In this study, the authors use college enrollment and migration data to test the brain drain hypothesis. Their results suggest that state merit scholarship programs do indeed stanch the migration of "best and brightest" students to other states. In the aggregate and on average, the implementation of state merit aid programs both increases the total 1st-year student enrollment in merit aid states and boosts resident college enrollment in these states significantly. The gross enrollment increase is a function of increased total student enrollment from these states and, perhaps more important, decreased emigration from these states. In addition to these overall effects, variations across states and across types of institutions exist due to scholarship eligibility criteria and award amount across states.

The association between grade retention in first grade and passing the third grade state accountability tests, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and math, was investigated in a sample of 769 students who were recruited into the study when they were in first grade. Of these 769 students, 165 were retained in first grade and 604 were promoted. Using propensity matching, we created five imputed datasets (average N = 321) in which promoted and retained students were matched on 67 comprehensive covariates. Using GEE models, we obtained the association between retention and passing the third grade TAKS reading and math tests. The positive association between retention and math scores was significant, whereas the association was marginally significant for reading scores.

Evaluating the impacts of public school funding on student achievement has been an important objective for informing education policymaking but fraught with data and methodological limitations. Findings from prior research have been mixed at best, leaving policymakers with little advice about the benefits of allocating public resources to schools or how it might best be done. In this study, the authors take advantage of a pilot supplemental funding program in North Carolina that used a quantitative index of educational advantage to select the most educationally disadvantaged districts in the state to receive funding. The targeted districts received supplemental funds of $250 per pupil or $840 per academically disadvantaged pupil for the 2 years of the pilot. Using a regression discontinuity design and multilevel models with extensive controls, the authors estimate that the marginal average treatment effect of the supplemental funding was 0.133 standard deviation units and that the effect on educationally disadvantaged students was 0.098 standard deviation units. The treatment effect represents approximately one third of the difference between the average score in top performing and low performing high schools.

The authors use longitudinal data from one large school district to investigate the distribution of principals across schools. They find that schools serving many low-income, non-White, and low-achieving students have principals who have less experience and less education and who attended less selective colleges. This distribution of principals is partially driven by the initial match of first-time principals to schools, and it is exacerbated by systematic attrition and transfer away from these schools. The authors supplement these data with surveys of principals and find that their stated preferences for school characteristics mirror observed distribution and transfer patterns: Principals prefer to work in easier-to-serve schools with favorable working conditions, which tend to be schools with fewer poor, minority, and low-achieving students.

The study takes advantage of the nontraditional selection process of the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program to test the association between selectivity of 4-year institution attended as well as other noncognitive variables on the college completion rates of a sample of students of color. The results of logistic regression and propensity score matching suggest these students are slightly more likely to graduate from college if they attend a highly selective institution. There is also evidence that other noncognitive variables such as leadership are good predictors of college completion. This suggests that admission offices interested in attracting a more diverse student body might want to consider expanding the traditional admission criteria.

This study investigates the influence of a school’s pre-existing social resources on the implementation of a comprehensive literacy-coaching program (Content-Focused Coaching [CFC]). Elementary schools were randomly assigned to receive a CFC-trained coach (n = 15 schools) or to continue with the literacy coaching resources that are standard for the district (n = 14 schools). Ninety-six fourth- and fifth-grade teachers participated in the study (n = 63 CFC and n = 33 comparison). Survey results indicate that teachers in the CFC schools participated more frequently in the coaching activities that emphasized planning and reflecting on instruction, enacting instruction, and building knowledge of the theories underlying effective reading comprehension instruction compared to teachers in the comparison schools. After 1 year, teachers strongly believed that CFC coaching helped improve their instructional practice. Principal leadership was the key resource supporting implementation of the program positively predicting greater teacher participation in coaching activities and perceived usefulness of these activities along with coaches’ training in the CFC program and less experienced teachers. Unexpectedly, a school’s pre-existing culture of teacher collaboration negatively predicted teachers’ coaching experiences. CFC coach interviews contribute to understanding the interactions of social resources within schools that facilitated or hindered program implementation. Implications for the design and implementation of effective instructional coaching policies in districts are discussed.

Schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in increasing student academic achievement are required, under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to offer children in low-income families the opportunity to receive supplemental educational services (SES). In research conducted in Milwaukee Public Schools, the authors explore whether parents and students are aware of their eligibility and options for extra tutoring under NCLB, and who among eligible students registers for SES. Using the best information available to school districts, the authors estimate the effects of SES in increasing students’ reading and math achievement. Their nonexperimental estimates suggest no average effects of SES attendance on student achievement gains. They use qualitative research to explore possible explanations for the lack of observed effects.

Teach For America (TFA) recruits high-achieving college graduates to teach for 2 years in the nation’s low-income schools. This study is the first to examine these teachers’ retention nationwide, asking whether, when, and why they voluntarily transfer from their low-income placement schools or leave teaching altogether. Based on a survey of three entire TFA cohorts (n = 2,029), this longitudinal, retrospective study uses discrete-time survival analysis. We found that teachers who have more challenging assignments—split grades, multiple subjects, or out-of-field classes—are at greater risk of leaving their schools or resigning from teaching than those with single-grade, single-subject, or in-field assignments. It is notable that in-field science teachers’ risk of resigning was higher than that of their out-of-field counterparts with nonscience degrees. This study informs policymakers and school officials seeking to retain TFA and other promising teachers.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to publish high school graduation rates for public schools; the U.S. Department of Education is currently considering a mandate to standardize high school graduation rate reporting. However, no consensus exists among researchers or policymakers about how to measure high school graduation rates. We use longitudinal data tracking a cohort of students at 82 Texas public high schools to assess the precision of three widely used high school graduation rate measures: Texas’s official graduation rates and two competing estimates based on publicly available enrollment data from the Common Core of Data. Our analyses show that these widely used approaches yield highly imprecise estimates of high school graduation and persistence rates. We propose several guidelines for using existing graduation and persistence rate data and argue that a national effort to track students as they progress through high school is essential to reconcile conflicting estimates.

Table of Contents (2010). Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32 (1).

The print table of contents for the March 2010 issue should have indicated that all the articles comprising the issue were accepted under the editorship of Drew Gitomer and Laura Goe.

In specifying a minimum passing score on examinations that students must pass to obtain a high school diploma, states divide a continuous performance measure into dichotomous categories. Thus, students with scores near the cutoff either pass or fail despite having essentially equal skills. The authors evaluate the causal effects of barely passing or failing a high school exit examination on the probability of graduation using a regression discontinuity design. For most Massachusetts students, barely failing their first 10th grade mathematics or English language arts (ELA) examination does not affect their probability of graduating. However, low-income urban students who just fail the mathematics examination have an 8 percentage point lower graduation rate than observationally similar students who just pass. There is no analogous impact from just passing or failing the ELA exit examination. For these urban, low-income students, barely failing the mathematics test does not affect the likelihood of on-time grade promotion, but it does cause students to be 4 percentage points more likely to drop out of school in the year following the test. Low-income urban students are just as likely to retake the test as equally skilled suburban students, but they have less success on retest.

This article investigates plausible explanations for the observed heterogeneity among jurisdictions in the exclusion rates of students with disabilities and English language learners in administrations of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It also examines the operating characteristics of a particular class of methods, called full-population estimates (FPE), that carry out statistical adjustments to NAEP’s reported scores to address the possible bias due to differential exclusion rates. The conclusions are that for many states there is a strong likelihood of bias in the results reported and that neither the current NAEP procedure nor the FPE methodologies constitute an ideal solution to the problem. Some alternative methods and related research questions are indicated. It is suggested that the general strategy employed here may be useful in investigating similar questions in other large-scale assessment surveys.

The University of Texas at Austin administrative data between 1990 and 2003 are used to evaluate claims that students granted automatic admission based on top 10% class rank underperform academically relative to lower ranked students who graduate from highly competitive high schools. Compared with White students ranked at or below the third decile, top 10% Black and Hispanic enrollees arrive with lower average standardized test scores yet consistently perform as well or better in grades, 1st-year persistence, and 4-year graduation likelihood. A similar story obtains for top 10% graduates from Longhorn high schools versus lower ranked students who graduate from highly competitive feeder high schools. Multivariate results reveal that high school attended rather than test scores is largely responsible for racial differences in college performance.

There are many approaches to solving the problem of underrepresentation of some racial and ethnic groups and women in scientific and technical disciplines. Here, the authors evaluate the association of a summer bridge program with the graduation rate of underrepresented minority (URM) students at a selective technical university. They demonstrate that this 5-week program prior to the fall of the 1st year contains elements reported as vital for successful student retention. Using multivariable survival analysis, they show that for URM students entering as fall-semester freshmen, relative to their nonparticipating peers, participation in this accelerated summer bridge program is associated with higher likelihood of graduation. The longitudinal panel data include more than 2,200 URM students.