The Effect of Early Intervention on Later School Selection

• In Event: 2-209 - Contextual Influences Promoting Resilience for Low-income Children: Evidence from Longitudinal and Experimental Data

Integrative Statement

We report on the long-term effects of the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a randomly-assigned early childhood intervention designed to improve the quality of Head Start classrooms operating in low-income and high-minority neighborhoods in inner-city Chicago. Teachers in the intervention group attended training sessions focused on improving their behavioral management strategies, and classrooms in the treatment condition also received access to mental health consultants, who worked with teachers, families and children to manage stress and improve the Head Start experience. Watts and colleagues (Watts, T.W., Gandi, J., Ibrahim, D. A., Masucci, M. D., & Raver, C.C., 2018) recently reported that the intervention had modest positive effects on measures of academic achievement and executive function measured 10-11 years after program completion. The current analysis investigated a possible mechanism for positive long-term effects-selection into higher quality schools.

Over the past decade, the Chicago Public School system has adopted a school-choice model, as the share of students attending a charter school has substantially increased, while the share of students attending their assigned neighborhood school has dropped below 25% (Barrow, L. & Sartain, L, 2017, Economic Perspectives). To test whether the CSRP program might have influenced students to select into higher-quality schools, we used data-scraping techniques to pull publicly-available data from the Illinois Department of Education. At the 11 year-follow up wave, 460 children reported their school of enrollment (76% of the preschool sample). Data on school quality was then taken from the Illinois School Report Card (ISRC; https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/) and linked to student-level data by school name (352 students had valid high-school ISRC data).

In Table 1, we present the measures of school quality taken from the ISRC. We combined measures regarding school-level college readiness into a single index (α = 0.86), as well as measures regarding schools’ inability to serve at-risk populations (α = 0.96). We also examined school-level graduation rate and teacher retention. As Table 1 reflects, most adolescents who participated in the CSRP program were attending lower-achieving high schools, with only 30% of students rated as “ready for college” across the treatment and control groups.

In Table 2, we present estimates of the impact of assignment to the CSRP preschool program on measures of school quality. In general, we found evidence suggesting that children in the treatment group attended higher-quality schools across the measures assessed. Specifically, when all covariates were added, we found that treatment children attended schools rated higher on the College Readiness Index (β= 0.22, SE= 0.09, p < 0.05) and these schools were rated lower on the Schools Failing Underserved Populations Index (β= -0.20, SE= 0.09, p < 0.05). Further, we found that treatment children attended schools with a 7% higher graduation rate (p< 0.05) and a 3% higher teacher retention rate (p < 0.10).

These estimates indicate that the preschool program may have influenced students’ later school-selection choices in ways that could benefit their long-term trajectories into adulthood. Results hi-light the importance of considering subsequent environments when examining long-term treatment impacts.

Authors

• Tyler Watts, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Deanna Ibrahim, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alaa Khader, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jill Gandhi, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cybele Raver, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author