex. Changing the quality of new recruits or importing teachers with good credentials into highpoverty schools may not be sufficient. Rather, the findings suggest that measures that induce highly effective teachers to move to high-poverty schools and which promote an environment in which teachers' skills will improve over time are more likely to be successful.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-North Carolina, North America-United States (Southern)-Florida
This Field Guide is designed to give quick and easy access to key data that will support the work to improve Idaho's education system.
To meet the needs of the 21st century workforce and economy, the Idaho State Board of Education has set an ambitious goal: 60% of Idahoans age 25-34 will have a post-secondary certificate or degree by 2020.
Given the current status and pace of progress, we are not on track to meet that goal.
Idaho must do better to prepare its students for success.
This Field Guild provides the facts and figures, with key information and insight, about the need and opportunity to improve Idaho's K-12 education system.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Western) / Idaho
