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The Hechinger Report
PROOF POINTS: Researchers pinpoint three elements of effective schools
A new index identifies Chicago high schools with the best outcomes
By Jill Barshay
January 4, 2021
Parents are often stymied by the process of picking a good school for
their kids. Word-of-mouth recommendations can be misleading. High test
scores provide only a limited picture of a school’s effectiveness since
they often reflect family income with wealthier students scoring
better. Northwestern University economist C. Kirabo Jackson believes
two additional elements point to an effective school: social and
emotional skills and student behavior. He argues that schools
that boost those two plus test scores propel more students to graduate
high school, go to college and reduce the number of students who get
arrested.
“We’re talking about schools that have a positive, causal impact on
children’s subsequent outcomes,” said Jackson. “Not everyone buys into
these non-test score measures of school effectiveness. I think what
we’re showing here is that they do require attention.”
To prove his point, Jackson studied more than 150,000 ninth graders in
Chicago public high schools from 2011 to 2017. He picked Chicago
because the school system annually surveys students about their social
and emotional skills. Students report how much effort they believe they
put into their school work and how they feel about their relationships
with peers. All the answers can be quantified on a scale of one to
four, enabling Jackson to calculate how much students’ social and
emotional development improved at each school, along with increases in
test scores and decreases in disciplinary incidents, such as
suspensions. Then he combined it all into one composite index, somewhat
similar to how a combined SAT score adds together math and verbal tests.
He found that Chicago high schools that ranked high on his three-part
index for ninth graders subsequently reduced the number of arrests at
school while increasing high school graduation and college enrollment
rates. Students at schools that only produced the highest growth in
test scores had less impressive long-term outcomes.
The non-test score aspects of school quality seem to be driving many of
the results. Schools that improve student behavior the most had the
largest drop in school-based arrests. Schools that boost social and
emotional skills had larger increases in college attendance.
Jackson’s study, “Who Benefits From Attending Effective Schools?
Examining Heterogeneity in High School Impacts,” was conducted with
three other researchers, including John Q. Easton, the former head of
the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences and
a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School
Research.* The team also included Shanette Porter, research
director at the Mindset Scholars Network, which promotes “soft” skills,
such as the belief that intelligence can be developed through hard work.
The study is still a draft, working paper, which means it hasn’t yet
been peer-reviewed, but it was circulated by the National Bureau of
Economics Research in December 2020. The ideas in it rely on previously
published research about the benefits of social and emotional
development and fostering good behavior.
The names of Chicago’s more effective high schools were not disclosed
because of the researchers’ data sharing agreement with the city’s
public school system. That’s too bad because parents might appreciate
knowing that information. All students benefit from attending more
effective high schools that boost a combination of test scores,
behavior and social and emotional skills, the researchers found.
However, students with the weakest eighth grade academic records, who
are the most likely to drop out of high school, received larger
benefits from attending one of Chicago’s most effective schools while
more advantaged students were more likely to attend these higher
quality schools in the first place.
For example, a disadvantaged student in the bottom 10 percent would be
3.4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school, 2.2
percentage points more likely to enroll in college and 2.1 percent less
likely to be arrested by attending a high school in the top 15 percent
of effectiveness compared to an average high school. For a more
advantaged student at the other end of the spectrum, there were very
small improvements in high school graduation and arrests but college
going rose by almost as much as it did for disadvantaged students.
The researchers also noticed a shift in college behavior. Disadvantaged
students were more likely to end up at a two-year community college
after attending a more effective high school. Wealthier students were
not only more likely to go to college but also more likely to enroll in
a four-year college. “You’re getting a shift from two-year to four-year
colleges among those that are more advantaged,” said Jackson. That’s a
good outcome because graduation rates are much higher at four-year
institutions than at two-year community colleges and adults with
bachelor’s degrees generally earn higher salaries.
It’s unclear whether the researchers’ index would be as useful outside
of Chicago in cities with more affluent students. Chicago’s schools are
overwhelmingly poor; 86 percent of the ninth graders in the study were
from disadvantaged families whose incomes were low enough to qualify
for free or reduced price lunch. Forty-two percent were Black students
and 44 percent were Latino students. Only half of the ninth graders
subsequently attended college.
If this approach to measuring schools turns out not to be useful for
affluent students, that’s okay. Our problem in America isn’t figuring
out which schools serve upper middle class students well but how
to educate children living in poverty. And this study is shining a
light in a new direction. Unfortunately, this study didn’t delve into
exactly what the effective high schools are doing to improve students’
soft skills and behavior. We don’t know if the schools were following
specific programs or staffed by caring adults or some combination of
both. The next step is to figure out exactly what these effective
Chicago high schools are doing and bottle it.
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