Curriculum Reform at Scale: Causal Impacts of Adopting State-Approved Materials on Student Achievement.
Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation regulating classroom
curriculum in hopes of improving instructional quality and consistency. I study Rhode Island’s
2019 curriculum reform using an event study design to measure the causal impact of adopting
state approved curriculum on student scores on achievement tests. In the initial adoption year, the
policy improved math achievement by 0.06 with no detectable effects in ELA. Impacts grow as
teachers and students gain familiarity. After four years of exposure to approved curriculum, the
policy improved math achievement by 0.18 and ELA by 0.15. The delayed impacts in ELA
appear driven by teams facing larger pedagogical shifts, consistent with familiarity and similarity
between old and new materials moderating impacts. Contrary to concerns that approved
curriculum might widen achievement gaps, gains are largest in lower-achieving classrooms
across subjects. Tests of mechanisms indicate that newly adopted curricula are higher quality,
partially driving gains.
Revisiting the bubble: Incentive design in post-NCLB accountability systems
This project examines the learning impacts of New Mexico's redesigned accountability system. Existing literature shows that accountability systems designed around the percent of students passing the state exam generates strong incentives for schools to narrowly target students on the verge of passing. Modern accountability systems, however, are based on multi-domain rubrics which reward learning gains across the entire achievement distribution. In conjunction with the New Mexico Public Education Department, I examine whether the redesigned incentives mitigates the educational triage documented in earlier NCLB-era systems.
The state of curriculum and how state policies impact district adoption nationwide
Going from adoption to effective implementation with state approved curriculum in Providence Public Schools