Bifulco Robert, Rubenstein Ross, Sohn Hosung
1 Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA.
2 Department of Public Management and Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Eval Rev. 2017 Dec;41(6):593-619. doi: 10.1177/0193841X17742233. Epub 2017 Nov 21.
"Place-based" scholarships seek to improve student outcomes in urban school districts and promote urban revitalization in economically challenged cities. Say Yes to Education is a unique district-wide school reform effort adopted in Syracuse, NY, in 2008. It includes full-tuition scholarships for public and private universities, coupled with extensive wraparound support services in schools.
This study uses synthetic control methods to evaluate the effect of Say Yes on district enrollment and graduation rates. It also introduces the synthetic control method and provides guidance for its use in evaluating single-site interventions.
Combining school district-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data and New York State School Report Cards, this article uses synthetic control methods to construct a synthetic comparison district to estimate counterfactual enrollment and graduation trends for Syracuse.
We find that Say Yes to Education was associated with enrollment increases in the Syracuse City School District, a district that had previously experienced decades of sustained enrollment declines. We do not find consistent evidence of changes in graduation rates following adoption of the program.
Graduation rate analyses demonstrate that estimates of treatment effects can be sensitive to choices that the researcher has to make in applying synthetic control methods, particularly when pretreatment outcome measures appear to have considerable amounts of noise.
“基于地点”的奖学金旨在提高城市学区学生的学业成绩，并促进经济困难城市的城市复兴。“对教育说‘是’”是2008年在纽约州锡拉丘兹市采用的一项独特的全学区范围的学校改革举措。它包括为公立和私立大学提供全额学费奖学金，以及在学校提供广泛的全方位支持服务。
本研究使用合成控制方法来评估“对教育说‘是’”对学区入学率和毕业率的影响。它还介绍了合成控制方法，并为其在评估单点干预措施中的应用提供指导。
本文结合了美国国家教育统计中心的核心数据和纽约州学校成绩单中的学区层面数据，使用合成控制方法构建了一个合成对照学区，以估计锡拉丘兹市学区的反事实入学和毕业趋势。
我们发现，“对教育说‘是’”与锡拉丘兹市学区的入学人数增加有关，该学区此前经历了数十年持续的入学人数下降。我们没有发现该计划实施后毕业率变化的一致证据。
毕业率分析表明，治疗效果的估计可能对研究人员在应用合成控制方法时必须做出的选择敏感，特别是当治疗前结果测量似乎有大量噪声时。
