The effects of the New Orleans post-Katrina school reforms on student academic outcomes
Harris, D. N.; Larsen, Matthew F.
The school reforms put in place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
represent the most intensive test-based and market-based school accountability system
ever created in the United States. Collective bargaining was ended, yielding flexible
human capital management. Traditional attendance zones were eliminated, expanding
choice for families. And almost all public schools were taken over by the state, which
turned over management to outside non-profit charter management organizations
working under performance contracts. Ten years later, this study provides the first
examination of the effects of this package of reforms on student achievement.
Identification is based on multiple difference-in-difference (DD) strategies, using
outcomes before and after the hurricane and reforms in New Orleans and a matched
comparison group that experienced hurricane damage but not the school reforms. The
estimation procedures address potential threats to identification, including changes in the
population, distortions in test scores from high-stakes accountability, influence of the
interim schools attended by evacuated students, and the trauma and disruption from the
hurricane itself. With the possible exception of test score distortions, these factors seem
to have a small influence and, collectively, they appear to cancel each other out. The
results suggest that, over time, as the reforms yielded a new system of schools, they had
large positive cumulative effects on achievement of 0.2-0.4 standard deviations.
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