REMEDIAL EDUCATION and STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: a REGRESSION-DISCONTINUITY ANALYSIS Brian A

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REMEDIAL EDUCATION and STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: a REGRESSION-DISCONTINUITY ANALYSIS Brian A REMEDIAL EDUCATION AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: A REGRESSION-DISCONTINUITY ANALYSIS Brian A. Jacob and Lars Lefgren* Abstract—As standards and accountability have become increasingly tricts that institute summer programs, require summer prominent features of the educational landscape, educators have relied more on remedial programs such as summer school and grade retention to school attendance for students who do not meet academic help low-achieving students meet minimum academic standards. Yet the expectations, or require districts to offer summer school to evidence on the effectiveness of such programs is mixed, and prior low-achieving students (ECS, 2000). In the summer of research suffers from selection bias. However, recent school reform efforts in Chicago provide an opportunity to examine the causal impact of these 1999, New York City provided summer help for 70,000 remedial education programs. In 1996, the Chicago Public Schools insti- students, and Chicago required over 30,000 low-achieving tuted an accountability policy that tied summer school and promotional students to attend summer classes. Other urban districts with decisions to performance on standardized tests, which resulted in a highly nonlinear relationship between current achievement and the probability of summer programs include Houston, with 8,000 students attending summer school or being retained. Using a regression disconti- enrolled; Boston, with 6,500; Denver, with 6,000; Los nuity design, we find that the net effect of these programs was to Angeles, with 139,000; and the District of Columbia, with substantially increase academic achievement among third-graders, but not sixth-graders. In addition, contrary to conventional wisdom and prior 30,000 (Pipho, 1999). There is a growing interest in grade research, we find that retention increases achievement for third-grade retention as well. Nineteen states explicitly tie student students and has little effect on math achievement for sixth-grade students. promotion to performance on a state or district assessment (ECS, 2000). The largest school districts in the country, I. Introduction including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Wash- ington, DC, have recently implemented policies requiring DUCATION is one of the most important avenues students to repeat a grade when they do not demonstrate through which governments can address concerns of E sufficient mastery of basic skills. economic growth and equity. Human capital plays a sub- Despite their popularity, these practices—particularly stantial role in the economic growth of nations (Topel, grade retention—remain controversial. Prior research sug- 1999), and in the past two decades skill-biased technical gests that summer school has a substantial positive effect on change has increased the returns to schooling, exacerbating wage inequality between the most and least educated mem- student learning in the short run, but there is less evidence bers of our society (Katz & Murphy, 1992). At the same regarding the sustainability of achievement gains made time, cognitive ability has become an increasingly impor- during the summer. In contrast, the majority of retention tant determinant of labor market success in this country studies find that the practice of requiring students to repeat (Murnane, Willet, & Levy, 1995). a grade decreases self-esteem, school adjustment, and aca- Aware of the importance of education, economists have demic achievement, and increases dropout rates. However, spent considerable effort examining what factors affect prior studies fail to take account of the selection of students academic achievement. There is a large literature on the into these programs, thus potentially overstating the benefits importance of financial resources in determining educa- of summer school and exaggerating the harm of retention. tional outcomes.1 However, researchers have paid consider- In this paper, we use a regression discontinuity design to ably less attention to remedial programs designed to im- examine the causal effect of summer school and grade prove the performance of low-achieving students, including retention on student achievement. In 1996, the Chicago summer school and grade retention (Eide & Showalter, Public Schools (CPS) instituted an accountability policy 2001). that tied summer school attendance and promotional deci- Such policies, however, have become increasingly popu- sions to performance on standardized tests. That policy lar in recent years. Sixteen states provide funding for dis- resulted in a highly nonlinear relationship between current achievement and the probability of attending summer 2 Received for publication December 24, 2001. Revision accepted for school or being retained. We use the exogenous variation publication November 1, 2002. generated by the decision rule to identify the impact of these * John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and remedial programs. Brigham Young University, respectively. We would like to thank the Consortium on Chicago School Research and We find that summer school increased academic achieve- the Chicago Public Schools for providing the data used in this study. We ment in reading and mathematics and that these positive are grateful to Anthony Bryk, Thomas DeLeire, Mark Duggan, Michael effects remain substantial at least two years following the Greenstone, Steven Levitt, Helen Levy, Brigitte Madrian, Casey Mulligan, Kevin Murphy, Melissa Roderick, Mark Showalter, seminar participants at the University of Chicago, and anonymous referees for helpful sugges- 2 In prior work, we have examined the potential motivational effects of tions. All remaining errors are our own. these requirements and found that the policy increased achievement, 1 Hanushek (1996) and Hedges and Greenwald (1996) present contrast- particularly among older students (Jacob, 2002; Roderick et al., 2000). In ing views regarding the effectiveness of resources in improving student this analysis, we set aside the incentives associated with the policy and achievement. Many researchers have also focused on the effect of class instead focus on the direct academic consequences of summer school and size on student outcomes. These studies include works by Angrist and grade retention for those students who fail to meet the promotional Lavy (1999), Krueger (1999), and Hoxby (2000). standards. The Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2004, 86(1): 226–244 © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/003465304323023778 by guest on 27 September 2021 REMEDIAL EDUCATION AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT 227 completion of the program. In contrast to prior studies, we 1991; Roderick, 1994). However, selection issues cast doubt find that retention has no negative consequences on the on these findings as well. In contrast to summer school, academic achievement of students retained in the third students are not generally given a choice whether to repeat grade—indeed, it appears that retention may actually in- a grade, but rather this decision is made by the teacher or crease performance in the short run. The impact of retention school principal on the basis of unobservable characteristics on older students is mixed, with no impact on math and a (for example, motivation, maturity, and parental involve- negative effect on reading.3 ment). This suggests that OLS estimates of grade retention The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. will be biased downward. Section II reviews the previous literature on summer school and grade retention. Section III provides background on the III. Background on Chicago’s Social Promotion Policy Chicago policy. Section IV describes our data, and section V explains our empirical strategy. Section VI presents findings An accountability policy recently implemented in Chi- on the net effect of summer school and retention. Section cago provides an opportunity to more carefully examine the VII presents findings on the separate effect of grade reten- impacts of these programs. In 1996–1997, Chicago insti- tion. Section VIII examines the independent effect of sum- tuted a policy to end social promotion—the practice of mer school. Section IX discusses these findings and con- passing students to the next grade regardless of their aca- cludes. demic skills or school performance. Under the policy, stu- dents in third, sixth, and eighth grades are required to II. Previous Literature on Summer School perform at predefined levels in both reading and mathemat- and Grade Retention ics in order to be promoted to the next grade. For example, third graders must obtain a minimum score of 2.8 grade Both summer school and grade retention have a long equivalents (GEs) in both reading and math achievement on history within American education, dating back to the in- the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in order to advance.5 In troduction of mass public education in the mid-nineteenth 1997, the promotion standards for the third, sixth, and century (Shepard & Smith, 1989). Both practices have been eighth grades were 2.8, 5.3, and 7.0 respectively, which widely implemented and have received considerable atten- roughly corresponded to the 20th percentile in the national tion from researchers. However, prior studies do not ade- achievement distribution.6 Students who do not meet the quately address the potential biases introduced by the non- standard in June are required to attend a six-week summer random selection into summer
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