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Can States Take Over and Turn Around School Districts? Evidence from Lawrence, Massachusetts

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  • Beth Schueler
  • Joshua Goodman
  • David Deming

Abstract

The 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Beth Schueler & Joshua Goodman & David Deming, "undated". "Can States Take Over and Turn Around School Districts? Evidence from Lawrence, Massachusetts," Working Paper 365596, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    • Handle: RePEc:qsh:wpaper:365596
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    File URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagoodman/node/365596
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    Cited by:

    1. Steven W. Hemelt & Brian A. Jacob, 2020. "How Does an Accountability Program that Targets Achievement Gaps Affect Student Performance?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(1), pages 45-74, Winter.
    2. Cordeiro Guerra, Susana & Lastra-Anadón, Carlos Xabel, 2019. "The quality-access tradeoff in decentralizing public services: Evidence from education in the OECD and Spain," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 295-316.
    3. Mark Chin & Thomas J. Kane & Whitney Kozakowski & Beth E. Schueler & Douglas O. Staiger, 2019. "School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-School Changes in Achievement Growth," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(2), pages 323-354, March.
    4. Beth E. Schueler & Joshua F. Bleiberg, 2022. "Evaluating Education Governance: Does State Takeover of School Districts Affect Student Achievement?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(1), pages 162-192, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

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