Integrated Evaluation of ARRA

Contractors: Westat, Policy Studies Associates, Chesapeake Research Associates, University of Wisconsin.

Background/Research Questions:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided an unprecedented $100 billion of funding for the U.S. Department of Education. While the initial goal of this money was to deliver emergency education funding, ARRA is also being used as an opportunity to spur innovation and reform at different levels of the education system. In turn, ARRA provides a unique opportunity to foster school improvements and to learn from reform efforts. Although funds are being disbursed through different grant programs, their goals and strategies are complementary, if not overlapping, as are likely recipients. For this reason, data collection and analysis will take place across grant programs (i.e., will be "integrated"), rather than separately for each set of grantees, allowing for a broad assessment of ARRA as a whole.

In addition to existing data, the integrated evaluation will draw on annual surveys of all 50 states and Washington D.C. and annual surveys of a nationally representative sample of districts and schools. Reports will answer the following research questions:

• At the state and local levels, who were the recipients of ARRA funds? To what extent did child poverty, state fiscal condition, student achievement, and other variables relate to funding?
• Is ARRA associated with the implementation of the key reform strategies it promoted? What was the pace and scope of implementation as reform activity took place over time?
• Which implementation supports (e.g., state assistance to districts and schools) and challenges (e.g., community opposition) were associated with ARRA? How did these factors relate to the pace and scope of implementation?
• What was the association between the amount of ARRA funding states and districts received and the pace and scope of implementation at the state and local levels?

Design:

Information will be collected from all 50 states and a nationally representative sample of school districts and schools through the administration of annual surveys taking place in the spring of 2011 and 2012. Descriptive and correlational analyses will be conducted, making use of both survey and extant data, in order to answer the study's research questions.

Cost/Duration: $6,740,000 over 4 years (August 2010–August 2014)

Current Status: The first round of data collection is complete and reports focused on the first two research question are being prepared for publication in 2012.