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
 • 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)