tailieunhanh - Preliminary Findings from the New Leaders for New Schools Evaluation

student-level achievement data are not available across all districts until as much as a year after the tests are taken, and analyzing the data requires time. This research has been conducted in RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation, under a contract with New Leaders for New Schools. . | WORKING P A P E R Preliminary Findings from the New Leaders for New Schools Evaluation FRANCISCO MARTORELL PAUL HEATON SUSAN M. GATES LAURA S. HAMILTON WR-739-NLNS February 2010 This product is part of the RAND Education working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND Education but have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author provided the source is clearly referred to as a working paper. RAND s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. RAND is a registered trademark. RAND EDUCATION - iii - ABSTRACT Effective school leadership is widely seen as a key determinant of student achievement yet it remains unclear what constitutes an effective principal. To address the need to develop new principals to lead urban schools the New Leaders for New Schools organization was established with the goal of ensuring high academic achievement for all students by attracting preparing and supporting leaders for urban public schools. This working paper presents preliminary findings on the impact of attending a school led by a K-8 school led by a New Leader. Using longitudinal student-level data collected from the six cities in which New Leaders had placed principals by the 2007-08 school year we attempt to estimate the effect of attending a school led by a New Leader using panel data methods to mitigate biases from nonrandom sorting of students and principals to schools. The estimates suggest that there is a positive association between achievement and having a New Leader in his or her second or higher year of tenure while there is a small negative relationship between achievement and attending a school led by a first-year New .