Measuring the Impact of Nonprofits on Early Childhood Educational Attainment with Linear Regression

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Abstract

This paper utilizes the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Birth and Kindergarten Cohort datasets linked to governmental data to measure the association of nonprofit organizations with child math and reading outcomes. In general, including child-level and neighborhood-level controls, no strong positive associations are found. Some measures indicate nonprofits that act as competitive entities for traditional public schools may have differential impacts across prekindergarten and kindergarten school years such that they increase achievement prior to enrollment in kindergarten but are then negatively associated with achievement during the kindergarten year. Additionally, nonprofits that act as interventionist organizations display strong positive associations with math and reading achievement when accounting for the size of the population being served.

Author

• Robert Wayne Ressler, University of Texas-Austin