Causal Effects of HISD Summer School

• In Event: 4203 - School Effects and Interventions: Causal Evidence

Abstract

The educational achievement gaps change by season. While schools and educators have been devoting tremendous efforts to curb the growing achievement gaps, research shows that students from different class backgrounds learn at similar rates when school is in session, and it is over the summer that class-based achievement gaps grow fastest (Entwisle et al. 1997; Downey et al. 2004). Recognizing the importance of summertime for students’ academic achievement, various kinds of summer programs have been widely adopted by school districts throughout the country (Cooper 2001; Matsudaira 2008).
In spite of the wide range of summer programs, scholars have attempted to identify the general effects of summer programs. Meta-analyses find that summer programs, geared to removing learning deficiencies or accelerating learning, have positive effects on students’ learning (Cooper et al. 2000; McEachin et al. 2016). Nonetheless, the causal link between summer program and improved educational attainment is weakly supported: most studies simply compare pre- versus post-program outcomes without enough control for pre-program differences (Cooper et al. 2000).
This study attempts to provide a thorough evaluation of the causal effects of remedial summer school in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) by answering the research questions: How does the summer school offered by HISD influence students’ academic attainment? Do students benefit from participating in HISD summer programs? Using data from Houston Independent School District (HISD), a fuzzy regression discontinuity design will be conducted to discern the causal effects of attending HISD summer school for students who are just above and below the cut-point for summer school eligibility.

Author

• Jie Min