Long-term impacts of educational interventions

The school accountability movement has led to a marked increase in the use of standardized test scores to measure school and teacher productivity, yet little is known about the correlation between test score gains and improvements in long-term outcomes. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I study the impact of a school choice policy in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2002 on young adult crime through 2009. I find that middle and high school students who win an admissions lottery to attend a better school commit fewer and less serious crimes as adults, years after the intervention is complete. In the second chapter, which is coauthored with Justine Hastings, Tom Kane and Doug Staiger, we examine the effect of this policy on college enrollment. We find that among students who live in neighborhoods that are zoned to low-quality schools, those that win an admissions lottery are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. In the final chapter, I examine the impact of Head Start, a federal preschool program for poor children, on long-term outcomes such as educational attainment, employment, health and crime. In all three chapters, program participants experience important gains in long-term life outcomes, despite little evidence of permanent test score gains. This raises important questions for test-based evaluation of existing policies and programs, and for the design of school accountability measures in the future.