Browsing by Author "Ladd, HF"

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    Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence
    (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2012-03-01) Ladd, HF
    Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little-and are not likely to contribute much in the future-to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
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    Gender Differences in the Impact of North Carolina’s Early Care and Education Initiatives on Student Outcomes in Elementary School
    (Educational Policy, 2020-03-01) Muschkin, CG; Ladd, HF; Dodge, KA; Bai, Y
    © The Author(s) 2018. Based on growing evidence of the long-term benefits of enriched early childhood experiences, we evaluate the potential for addressing gender disparities in elementary school through early care and education programs. Specifically, we explore the community-wide effects of two statewide initiatives in North Carolina on gender differences in academic outcomes in Grades 3 to 5, using administrative student data and information on variation in program availability across counties and over time. We find that although investments in early care and education programs produce significant gains in math and reading skills on average for all children, boys experience larger program-related gains than girls. Moreover, the greatest gains among boys emerge for those from less advantaged families. In contrast, the large and statistically significant reductions in special education placements induced by these early childhood program do not differ consistently by gender.
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    Impact of North Carolina's Early Childhood Programs and Policies on Educational Outcomes in Elementary School.
    (Child Dev, 2016-11-17) Dodge, KA; Bai, Y; Ladd, HF; Muschkin, CG
    North Carolina's Smart Start and More at Four (MAF) early childhood programs were evaluated through the end of elementary school (age 11) by estimating the impact of state funding allocations to programs in each of 100 counties across 13 consecutive years on outcomes for all children in each county-year group (n = 1,004,571; 49% female; 61% non-Latinx White, 30% African American, 4% Latinx, 5% other). Student-level regression models with county and year fixed effects indicated significant positive impacts of each program on reading and math test scores and reductions in special education and grade retention in each grade. Effect sizes grew or held steady across years. Positive effects held for both high- and low-poverty families, suggesting spillover of effects to nonparticipating peers.
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    Institutional change and coproduction of public services: The effect of charter schools on parental involvement
    (Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2006-10-01) Bifulco, R; Ladd, HF
    Recent discussions of school choice have revived arguments that the decentralization of governing institutions can enhance the quality of public services by increasing the participation of intended beneficiaries in the production of those services. We use data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to examine the extent to which the decentralization of authority to charter schools induces parents to become more involved in their children's schools. We find that parents are indeed more involved in charter schools than in observationally similar public schools, especially in urban elementary and middle schools. Although we find that this difference is partly attributable to measurable institutional and organizational factors, we also find that charter schools tend to be established in areas with above-average proportions of involved parents, and we find suggestive evidence that, within those areas, it is the more involved parents who tend to select into charter schools. Thus, while the institutional characteristics of charter schools do appear to induce parents to become more involved in their children's schools, such characteristics are only part of the explanation for the greater parental involvement in charter schools than in traditional public schools. © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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    Results from the tar heel state
    (Education Next, 2005-09-01) Bifulco, R; Ladd, HF
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    School vouchers: A critical view
    (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2002-09-01) Ladd, HF