The Impact of Turnaround Reform on Student Outcomes: Evidence and Insights from the Los Angeles Unified School District

Katharine O. Strunk (), Julie A. Marsh (), Ayesha K. Hashim (), Susan Bush-Mecenas () and Tracey Weinstein ()
Additional contact information
Katharine O. Strunk: Rossier School of Educationand Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles
Julie A. Marsh: Rossier School of Educationand Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles
Ayesha K. Hashim: Rossier School of Educationand Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles
Susan Bush-Mecenas: Rossier School of Educationand Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles
Tracey Weinstein: Students First Sacramento, CA

Education Finance and Policy, 2016, vol. 11, issue 3, 251-282

Abstract: We examine the Los Angeles Unified School District's Public School Choice Initiative (PSCI), which sought to turnaround the district's lowest-performing schools. We ask whether school turnaround impacted student outcomes, and what explains variations in outcomes across reform cohorts. We use a Comparative Interrupted Time Series approach using administrative student-level data, following students in the first (1.0), second (2.0), and third (3.0) cohorts of PSCI schools. We find that students in 1.0 turnaround schools saw no significant improvements in outcomes, whereas students enrolled in 2.0 schools saw significant gains in English Language Arts in both years of the reform. Students in 3.0 schools experienced significant decreases in achievement. Qualitative and survey data suggest that increased support and assistance and the use of reconstitution and restart as the sole turnaround methods contributed to gains in 2.0, whereas policy changes in 3.0 caused difficulties and confusion in implementation, leading to poor student performance.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00188 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:edfpol:v:11:y:2016:i:3:p:251-282

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().