Leanna Stiefel

In this study, we assess changes in the education of students with disabilities (SWDs) in the nation’s largest school district, New York City (NYC), over the decade 2005–2015. Specifically, we examine progress toward the twin legislative goals of both the federal Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) and NYC district goals of (a) including SWDs in general education settings and (b) improving their academic performance. We find that the inclusion of SWDs with their general education peers (GENs) has increased in elementary and middle schools, but decreased in high school. Furthermore, although more SWDs are completing high school, their graduation rate remains considerably below that of GENs (50% vs. 80%). In assessing these patterns, we provide empirical evidence of the changing context of education in NYC before, during, and after policy changes that affected special education.

Residential mobility is likely to have consequences for student performance, but prior empirical work is largely correlational and offers little insight into its impacts. Using rich, longitudinal data, we estimate the effects of residential mobility on the performance of New York City public school students. Using both student fixed effects and instrumental variables approaches, we find that long-distance moves have negative effects, while short-distance moves improve student performance. These differential effects are partially, but not fully, explained by school mobility. Rather, the positive effects of short-distance moves may be explained by improvements in housing, while the negative impacts of long-distance moves may be explained by lower performance relative to school peers and loss of social capital.

The passage of landmark federal legislation in 1975 guaranteed students with disabilities (SWDs) a free appropriate public education. Over time, reauthorization of this legislation has highlighted the importance of educating SWDs in the general education environment where appropriate, and significant interaction with general education peers who are not receiving special education services (GENs) has followed. The largest U.S. school district—New York City (NYC), the setting of our study—mirrors this national trend toward more inclusive environments. Despite the trend, a critical question remains: Does inclusion in fact feel inclusive? This study provides a district-wide descriptive analysis of feelings of inclusion among SWDs compared to their GEN peers. We rely on detailed, longitudinal administrative and student survey data on approximately 249,000 NYC middle school students attending schools that educate both SWDs and GENs (which we call traditional schools in contrast with schools that educate only SWDs). Our results suggest that while gaps between SWDs overall and GENs are quite small, there is some heterogeneity. Specifically, students with an emotional disturbance (ED) and other health impairments (OH) feel modestly less included with peers but more with adults. There are, however, almost no differences in feelings of inclusion between students assigned exclusive and inclusive services, even for those in the ED and OH groups. In fact, for students with low incidence (LI) disabilities, feelings of inclusion are slightly better when assigned exclusive services.

Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district? We explore New York City’s small high school reform in which hundreds of new small high schools were built in less than a decade. We use rich individual student data on four cohorts of New York City high school students and estimate effects of schools on student outcomes. Our results suggest that the introduction of small schools improved outcomes for students in all types of schools: large, small, continuously operating, and new. Small school reform lifted all boats.

The notion that children from ‘good’ neighbourhoods are destined for success while those from ‘bad’ neighbourhoods are destined for failure has considerable popular appeal. Residential location is strongly linked to school quality, access to educated adults, exposure to violence, etc. There is, however, surprisingly little evidence on the link between the neighbourhood in which a child begins school and later schooling outcomes. Understanding early neighbourhood experiences is important for determining whether students are ‘stuck’ in neighbourhoods of disadvantage. It is also critical for determining the extent to which students who begin their schooling careers in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are destined for poor schooling outcomes, and conversely, whether changing neighbourhood context improves student performance. In this study, therefore, we document how students’ early neighbourhood and schooling experiences are related to later success in school, and explore how changing neighbourhood and school contexts explain differences in academic outcomes. Using data from New York City (NYC), we construct a panel containing all students enrolled as first graders in NYC public schools in 1996–1997, following them through academic years 2007–2008, which would be their 12th grade year if they made standard academic progress (annual one-grade promotion). Far from supporting the simplistic story of ‘dead-end’ neighbourhoods, our analyses describe a situation where students from poor neighbourhoods actually move more often than their peers in less disadvantaged neighbourhoods and are more likely to experience changes in neighbourhood and school quality, with 45.7% of neighbourhood moves from the poorest neighbourhoods being made to significantly higher quality neighbourhoods.

This entry briefly outlines the origin of school finance statistics and describes the Berne-Stiefel framework for identifying the values of school finance equity.  It then introduces various measures of horizontal, vertical, and taxpayer equity and concludes by highlighting school finance research that utilizes these measures.

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country's largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative datasest for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created small schools have positive effects of graduation and some other educational outcomes while older small schools do not. Importantly, we show that ignoring this source of treatment effect heterogeneity by assuming a common small school effect yields a misleading zero effect of small school attendance.

In the last few years, millions of homes around the country have entered foreclosure, pushing many families out of their homes and potentially forcing their children to move to new schools. Unfortunately, despite considerable attention to the causes and consequences of mortgage defaults, we understand little about the distribution and severity of these impacts on school children. This paper takes a step toward filling that gap through studying how foreclosures in New York City affect the mobility of public school children across schools. A significant body of research suggests that, in general, switching schools is costly for students, though the magnitude of the effect depends critically on the nature of the move and the quality of the origin and destination schools.

In the spring of 2008 the authors surveyed members of the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) to gain insight into their views on education policy issues. The results summarize opinions of this broad group of education researchers and practitioners, providing AEFA members and education leaders with access to views that may be helpful as they consider policies to analyze or pursue. This article reports the results in six areas of current policy interest. How should education aid be distributed? Is school choice a good thing? Does school finance reform work? What has accountability wrought? Can school policies close the black-white achievement gap? And how should teachers be compensated? Our findings identify areas of substantial agreement as well as areas where there is disagreement. For example, there is considerable agreement that state and federal governments should provide additional funding for disadvantaged students but disagreement on how to measure school finance adequacy.

Although rearranging school organizational features is a popular school reform, little research exists to inform policymakers about how grade spans affect achievement. This article examines how grade spans and the school transitions that students make between fourth and eighth grade shape student performance in eighth grade. The authors estimate the impact of grade span paths on eighth grade performance, controlling for school and student characteristics and correcting for attrition bias and quality of original school. They find that students moving from K-4 to 5-8 schools outperform students on other paths. Results suggest four possible explanations for the findings- the number and timing of school changes, the size of within-school cohorts, and the stability of peer cohorts.

This paper explores the effect of the human capital characteristics of co-ethnic immigrant communities on foreign-born students’ math achievement. We use data on New York City public school foreign-born students from 39 countries merged with census data on the characteristics of the immigrant household heads in the city from each nation of origin and estimate regressions of student achievement on co-ethnic immigrant community characteristics, controlling for student and school attributes. We find that the income and size of the co-ethnic immigrant community has no effect on immigrant student achievement, while the percent of college graduates may have a small positive effect. In addition, children in highly English proficient immigrant communities test slightly lower than children from less proficient communities. The results suggest that there may be some protective factors associated with immigrant community members’ education levels and use of native languages.

This paper describes a model for assessing and reporting schoollevel resources. State and local decision-makers have been seeking ways to obtain such information for more than a decade, but there is as yet no easy, accessible way to do so and no way to satisfy both internal and external users of the information. The model, based on case studies in Pennsylvania (with successful replication in New York), resolves many of the issues. The seven principles that guide the model are explained, challenges in developing school-level reports are generalized, and resolutions to the challenges in three states are compared. The conclusion draws out implications for the future of regularly collected school resource data.

Problem: Policymakers and community development practitioners view increasing subsidized owner-occupied housing as a mechanism to improve urban neighborhoods, but little research studies the impact of such investments on community amenities.

Purpose: We examine the impact of subsidized owner-occupied housing on the quality of local schools and compare them to the impacts of city investments in rental units.

Methods: Using data from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), we estimate three main sets of regressions, exploring student characteristics, school resources, and school outcomes.

Results and conclusions: The completion of subsidized owner-occupied housing is associated with a decrease in schools’ percentage of free-lunch eligible students, an increase in schools’ percentage of White students, and, controlling for these compositional changes, an increase in scores on standardized reading and math exams. By contrast, our results suggest that investments in rental housing have little, if any, effect.

Takeaway for practice: Policies promoting the construction of subsidized owner-occupied housing have solidified in local governments around the country. Our research provides reassurance to policymakers and planners who are concerned about the spillover effects of subsidized, citywide investments beyond the households being directly served. It suggests that benefits from investments in owner occupancy may extend beyond the individual level, with an increase in subsidized owner-occupancy bringing about improvements in neighborhood school quality.

In 2005, immigrants exceeded 12% of the US population, with the highest concentrations in large metropolitan areas. While considerable research has focused on how immigrants affect local wages and housing prices, less research has asked how immigrants fare in US urban public schools. Previous studies find that foreign-born students outperform native-born students in their elementary and middle school years, but urban policymakers and practitioners continue to raise concerns about educational outcomes of immigrants arriving in their high school years.

The authors use data on a large cohort of New York City (NYC) public high school students to examine how the performance of students who immigrate during high school (teen immigrants) differs from that of students who immigrate during middle school (tween immigrants) or elementary school (child immigrants), relative to otherwise similar native-born students. Contrary to prior studies, their difference-in-difference estimates suggest that, ceteris paribus, teen immigrants do well compared to native-born migrants, and that the foreign-born advantage is relatively large among the teen (im)migrants. That said, their findings provide cause for concern about the performance of limited English proficient students, blacks and Hispanics and, importantly, teen migrants. In particular, switching school districts in the high school years - that is, student mobility across school districts - may be more detrimental than immigration per se. Results are robust to alternative specifications and cohorts, including a cohort of Miami students.

With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. We use data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. We find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission-comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally sized comprehensive schools. We also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes.

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to 2002 and exploiting within-school variations, we examine relationships among grade span, spending, and size. We find that school grade span is associated with differences in school size, class size, and grade size, though generally not with spending and other resources. In addition, we find class size and grade size differences in the same grade level at schools with different configurations, suggesting that school grade span affects not only school size but also class size and grade size. We find few relationships, though, between grade span and school-level performance, pointing to the need to augment these analyses with pupil-level data. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new "small" schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students "left behind" in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts.

High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new "small" schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students "left behind" in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts.

Using 10 years (1993-2003) of data on New York City high schools, we examine the potential systemic effects of small schools that have been identified by critics and researchers.

Using an 11-year panel data set containing information on revenues, expenditures, and demographics for every school district in the United States, we examine the effects of state-adopted school accountability systems on the adequacy and equity of school resources. We find little relationship between state implementation of accountability systems and changes in school finance equity, though we do find evidence that states in which courts overturned the school finance system during the decade exhibited significant equity improvements. Additionally, while implementation of accountability per se does not appear linked to changes in resource adequacy, states that implemented strong accountability systems did experience improvements.

The goal of this book, the first in a series, is to bring policymakers, practitioners, and scholars up to speed on the state of knowledge on various aspects of urban and regional policy. What do we know about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, or experiments on key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas? What can we say about what works, what doesn’t, and why? And what does this knowledge and experience imply for future policy questions?

The authors take a fresh look at several different issues (e.g., economic development, education, land use) and conceptualize how each should be thought of. Once the contributors have presented the essence of what is known, as well as the likely implications, they identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.

The Handbook traces the evolution of the field from its initial focus on school inputs (per pupil expenditures) and the revenue sources (property taxes, state aid programs, etc) used to finance these inputs to a focus on educational outcomes (student achievement) and the larger policies used to achieve them. It shows how the current decision-making context in school finance inevitably interacts with those of governance, accountability, equity, privatization, and other areas of education policy. Because a full understanding of the important contemporary issues requires inputs from a variety of perspectives, the Handbook draws on contributors from a variety of disciplines.

This paper explores the determinants of resource allocation across schools in large districts and examines options for improving resource distribution patterns. Previous research on intra-district allocations consistently reveals resource disparities across schools within districts, particularly in the distribution of teachers. While overall expenditures are sometimes related to the characteristics of students in schools, the ratio of teachers per pupil is consistently larger in high-poverty, high-minority and low-performing schools. These teachers, though, generally have lower experience and education levels - and consequently, lower salaries - as compared to teachers in more advantaged schools. We explore these patterns in New York City,  Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio by estimating de facto expenditure equations relating resource measures to school and student characteristics. Consistent with previous research, we find schools that have higher percentages
of poor pupils receive more money and have more teachers per pupil, but the teachers tend to be less educated and less well paid, with a particularly consistent pattern in New York City schools. The paper concludes with policy options for changing intradistrict resource distributions in order to promote more efficient, more equitable or more effective use of resources. These options include allocating dollars rather than teacher positions to schools, providing teacher pay differentials in hard-to-staff schools and subjects, and adapting current district-based funding formulas to the school (and student) level.

We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within-school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within-school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size - implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade-off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within-school race gaps.

Insight comes from hindsight.  By reviewing enduring problems in education finance and policy, observing what we did right and seeing when we were surprised and why, we can identify research issues that we missed, avoid similar mistakes in the future, and move forward toward work that is even more productive and useful in the field of education finance and policy.

This chapter develops and explores the use of school-level cost functions for estimating school efficiency and differentiating between more- and less-efficient schools. Using data for elementary and middle schools in the state of Ohio, we explore a range of specifications and the resulting efficiency measures. The next section presents and overview of the literature on education cost functions. In the third section we present the theory of cost functions, and in the fourth section we describe the data. The fifth section provides estimation results, and the chapter concludes in the fifth section with implications and lessons for future research.

School performance and efficiency measurement have taken center stage in much of the debate and research in education policy since at least the mid-1990s. Despite the clear theoretical and practical importance of understanding the ways in which school performance can be measured, only limited research exists on alternative ways to measure how well schools are educating their students, delivering what parents want, and using resources efficiently. The authors address the measurement of school performance, an issue that lies between the study of technical characteristics of student assessments, on the one hand, and the effectiveness of accountability systems that use those assessments, on the other. Although psychometricians focus on the reliability, validity, and fairness of individual student assessments, and social scientists address whether state and local accountability systems that use those student assessments are effective ways to influence school performance, the authors of this volume consider the pros and cons of alternative measurements of school performance and efficiency, per se.

Italian Statistical Association, 1999.

School reform leaders from Chicago (Illinois), Denver (Colorado), New York (New York), Seattle (Washington), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), and Los Angeles (California) created the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform to work to improve urban education so that all urban youth are well-prepared for postsecondary education, work, and citizenship. Papers in this volume provide insights into an approach advocated by the Cross City Campaign, the small schools movement.

Reviews the school-level resource-allocation literature and presents findings of a study of school-district expenditures in Chicago, Forth Worth, New York, and Rochester. Horizontal equity results show that in Chicago, New York, and Fort Worth, most coefficients of variation are below 0.15. Rochester's system is slightly less equitable. For general funds, all cities show mixed vertical-equity results.

Discusses implications for school finance data collection and analysis of shifting to schools as key management and policy units. Discusses questions that school-level data can answer concerning resource utilization efficiency, effectiveness, intent, and equity. Outlines conceptual issues (school definition and identification) and database realities. Illustrates issues problems, and principles, using examples from Rochester, New York.

This article explores conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues in resource allocation at the intradistrict and school levels. With increased attention focused on policies and data related to resources within districts, it is important that analytical problems and potential solutions be debated by researchers. The article develops ways that equity concepts can apply at the school level, identifies a series of methodological issues, and includes an empirical analysis of vertical equity at the intradistrict and school levels in New York City.

This is a comprehensive, clearly written guide to the use of statistical analysis in the management of not-for-profit organizations. The book emphasizes statistical models that use more than one variable and is unique in presenting multivariate statistics specifically with the public and the not-for-profit manager in mind. Examples throughout have been chosen to be relevant to the not-for-profit organization and each chapter contains several "real-life" illustrations of how statistical techniques can be used in actual practice. In addition to explaining statistical methods and techniques in detail, the author focuses on why statistics should be used and helps the reader obtain an intuitive grasp of the rationale behind the statistics.

Analyzes whether short-term cutbacks made during a fiscal crisis become permanent once fiscal conditions improve. Economic and fiscal history of New York City from the 1970s through the 1980s; Framework for studying the long-term effects of budgetary cutbacks; Methodology for studying the long-term effects of 1976 and 1977 budgetary cutbacks; Effects on dollars, services, teacher characteristics and capital constructions.

Differing methodologies and varied conclusions in research about equity trends in school finance make it impossible to assess national status in school finance reform by using existing studies. Evidence suggests, however, that although horizontal equity has not been achieved, the situation improved from 1940 to 1960 and worsened from 1960 to 1977.

Various simple ex post wealth neutrality measures capture different aspects of the concept; the use of one measure alone or several measures independently can lead to interpretation problems. The Adjusted Relationship Measure is introduced to pay attention to actual revenue differences associated with wealth differences.

It is generally thought that across-the-board tax limits, white encouraging fiscal restraint, create hardships for jurisdictions with above average and uncontrollable needs. Because of the recent imposition of most limits, the conclusion is difficult to confirm empirically. This article provides a test of the conclusion based on a study of New York State city school districts where limits long in effect were suspended between 1970 and 1978 because of unusual local behavior and legislative action. Because some, but not all, districts took advantage of legislatively granted authority to tax beyond their limit, art empirical investigation can be used to explain this behavior. The results of the analysis, which show that low ability to pay, low inter-governmental grants, and high needs account for much of the behavior of districts that exceed limits, are helpful in designing flexible tax limits.

Since 1970, over half the states have reformed their school finance systems with improvement in equity of revenue and resource distributions as one of the stated goals. While numerous studies evaluating the equity effects of these often expensive reforms have been undertaken, there remains much disagreement about how to assess the reforms' impacts. In this article, we address the problems of measuring equity effects with an emphasis on the need for multiple definitions and an understanding of the value judgments inherent in all measures of equity. Next, three methodologies that have been used to assess the equity impacts of school finance reform are critiqued. Finally, in an effort to correct shortcomings of each, a fourth methodology is developed and new empirical evidence on the effects of reform based on that methodology are presented. The article concludes with observations about the importance of the choice of a methodology with which to evaluate complex policy changes that involve value judgments about what is fair, just, and equitable.

Investigates the impact of social science research on school finance policy in the U.S. Formulation of social science research to public policy; Perspectives in evaluating the policy impact of social science research; Strengths of the perspectives.

Numerous value judgments are embedded in the standards used to evaluate whether a school finance system has become more or less equitable over time. Data from 20 states are analyzed to demonstrate that alternative value judgments affect the measurement of a state's movement toward or away from equity.

Elaborates on distinctions between different formulations of taxpayer equity. First, taxpayer equity is examined from the school finance perspective, then notions of taxpayer equity that are more consistent with public finance views, but that can and have been applied to education, are introduced.

Systematically analyzes the relationships between the goals and the tools of educational finance plans. Argues that an improved understanding of policies that affect school finance equity can be obtained by viewing equity in terms of a conceptual framework and by describing school finance plans in terms of their structural elements.

In this article, the authors present their comments on the book "The New World of Economics," by Richard B. McKenzie and Gordon Tullock. McKenzie and Tullock differ from the other authors in three respects. First, they abandon any reference at all to traditional economic topics. Second, they write in an extremely forceful and provocative style, advocating economic concepts and principles above those of all other disciplines. Third, they adopt a single focal point virtually throughout the volume, namely, individual maximization of utility through the equating of marginal utility or benefit and marginal cost. The book is excellent in its gradual introduction of concepts, usually only one or two in each chapter, and in cleverly discussing them in the context of a particular problem. Unfortunately, the explanation of the basic tools of economics in the first chapter is not adequate for most students with no economics background. The equality of the ratio of marginal utility to price across goods and services is particularly inadequate in its development, given the difficulty many students have with the principle.

The article focuses on the impact on local treasury of mobile home developments. The impact on the local public treasury of the parks in which most newly constructed mobile homes are located is as important to the discussion of the mobile home as a vehicle for enhancing the nation's housing services as is the analysis of private mobile home market operations. This is so because an adverse impact on the local treasury may cause local governments to resist zoning land for mobile home use. Furthermore, an analysis of the net benefits of mobile homes should include an estimate of their social overhead as well as their private net benefits. This note reports a hypothetical case study of the impact on the public treasury of a 600-unit mobile home park in an urban-fringe community of 16,400 population near Detroit, Michigan. A case study in other states with similar local finance structures would result in similar findings. In Michigan, mobile home parks yield revenues to local governments through various means.