Improving America's Schools The Role of Incentives (1996) / Chapter Skim
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11 Economics of School Reform for At-Risk Students
11 Economics of School Reform for At-Risk Students
Pages 225-240
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From page 225... ...
Such students comprise over onethird of all elementary and secondary school enrollments, and their numbers are rising absolutely and proportionately over time. At-risk students are about two years behind grade level in school achievement by sixth grade and are performing at about the eighth-grade level if/when they graduate from high school.
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From page 226... ...
The chapter then considers a more radical transformation of educational institutions, and a final section addresses strategies for systemic change. THE CRISIS OF AT-RISK STUDENTS Addressing the needs of at-risk students is important because they comprise a large and growing portion of school enrollments and their poor educational performance has significant consequences for the economy and society.
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From page 227... ...
High dropout rates, low test scores, and poor academic performance of a larger and larger portion of the school population mean that a larger portion of the future labor force will be undereducated for available jobs, not only managerial, professional, and technical jobs but even the lower-level service jobs that are increasingly important in the U.S. economy (Rumberger and Levin, 1989)
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From page 228... ...
A third consequence of failing to deal with the challenge of at-risk students will be the rising costs of public services, as more citizens rely on public assistance and undereducated teens and adults pursue illegal activities to fill idle time and obtain income. In a national sample of 19 to 23 year olds in 1981, 72 percent of the jobless, 79 percent of those on public assistance, and 68 percent of those arrested the previous year had scored below average on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT)
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From page 229... ...
The view that focusing school expenditures on the poor, as was done beginning in the 1960s, will have some positive effect is supported by recent Rand Corporation study findings of minority test scores improving in excess of what could be explained by improvements in demographic factors (Grissmer et al., 1994)
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From page 230... ...
Louis program designed to reduce dropout rates among "dropout-prone" high school students with the results of a control group of similar students who did not have such a program. The dropout prevention program was associated with a high school completion rate about 7 percent higher than that of the control group.
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From page 231... ...
They estimated the benefits of a dropout prevention program as those attributable to savings in public assistance, training and adult education, crime and incarceration, unemployment insurance and placement, and higher earnings associated with the additional high school graduates. Such benefits were calculated at $17.5 billion, and the costs to eliminate dropouts for this cohort were estimated at slightly less than $2 billion, for a cost-benefit ratio of nine to one.
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From page 232... ...
. About 80 percent of the net benefits accrued to taxpayers in the form of higher tax contributions and lower expenditures on education, crime, and welfare and to potential crime victims in the form of lower costs for property losses and injuries.
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From page 233... ...
The goal is to identify features of efficient noneducation organizations and make those features integral to the design and operation of schools. Economic analysis suggests that efficient firms must exhibit the following features: • a clear, objective function with measurable outcomes; • incentives that are linked to success on the objective function; • efficient access to useful information for decisions; • adaptability to meet changing conditions; and • use of the most productive technologies consistent with cost constraints (Levin, 1994)
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From page 234... ...
. But even if teachers receive some intrinsic satisfaction from their individual accomplishments with students, these do not comprise a link with overall school success or assure articulation of goals from grade to grade and teacher to teacher (Little, 1990)
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From page 235... ...
It was designed to transform public schools with high concentrations of at-risk students into organizations that will make all students academically able by the end of elementary school and sustain high levels of achievement through middle school to prepare such students for academically demanding high schools. In the past the schools relied primarily on remedial education, which slows the pace of learning and reduces learning expectations.
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From page 236... ...
, evaluations of accelerated schools indicate impressive improvements in student achievement, attendance, and parent participation and reductions in costly policies such as students retained in grade and special education placements. One study found that prior to its transformation into an accelerated school, fifth graders at a Houston school had achievement that was two years below average (McCarthy and Still, 1993)
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From page 237... ...
GETTING THERE The evidence suggests that there are both effective strategies for conventional schools to address certain educational outcomes and more far-reaching organizational changes to address the needs of at-risk students. The Accelerated Schools Project has had considerable success in getting conventional public schools and parochial schools to adopt its model, but that does not ensure adequate supporting systems at the district and state levels to induce schools to meet the needs of at-risk students (Hanushek et al., 1994)
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From page 238... ...
1990. "Reforming, again, and again and again." Educational Researcher 19(1)
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From page 239... ...
236–251 in No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in American Elementary Schools, Richard Allington and Sean Walmsley, eds. New York: Teachers College Press.
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From page 240... ...
1991a. "Public schools and excess burdens." Economics of Education Review 10:159– 170.
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