The Effects of School Reform Under NCLB Waivers: Evidence from Focus Schools in Kentucky

Sade Bonilla and Thomas Dee

No 23462, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Under waivers to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the federal government required states to identify schools where targeted subgroups of students have the lowest achievement and to implement reforms in these “Focus Schools.” In this study, we examine the Focus School reforms in the state of Kentucky. The reforms in this state are uniquely interesting for several reasons. One is that the state developed unusually explicit guidance for Focus Schools centered on a comprehensive school-planning process. Second, the state identified Focus Schools using a “super subgroup” measure that combined traditionally low-performing subgroups into an umbrella group. This design feature may have catalyzed broader whole-school reforms and attenuated the incentives to target reform efforts narrowly. Using regression discontinuity designs, we find that these reforms led to substantial improvements in school performance, raising math achievement by 17 percent and reading achievement by 9 percent.

JEL-codes: H70 I2 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
Note: ED
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Sade Bonilla & Thomas S. Dee, 2020. "The Effects of School Reform under NCLB Waivers: Evidence from Focus Schools in Kentucky," Education Finance and Policy, vol 15(1), pages 75-103.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23462.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:23462

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23462

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).