| This dissertation investigates the achievement effects of three recent educational reforms. The first chapter analyzes California's Class Size Reduction (CSR) Program, which was enacted in 1996 and provided extra funds to schools that enrolled 20 or fewer students in their K-3 classes. State National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests are utilized in several empirical strategies, such as comparing test scores of California 4th graders with those of 8th graders (who were not affected by the program) in a Difference-in-Differences (DID) framework and matching California 4th graders with 4th graders from other states using propensity score matching to compare their test score changes. Most specifications suggest that between 1996 and 2000, California 4th graders' test scores in Mathematics increased by between 0.2 and 0.3 of a standard deviation compared to the increase of the students who were not exposed to the CSR initiative.; The second chapter employs State NAEP tests to analyze the effects of the mayoral takeovers of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit School Districts in the 1990s. The DID estimates suggest that the 4th grade test score gap between the large non-takeover districts and takeover districts narrowed down between 0.03 and 0.04 of a standard deviation per year after the takeovers. The Conditional DID estimates, however, suggest that the increase observed in the test scores of students from takeover districts is not significantly different than that of their closely matched peers from large non-takeover districts. This raises the question whether the improvements in achievement observed in takeover districts are exclusively due to the mayoral takeovers.; The third chapter evaluates a recent reform in Philadelphia, which restructured the lowest performing schools by transferring the management of some to a number of private Educational Management Organizations (EMOs). Trends in the test scores of reformed and not-reformed Philadelphia schools are compared in a framework including the DID approach and fixed effects. The results suggest that test scores in Philadelphia improved after the program. When compared to not-reformed schools, however, reformed schools in general and EMO schools in particular did not experience a faster performance growth. |
