Download Florida Department of Education Unit Record Data Request Packet

Florida Department of Education
Unit Record Data Request Packet
I. Project Information
A. John D. Singleton
B. Department of Economics, Duke University
C. Charter School Dynamics, Quality, and Competition: Evidence from Florida
D. June 1st, 2014
E. No.
F. N\A
G. N\A
II. Statement of Benefit
A. 4) Charters/Choice
a) Student Achievement
i)
Analyze student achievement at charter schools and other choice
option including, but not limited to the following:
(1) Public Schools
ii)
Identify characteristics of charters with the highest and lowest
rates of growth in student achievement
iii)
Determine if and how well charter operators are educating the
most disadvantaged students
B. The study (1) will quantify how the quality of charter schools, as measured by gains
in student achievement, has changed over time relative to the quality of traditional
public schools, and (2) identify the sources of those changes in terms of charters
schools’ characteristics, with a special focus on the incentives and costs faced by
charter schools and how these depend on the kinds of students the charter school
serves.
C. The study will speak directly to the prospective effectiveness of policies, such as the
“high-performing” designation and subsidies targeted at charters serving
disadvantaged students or areas, in raising student achievement.
D. Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice (IEPC)
III. Project Description
A. Abstract: This research aims to evaluate a central rationale for school choice: that
competitive pressure by households incentivizes schools to improve performance
and drives low productivity schools from the market.
B. Research Questions
1. How has the quality of Florida charter schools, as measured by gains in
student achievement, changed over time relative to the quality of traditional
public schools?

Analyses student achievement at charter schools and public schools
(FLDOE Research Agenda 4.a.i.).
2. Through which channel – improvement in performance by existing charters
or the replacement of low productivity charter schools by more effective
schools – have these changes in charter school quality occurred?

Examines whether charters with the lowest rates of growth in student
achievement are incentivized to improve performance (4.a.ii.).
3. How effective is competition at incentivizing charter schools to improve
performance and what are the largest frictions to these gains?

Analyses how competitive pressure on charter schools influences
rates of growth in student achievement (4.a.ii).

Estimates the costs and benefits to charter schools associated with
educating disadvantaged students and the implications for student
achievement (4.a.iii.).
C. I am seeking to track all cohorts of K12 students in Kindergarten through 12th grade
beginning with the 1997-1998 academic year forward to the 2012-2013 academic
year.
D. All K12 students that attended a Florida charter school for at least a year.
E. K12 students who do not attend a Florida charter school, but attend a Florida public
school.
F. I will not provide FLDOE with a dataset of identifiable information to be matched.
G. The published data and reports on FLDOE’s website are insufficient because of
student selection into charter schools. The research questions seek to separate the
factors determining growth in student achievement each year into characteristics of
the student and their parents, the contribution of inputs, such as peers, at the
school attended, and the school’s quality. To measure school quality, which is not
directly observable, this requires correcting for students’ prior education history and
basing the comparison between schools each year on the variation in the
achievement of students who switch schools. The data on the FLDOE’s website,
which is aggregated to the school level, do not allow these techniques to be applied.
The result is that a school’s quality is conflated with the unobservable characteristics
of the students who selected to attend that school.
H. The research applies two methods in economics. First, value-added and fixed effects
methods are employed in order to estimate school quality. School fixed effects
ensure that the comparison between schools each year is based on the variation in
achievement of students who switch schools. At the same time, value-added
techniques control for students’ prior education history when estimating school
quality. These are frontier methods in the economics of education.
Second, an entry model with quality investment is estimated for charter schools.
This method, applied in the industrial organization literature to understand
equilibrium market structure, aims to uncover how charter schools respond to
competition and to estimate their cost structure. The method applies the logic of
revealed preference: if a charter school enters a school district in one location when
another was available, that location offered the school a more attractive
combination of benefits and costs. The benefits might include the ease in attracting
students, while the costs may depend on the kind of students that will be served,
teacher salaries, and rent. The method further applies this logic to how charter
schools’ quality evolves over time.
IV. Timeline Requirements
V. Data Element Crosswalk