Current Projects

We work with practitioners and policymakers to define and refine the Center's research agenda, which will, of course, naturally evolve as certain questions are answered and others come to the fore. The following represent a sampling of the questions we are currently addressing in collaboration with school district leaders:

• Strategic Data Project releases Fort Worth Independent School District College-Going Diagnostic Report: The Strategic Data Project has released the next installment in its series of college-going diagnostic reports. SDP has teamed up with one of its partner agencies, Forth Worth Independent School District (FWISD), to examine the district's college-going enrollment and persistence rates. The diagnostic is designed to identify potential areas for action to increase students' levels of academic achievement, preparedness for college, and postsecondary attainment.
  
  Fort Worth Independent School District College-Going Diagnostic Report
  
• Strategic Data Project examines College-Going and Human Capital Diagnostics for the Fulton County Schools: As part of the Center's Strategic Data Project (SDP), Center researchers are working with school districts to gather their administrative data and examine the human capital system and post-secondary outcomes for students. SDP partnered with the Fulton County Schools (FCS) to produce College-Going and Human Capital diagnostic reports, which are meant to demonstrate how districts can capitalize on existing data to understand its current performance, set future goals, and strategically plan responses. The College-Going diagnostic report illuminates students’ enrollment over time and compares these patterns across a variety of student characteristics and academic experiences. The Human Capital diagnostic report investigates teacher effectiveness with the intention of informing district leaders about patterns of teacher effectiveness and identifying areas for policy change that could leverage teacher effectiveness to improve student achievement.
  
  Fulton County Schools College-Going Diagnostic Report
  Fulton County Schools Human Capital Diagnostic Report
  
  A video of the SDP presentation to the Fulton County Board of Education is available on their website under the “February 15, 2011 Board Meeting”. “1.01 Harvard Strategic Data Project” is the first item on the agenda.
  
  Fulton County Schools College-Going Board of Education PowerPoint Presentation
  Fulton County Schools Human Capital Board of Education PowerPoint Presentation
  
• Student Achievement in Massachusetts' Charter Schools: Researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, MIT and the University of Michigan have released the results of a new study that suggests that urban charter schools in Massachusetts have large positive effects on student achievement at both the middle and high school levels. Results for nonurban charter schools were less clear; some analyses indicated positive effects on student achievement at the high school level, while results for middle school students were much less encouraging.
  
  Student Achievement in Massachusetts' Charter Schools
• District Diagnostic Reports Across the Nation Examine Teacher Effectiveness: As part of the Center's Strategic Data Project (SDP), Center researchers are working with school districts to gather their administrative data and examine the human capital system and post-secondary outcomes for students. SDP is working with Boston Public Schools, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the District of Columbia Public Schools, Fort Worth Independent School District, Fulton County Schools, and Gwinnett County Public Schools. Our first report, in partnership with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, is now available.
  
  Teacher Employment Patterns and Student Results in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, Teacher Effects Technical Appendix
  A presentation to the Board of Education in Charlotte of their local results is available on the CMS website here. Click on the link, and then click on item "B. Report from researchers at Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research..." under the "All Items" list to skip forward to the CEPR presentation.
• New Study of Boston Charter and pilot schools finds charter schools have positive effects on student achievement: Findings of groundbreaking study suggest charter school students in Boston outperform their peers at other public schools in Boston. Results for pilot schools were less clear; some analyses showed positive results at the elementary and high school level, while results for middle school students were less encouraging. The study uses an innovative research design based on school lotteries that allowed for a direct comparison of charter and pilot school students with their peers.
  
  Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston's Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools
  Informing the Debate: Technical Appendix
• National Board Certification and Teacher Effectiveness in Los Angeles: Evidence from a new random assignment experiment in Los Angeles elementary schools finds students assigned to teachers rated highly by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards outperform students in comparison classrooms. The NBPTS has developed a rigorous process to identify exemplary teachers. Yet, little has been done to connect the NBPTSs assessments to student achievement outcomes. The Center, working with the Los Angeles Unified School District, studied the extent to which the NBPTS process identifies teachers that produce the largest gains in student achievement. We compared the performance of classrooms randomly assigned to either an NBPTS applicant or a comparison teacher. The report includes a number of suggestions for improving the predictive power of the NBPTS scaling process.
  
  National Board Certification and Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from a Random Assignment Experiment
• New York City Teaching Fellows: There are large and persistent differences in effectiveness among teachers that are apparent as early as the first year of teaching. Yet, there is little evidence that the "paper credentials" (e.g., undergraduate GPA, certification to teach) that district HR departments traditionally use to evaluate candidates are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. We are currently working with the New York City schools to determine whether other information that could be gathered during the hiring process and afterward (e.g., responses to interview questions, survey responses about attitudes towards learning) might help the district pick teachers that are likely to be more effective at raising student achievement.
  
  What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness? Evidence From New York City
• School Choice in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina: In Fall 2002, the Mecklenburg County school district (which includes Charlotte) implemented a school choice plan after three decades of bussing on the basis of race. Under that plan, 95 percent of parents in the district listed their top three choices of schools. When schools were oversubscribed, the district held lotteries to determine which students were allowed to enter. We have used the lottery data to study the impact of being admitted to ones first choice school. Moreover, we have been studying the data on parental choice to determine the relative weight parents put on school traits such as proximity of the school to home, racial composition, and test scores in choosing schools for their children. The relative weights parents place on such factors have important implications for the incentives school face in the market created by school choice.
  
  Preferences And Heterogeneous Treatment Effects In A Public School Choice Lottery