| Notes |
4.2 | Involve and Improve: New York and Boston
Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) is a 97-block area in Harlem that offers a number of “community” and “school” programs. Community programs are available to anyone living near HCZ, while school-related services are provided to the students who attend the Promise Academy charter schools. The Promise Academy schools began in the fall of 2004 with the opening of the Promise Academy elementary and middle schools. In 2005, the Promise Academy II elementary school opened.
The Promise Academy has an extended school day and year, with after-school tutoring and additional classes on Saturdays for children who need remediation in math and English skills. It emphasizes the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers and uses a test-score value- added measure to offer incentives to and evaluate current teachers. Teachers are evaluated annually and are provided support so that their time is spent teaching and not doing administrative tasks.
The Promise Academy is similar to other No Excuses charter schools6 with three exceptions: (1) the Promise Academy does not require parents or students to sign a behavioral contract, (2) the Promise Academy enrolls students at a younger age (3 years old), and (3) a wide range of additional services are available to HCZ students that are not available in other charter schools, including free medical, dental, and mental health services; student incentives for achievement; meals; and support for parents in the form of food baskets, meals, bus services, and the like.
Dobbie and Fryer (2011) show that students who enroll in the middle school gain about 0.2 standard deviations in math per year. Students in the Promise Academy elementary school gain approximately 0.2 standard deviations in both math and English language arts per year.
Dobbie and Fryer (2013) show on the one hand that traditionally collected input measures— class size, per pupil expenditure, teacher certification, and teacher training—are not correlated with school effectiveness. On the other hand, an index of five policies suggested by qualitative research—frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations—explains approximately 45 percent of the variation in school effectiveness.
Six years after being selected through a lottery to enroll, Promise Academy middle school students scored 0.28 standard deviations higher on academic achievement outcomes and 0.31 standard deviations higher on a measure of on-time benchmarks.7 Moreover, females are 10.1 percentage points less likely to be pregnant as teenagers, and males are 4.4 percentage points less likely to be incarcerated.
While the HCZ program focuses on both school and community interventions, Boston College’s City Connects program focuses on providing comprehensive support services that assess individual elementary school students’ academic, social/emotional, family, and health needs, and connects them to relevant community-based services. The program assists schools by connecting them with community agencies and service providers, and streamlining student referral and case management.
A recent report suggests that children who attended City Connects through Grade 5 closed half of the achievement gap in English and two-thirds of the achievement gap in math by Grade 8 relative to the Massachusetts state average. After controlling for school and student characteristics and pre-existing academic achievement differences, students who attended a City Connects elementary school outperformed peers on Grade 6 to Grade 8 achievement tests, with effect sizes ranging from 0.29 to 0.67.8 In addition, children who attended a City Connects school had lower high school dropout rates compared with children who did not attend a City Connects school, adjusting for child and family background characteristics. |