Research

We use research to measure how school system reforms affect student learning and longer-term outcomes, such as post-secondary attainment, employment, and earnings.

We recognize that education is also about instilling values, mindsets, and habits that can help a child lead a meaningful life. These attributes are very hard to measure. Additionally, different families may want different types of educational environments for their children. For both of these reasons, we don’t believe that there are objective, universal measures that can capture all components of schooling. This is why we also care about understanding which schools are consistently in high demand from families.

We try to balance these two approaches in our work. We work with researchers to examine which schools are increasing student learning and leading to better life outcomes, as well as which schools parents want most for their children.

We want to learn if all public schools improve when cities increase the number of schools governed by non-profit organizations, adopt enrollment systems that provide families with transparent information on school options and quality, and selectively intervene to improve underperforming schools.

New Orleans, Washington D.C., Denver, and Newark have adopted some version of this approach. These cities vary greatly in their politics, leadership, and public school governance, but all have seen real improvements in citywide academic performance.

In the next phase of our work, we want to learn if results hold as additional cities adopt these reforms.  We also want to learn whether student achievement gains will translate into improvements in post-secondary attainment and other long-term outcomes.

We are most confident that high-quality, non-profit public charter schools increase educational opportunity for low income students in urban areas.

Very few public policy innovations succeed. Even fewer succeed at scale. We believe that public, non-profit charter schools, which now serve millions of students, are one of the most important breakthroughs in public education.

There is clear research showing that urban, non-profit public charter schools:

• Increase academic achievement for low income students
• Improve over time, even as they scale to serve more students
• Either improve or don’t negatively affect student achievement in traditional public schools.

It is very rare that a social sector innovation works best with those who need it the most and gets better as it serves more people.

Non-profit public charter schools have achieved this. Equally important, non-profit public charter schools can only exist if parents choose them; they are passing both the research and parent demand tests.

We are unsure exactly how test scores are related to long-term life outcomes.

Researchers disagree about the extent to which test score gains are a reliable proxy for improvement in longer-term outcomes like college enrollment, college graduation, and earnings.

Our current understanding of the research is that: (1) schools that significantly  decrease student test scores do not increase postsecondary success; and (2) schools that have neutral and positive impacts on test scores have both been shown to increase postsecondary success.

This fits our intuition. Attending very poor performing schools creates a lot of risk for children. Children in these schools often don’t learn basic reading and math; the schools are often unsafe; and dropout rates tend to be high. It’s not surprising that these types of schools are not associated with students thriving later in life.

However, test scores (and mastering academic content) is just one piece of schooling. Some schools may be very effective at imparting skills that help students succeed later in life even if they do not raise achievement on standardized tests.

We are committed to growing the evidence base to better understand how schools affect students’ long-term success.

While we are optimistic about our approach, it is not the only promising way to improve public education.

Rigorous evaluations have shown that early childhood education, small group tutoring, and managed professional development for teachers can significantly raise student achievement. Research also shows that higher spending on public education can increase test scores and high school graduation rates, particularly for low-income students, and that integrated schools improve academic and adult outcomes.

We are also optimistic about innovations at the high school level. Much more can be done to create a better transition for kids to thrive in careers and postsecondary education. We are hopeful that some of these approaches will achieve success and be tried at greater scale.

Lastly, we believe that K-12 education is just one piece of the puzzle in improving our country. While this our focus, we hope that others achieve amazing breakthroughs in public and private sector innovations.