Person: Schueler, Beth
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Schueler
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Beth
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Schueler, Beth
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Publication Measuring Parent Perceptions of School Climate(American Psychological Association, 2014) Schueler, Beth; Capotosto, Lauren; Bahena, Sofia; McIntyre, Joseph; Gehlbach, HunterParents' attitudes about their children’s schools matter. Their views can shape their children’s attitudes about school, affect their levels of family-school engagement, and influence their residential and school enrollment decisions. This paper describes the development of a survey scale to assess parent perceptions of the climate of their child’s school. Our comprehensive scale development process incorporated feedback from academics and potential respondents from the outset of the design process to enhance scale quality. We conducted three studies with national samples of parents (n = 385; n = 253; n = 266) to gather evidence of scale score reliability and valid score inferences based on convergent/discriminant validity. Through confirmatory factor analysis we identified a theoretically grounded factor structure that fit the data well. Interestingly, we found no evidence that parental response patterns distinguish between academic and social elements of school climate. Furthermore, we found that parents of younger children, on average, had a more positive perception of the school’s climate than parents of older children. We conclude by discussing how researchers and Pre-K – 12 schools and districts can use the scale to aid school improvement efforts.Publication Can States Take Over and Turn Around School Districts? Evidence from Lawrence, Massachusetts(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016) Schueler, Beth; Goodman, Joshua; Deming, DavidThe Federal government has spent billions of dollars to support turnarounds of low-achieving schools, yet most evidence on the impact of such turnarounds comes from high-profile, exceptional settings and not from examples driven by state policy decisions at scale. In this paper, we study the impact of state takeover and district-level turnaround in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Takeover of the Lawrence Public School (LPS) district was driven by the state’s accountability system, which increases state control in response to chronic underperformance. We find that the first two years of the LPS turnaround produced large achievement gains in math and modest gains in reading. Our preferred estimates compare LPS to other low income school districts in a differences-in-differences framework, although the results are robust to a wide variety of specifications, including student fixed effects. While the LPS turnaround was a package of interventions that cannot be fully separated, we find evidence that intensive small-group instruction led to particularly large achievement gains for participating students.Publication Can States Take Over and Turn Around Low-Performing School Districts? Evidence on Policy Effects and Political Dynamics From Lawrence, Massachusetts(2016-05-13) Schueler, Beth; West, Martin; Deming, David; Mehta, JalTurning around persistently low-performing K-12 schools and districts has been an elusive goal despite prioritization at the highest levels of government. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education encouraged states to adopt tiered accountability systems, like the Massachusetts model, which allows state takeover of districts in cases of extreme underperformance. Massachusetts’ Lawrence Public Schools provide a unique opportunity to examine a post-No Child Left Behind state takeover and turnaround of a chronically low-performing, majority low-income, district stemming directly from state accountability policy. I use mixed-methods to examine both policy effects and political dynamics of the Lawrence turnaround. In Part I, I use student-level administrative data to compare Lawrence students’ academic achievement gains before and after the turnaround to similar students in other majority low-income Massachusetts districts. I find that the turnaround had large positive effects on math achievement and modest positive effects on reading achievement. The turnaround also increased grade progression among high school students. I find no effects on any other non-test academic outcomes. The reforms were particularly effective for the district’s large population of students learning English as a second language. I also find that intensive small-group instruction by select teachers over vacation breaks explains roughly half of the effect in math and all of the effect in reading. In Part II, I examine the political dynamics of the Lawrence turnaround drawing on interviews, press coverage, public documents, and secondary sources of survey data. I find that, although it was certainly not without controversy, the Lawrence reforms were less contentious than many other recent cases of takeover and turnaround. Explanatory factors relate to the (1) Lawrence context, (2) new authorities granted to the state under its accountability law, and (3) features of turnaround leaders’ approach to reform. Specifically, leaders focused on relationship building and stakeholder empowerment, differentiated district-school relations, a “third way” framing and policy approach to transcending polarizing politics, strategic staffing decisions, and generating early results while minimizing disruption. The study provides a rare and encouraging proof point illustrating that accountability-driven improvement of low-performing districts is indeed possible, as well as lessons for other states, districts, and schools seeking improvement.