Tenure and achievement: When Florida legislators eliminated teacher tenure in 2011, they argued that making it easier to get rid of bad teachers could lead to better student academic results. Seven years later, a study finds that achievement by students in vulnerable schools has improved only slightly, and that there's no conclusive way to tell if the elimination of tenure played a role in that modest success. "The intent (of the statute) was to raise student achievement by improving the quality of instructional, administrative and supervisory services in the public schools," write researchers Celeste Carruthers, David Figlio and Tim Sass. "Whether (the law) or policies like it succeed in attracting and retaining high quality teachers remains an open question." Brookings Institution. Gradebook.
Special session request: Democrats in the Legislature resort to an obscure rule to force a poll of all lawmakers on the idea of calling a special session to deal with educational funding. Ordinarily, Senate and House leaders decide if a special session is needed. But when they resisted, 35 Democratic members filed petitions with the secretary of state to conduct the poll; 32 are required to force the polling. They don't expect to be successful, but say it will put legislators on the record in an election year. Answers to the poll are due May 24. Gradebook.
Sass
Florida's charter schools might not raise students' reading and math scores a whole lot, on average, but attending one may increase a student's chances of reaching college, or earning more money later in life, newly published research suggests.
We first highlighted the working paper more than two years ago. An updated version appeared Monday in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
The researchers (Tim Sass of Georgia State University, Kevin Booker and Brian Gill of Mathematica Policy Research, and Ron Zimmer of Vanderbilt University) looked at students who attended Florida charter schools in eighth grade between the 1998-99 and 2001-02 school years. They compared those who went on to attend charter high schools with those who enrolled in traditional high schools.
They found the charter high school students were about 9 percent more likely to enroll in college, and had an earnings advantage of nearly $2,300 by their mid-20s.
"The positive relationships between charter high school attendance and long-term outcomes are striking, given that charter school students in the same jurisdiction have not been shown to have large positive impacts on students' test scores," they write.
The authors caution "unobservable" differences between charter and non-charter students could affect the results, and that Florida's charter school landscape has changed a lot in the 14 years since the students in the study finished middle school. But they probed their results using a variety of statistical techniques, and concluded they appear "robust." (more…)
Sass
Students who attend Florida charter high schools are more likely to persist in college and earn more money than their counterparts in district schools, an “especially striking” finding given little differences in test scores, according to a new working paper. (Hat tip: Colin Hitt at Jay P. Greene’s Blog).
The paper is co-authored by four researchers, including Tim Sass, formerly an economics professor at Florida State University and now at Georgia State University. It builds on earlier research that found students in charter high schools in Florida and Chicago were more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college than like students in traditional public schools. (Both groups examined attended charter schools in eighth grade.) The more recent data continues to show the same thing. But the researchers also found:
In both cases, the researchers found the differences to be statistically significant. They write in their conclusion:
“Exactly what charter schools are doing to produce substantial positive effects on educational attainment and earnings is an open question. Charter high schools might be able to produce positive effects on initial college entry merely by providing better counseling and encouragement to apply and enroll. But that could not explain higher rates of persistence in college or higher earnings, suggesting that charter high schools are endowing their students with skills that are useful for success in college and career but that test scores do not capture. The fact that charter high school students have higher earnings even if they do not attend college further supports this interpretation …
“Positive impacts on long-term attainment outcomes and earnings are, of course, more consequential than outcomes on test scores in school. It is possible that charter schools’ full long-term impacts on their students have been underestimated by studies that examine only test scores.”
In Florida, those studies include this, this, this and this.
