Chicago Heights Description Of Programs

GOAL 1 – INNOVATIVE RESEARCH Changing the Rules of the Game: Field Experiments in Chicago Heights The following briefly summarizes projects that roughly fall into the expected treatment change of “greater than one standard deviation” category and an expected change of “less than one standard deviation” category. We view a prudent strategy to have representation in each since the latter might be more cost effective, or more scalable in certain cases, whereas the former permits us a first glimpse of efforts that can truly change the nature of the game. We are of the mind that the best chance to make this sort of impact arises from early childhood interventions. “GREATER THAN 1 SD EFFECT CATEGORY” Project 1: Griffin Preschool Labs There is a renewed focus among policy-makers, academics, and practitioners on the importance of early childhood education. As a prime example, the Obama administration named the expansion of early childhood education as one of its key education reform priorities. While numerous different approaches to early childhood education exist, the research shows mixed results. Some are promising: the HighScope Perry Pre-school longitudinal study that started in the last 1960s, following the control and treatment group to the age of 27, showed positive results in higher monthly earnings, higher levels of school completion, lower percentages of receiving social services and fewer arrests, and higher levels of academic achievement. Economic benefits from Perry Preschool participation are estimated at over $90,000. Some are not: HeadStart, a multi-billion dollar government program that has also been in existence since the late 1960s, has not shown similarly significant positive effects. In fact, the impact on black students has been shown to disappear by age 10. In order to better serve the next generation and guide the enormous resources invested in early childhood, we must identify what practices and programs have what impact on what children. We approach the problem as would a typical economist: consider both the demand and supply side. This is done via 3 simple treatments. Project 1 - Treatment 1: Begin a preschool that has R&D as part of its DNA. We will recruit families to sign-up for the preschool through a lottery. Children who “win” the entrance lottery will enter our preschool. Preschool Labs thus creates a randomized trial of major early childhood intervention models. Experimental Design: At a minimum, we would randomly recruit 150 participants through a lottery from a larger pool of students to enter the pre-school (at a maximum we would want 250). We will constrain ourselves to spend $8,500 per child to plan for scalability. As a benchmark, HeadStart spends an average of $7,200 per child, HighScopes Perry spends an average of $13,000 per child and EduCare Centers spend approximately $20,000. Key Outcomes Tested: • Students level of proficiency on assessment tests • Parents’ motivation and capacity to support students in addressing skill gaps when identified

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Physical health through immunizations and regular health screenings Long term: Crime rates, age of first pregnancy, employment and educational attainment and achievement

Brass Tacks: • Where: Within elementary schools in Chicago Heights or other facilities • When: Launching January 2010 Project 1 - Treatments 2 and 3: Parental Incentives for Pre-School Achievement The preschool approach described above attempts to address deficits in home environments by removing the child from that setting for much of the day. An alternative approach is to enrich the home environment for children through a combination of financial incentives to parents combined with parental training, support, and encouragement. Prior research has shown that parental involvement is strongly correlated with student success, but we do not have confirmation on the causality of this relationship. To build a knowledge-base of what children need in their early years for short- and long-term success, we must better understand the role that parents play. Thus, in our second and third treatments, we propose to study the impact of providing large incentives to the parents for boosts their child’s cognitive development and school readiness. We will randomly select a group of parents to receive up to $7,000 annually, conditional on parental attendance at monthly meetings, completion of monthly parent-child homework exercises, and child performance on monthly post-tests. Parents will attend monthly meetings where they learn\ about best parenting practices, the development of their child, and ways to boost their intellectual and social development. Additionally, parents will receive materials and instruction at each meeting on what their children need to learn in the next month. The children will also attend the meetings. During the time the parents are in their workshops, we will assess whether the children learned what they were instructed to learn the previous month. Parents will be given incentives for attendance at monthly meetings, for demonstrating completion of exercises with their child, and for their child’s performance on monthly assessments. The magnitude of incentives will be calibrated so that we can make direct comparisons between this model of school achievement and the Day Care Labs. The major difference between treatments 2 and 3 is that in treatment 2 the financial incentives go directly, and immediately, to the parent, whereas in treatment 3 the earned monies are placed in an account earmarked for the child’s college tuition. Key Outcomes Tested: • Students level of proficiency on assessment tests • Parents’ motivation and capacity to support students in addressing skill gaps when identified • Physical health through immunizations and regular health screenings • Long term: Crime rates, age of first pregnancy, employment and educational attainment and achievement Brass Tacks: • Where: Facility TBD (church, community center or school auditorium) • When: Launching September 2009

Project 2: Teacher Pay for Performance (likely a long shot for 1+ SD change) Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on teacher incentives for performance. Few of those dollars have been given out in the context of a rigorous evaluation. Those programs that have been able to randomize involved agreements with the Teachers Union, which invariably watered down the incentives for individual teachers (i.e. New York City) and have shown little or no results. Our third experiment will test the effectiveness of teacher pay-for-performance plans in a research design that gives teacher incentives the best chance of succeeding. We will provide strong individual incentives for teachers to produce results, and we will add a twist at the high school level: a tournament-like model. This experiment will provide the single most powerful test ever carried out on pay-for-performance schemes for teachers. Incentive Design: In K-8 schools, incentives will take the following form: no incentives for a teacher who has a class-average value-added equal to or below 0.5 grade equivalents and $2,000 per 0.1 grade equivalent increase over that 0.5 baseline. We expect the average amount earned by teachers to be $10,000. In the high schools, we will provide tournament-like incentive structures for teachers. For every 0.1 grade equivalent of value-added over 0.5, teachers get one ticket for a lottery. Teachers can get as many tickets as 0.1 increases their students make. The more their students’ achievement improves, the higher the teacher’s chance of winning one of three $50,000 prizes. As a corollary to these experiments, we would also like to experiment with non-pecuniary incentives in Chicago Public Schools. Depending on the assumptions one makes about the marginal utility of income for teachers, this might be a more effective motivator than cash. Key Outcomes Tested: • Student achievement in individual teacher’s classes • School morale measurements • Teacher effort measurements Brass Tacks: • Where: All Chicago Heights Schools • When: Launching September 2009 “LESS THAN 1 SD EFFECT CATEGORY” Project 3: Summer Employment Program vs. Summer Grant (with resources from the previous grant) Do employment programs over the summer have any effect on student achievement during the school-year? If so, is the effect driven by “being off the street” or by “income effect”. Project 4: Non-financial Incentives for Students (i.e., cheerleading) (with resources from the previous grant) In our Chicago Heights Miracle program financial incentives were complement with what we

call “cheerleading” which includes monthly celebration events with free food, informational phone calls, etc. Can these non-financial incentives have a bigger impact on student achievement? If this is true, it is a very cost effective way of increasing student achievement. Project 5: Single-sex Class within a Co-ed School (free) Does this type of intervention have any effect on student achievement? Others: • We will be creating our perfect laboratory where countless other interesting studies can be implemented • This level of flexibility and access is rare in the research community Pre-school Program (TBA)