Project Activities
Focused program of research
The REACH Center completed two central activities, carrying out a set of 48 quantitative and qualitative studies and developing the National Longitudinal School Database (NLSD). Through these studies, they examined five types of state and district policies regarding school choice to identify how these policies can be structured to improve the education received by disadvantaged students. These five “policy levers”, identified through theory and past empirical work, are:
- Planning and oversight: including charter school application and authorization processes, school openings and closures, and school regulation and accountability
- Transportation: including access to and form of transportation to school, distance and commuting times
- Enrollment systems: including centralized enrollment systems, the use of priority categories in lotteries, inter-district choice regulation
- Information: including low- and high-cost approaches to informing families about school choice opportunities and the application process
- Teacher: including teacher supply, distribution, turnover by type of school and the role of collective bargaining
In addition, the REACH Center examined a related set of issues including the extensiveness of school choice in a district, student sorting, virtual charters, and students with disabilities.
The quantitative studies under each policy lever and the related issues ranged from descriptive to experimental. They were complemented by qualitative studies to further examine issues and gaps in understanding for each lever. The studies were carried out at the national, state, and district levels. At the state level, the research focused on Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Oregon. Additional research at the district level focused on Baltimore, New Orleans, Denver, and New York City.
Concurrently, the REACH Center developed the NLSD, a 30-year near-census dataset of all traditional public, charter, and private schools in the U.S including available measures of school outcomes (e.g., achievement, graduation rates), school type (e.g., magnet, virtual), and relevant state policies.
The REACH funding came with some initially uncommitted funds whose use were determined after the grant was given. As the COVID crisis emerged two years after the grant started, the center’s leadership and IES leadership agreed to use these resources for 10 studies to help understand how schools responded to the COVID crisis, how the virus was spreading in schools, and how the crisis changed the schooling market.
National leadership and outreach activities
The REACH Center provided leadership and outreach to practitioners, policymakers, and researchers on the issue of school choice. Through its National Policy Advisory Board, composed of education associations representing both traditional and choice schools as well as other stakeholders, the REACH Center shared and received feedback from the field on its research agenda, interpretation of findings, and dissemination strategies. The REACH Center hosted a series of conferences and used a variety of forums to share its findings and interact with policymakers, practitioners, and researchers (e.g., policy briefs, videos, blogs, op-eds, social media, and e-newsletters). They also created and released a public-use version of the NLSD.
People and institutions involved
Project contributors
Products and publications
Project website:
Publications:
Chen, F., & Harris, D. N. (2023). The market-level effects of charter schools on student outcomes: A national analysis of school districts. Journal of Public Economics, 228, 105015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.105015
Chen, F., Harris, D. N., & Penn, M. (2024). The effects of charter school entry on the supply of teachers from university-based education programs. Economics of Education Review, 99, 102520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102520
Harris, D., & McKenzie, R. (2023). The Regulation of Charter Schools: National Patterns and Causal Effects. Technical Report. National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED633846
Harris, D. N., & Martinez-Pabon, V. (2023). Extreme Measures: A National Descriptive Analysis of Closure and Restructuring of Traditional Public, Charter, and Private Schools. Education Finance and Policy, 19(1), 32–60. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00386
See ERIC for a full list of publications from the grant.
Available data:
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