Project Activities
The partners will launch this project with a half-day kickoff retreat, during which they will review their short-term research plans and discuss each partner's long-term research needs and priorities. Partners will meet bi-monthly to discuss progress, review findings, and develop the long-term research agenda. First, the partners will use application data to identify groups of parents who apply in ways that do not maximize their chances of desired placements. Second, they will interview a sample of these parents to understand their application experiences and needs for support. Third, they will examine short-term outcomes of children with different application paths and identify the causal effects of an application redesign. Key measures include early grade literacy achievement, attendance, grade retention, and suspensions, parent interview findings, school application records, and program assignment mechanisms. Finally, the team will analyze the application data to identify groups of children who are randomly assigned to programs and schools and can be included in long-term causal impact studies.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, a racially and economically diverse city with a high-poverty public school system that has the highest charter school enrollment in the nation.
Sample
The project focuses on low-income children in public early childhood education programs and elementary schools, and their parents.
Data analytic strategy
The research team will use thematic analysis to analyze interview data. They will use descriptive methods, OLS regression, and logistic regression to analyze administrative data.The team will use the first-choice lottery and deferred-acceptance propensity score methods to examine random assignment to programs and schools.
Key outcomes
Partners will collaborate to design an intervention to support parents in the application process and write a grant application to fund the long-term research agenda. The partnership will also produce a report and policy brief for the community and will host a release event to publicize the work and findings of the project.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Harris, Douglas; Lambert, Thomas
Partner Institutions: The Orleans Public School Board, Tulane University/Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, and the New Orleans Early Education Network.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
