College Guidance for All: A Randomized Experiment in Pre‐College Advising

Pre‐college advising programs exist in most disadvantaged high schools throughout the United States. These programs supplement traditional advising by high school guidance counselors and attempt to help underrepresented and disadvantaged students overcome the complexities of the postsecondary admission and financial aid processes. Existing evidence on these programs often uses within‐school randomization where spillovers and alternative supports may confound estimates. We provide the first evidence on a whole school intervention resulting from a school‐level randomized controlled trial in the United States. The college access program we study uses a near‐peer model where a recent college graduate works at the school assisting students in the application and enrollment process. Pooled results across the first three years of program implementation find no significant impacts on overall college enrollment. However, subgroup analyses reveal positive, significant effects among the groups most targeted by the intervention: Hispanic and low‐income students. Most of the impact comes through increasing two‐year college enrollment, but this appears to be new entrants rather than inducing students to move from four‐year to two‐year colleges. The observed positive effects for these subgroups attenuate over time. We attribute this drop in the estimated impact to departures in fidelity of the experiment. Even among the cohorts for which we find positive enrollment impacts, we find no significant impacts on college persistence.     

Alternative routes to teaching: The impacts of Teach for America on student achievement and other outcomes

This paper reports on a randomized experiment to study the impact of an alternative teacher preparation program, Teach for America (TFA), on student achievement and other outcomes. We found that TFA teachers had a positive impact on math achievement and no impact on reading achievement. The size of the impact on math scores was about 15 percent of a standard deviation, equivalent to about one month of instruction. The general conclusions did not differ substantially for subgroups of teachers, including novice teachers, or for subgroups of students. We found no impacts on other student outcomes such as attendance, promotion, or disciplinary incidents, but TFA teachers were more likely to report problems with student behavior than were their peers. The findings contradict claims that such programs allowing teachers to bypass the traditional route to the classroom harm students. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

AN IMPACT IDENTIFICATION METHOD FOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM EVALUATION

Evaluation is essential to planning and implementing effective develop- ment programs. The resource limitations, multidimensionality of develop- ment program impacts, cultural barriers between evaluators and those impacted, and the diversity of settings in which evaluations must be con- ducted arc serious constraints on the use of traditional research methods to evaluate development programs. Similar constraints are faced in con- ducting most social impact assessments. We suggest that a method of impact identification that makes use of experts, including the people ef- fected by a project, can be used in development project evaluation. The method, which is based on the noniinal group technique, is described, as are some of its applications in Latin America and the Caribbean. We conclude iiy considering directions for future development and the relationship be- tween planning, evaluation, and impact assessment.     

Consequences of Forced Residential Relocation: Early Impacts of Urban Renewal Strategies on Forced Relocatees’ Housing Opportunities and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Policymakers have actively pursued urban renewal and dispersal programs to deconcentrate poverty in urban neighborhoods. Relocation strategies lead to new housing opportunities and may encourage employment opportunities for relocated residents if resourceful contacts and job information become more easily available after the move. This study provides an innovative evaluation of the early impacts of involuntary relocation programs in the Netherlands on the housing careers, earnings and employment rates of forced relocatees. It establishes a quasi-experimental design by employing unique longitudinal individual-level population registry data from Statistics Netherlands: forced relocatees are tracked and matched to a control group consisting of similar residents that were not forced to move. A difference-in-difference design shows that forced relocatees are living in less deprived neighborhoods after the move. However, we find no conclusive evidence that this upgrade in housing leads to more socioeconomic opportunities for the forced relocatees.     

When to Tell? : Disclosure of Concealable Group Membership,Stereotypes, and Political Evaluation

Although their group membership is normatively irrelevant to vote choice, members of politically underrepresented groups (e.g., women, nonwhites, and gays and lesbians) are often evaluated through the prism of their group memberships and related stereotypes when competing for elective office. Because membership in groups defined by gender, race, or ethnicity is easily perceptible, women and nonwhite candidates may have little control over the political effects of their group membership. Membership in groups defined by a candidate's sexual orientation is concealable, in contrast, and thus potentially gives gay and lesbian candidates some control over the impact of their homosexuality and accompanying stereotypes on voters' responses. Using an experimental design, I examine the relationships between timing of group membership disclosure, group stereotypes, candidate sex, and political responses to gay and lesbian candidates for office—taking into consideration voters' attitudes toward homosexuality and their sex.     

Sexual Harassment in the Federal Workplace

What factors influence the likelihood that a federal worker will receive unwanted sexual attention? Who is most likely to be accused of sexual harassment? What factors influence federal workers' perceptions of the effectiveness of agency sexual harassment training? Using the raw data file of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board's most recent survey on sexual harassment, the authors find that worker characteristics are the principal influence on the likelihood that a worker will receive unwanted sexual attention and whether an agency's sexual harassment training is perceived favorably. Contextual factors demonstrate lesser influence. Their conclusions lead the authors to believe that a reevaluation of training programs is in order. A one‐size‐fits‐all training approach may no longer be tenable, if it ever was.     

School Vouchers and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Washington,DC

School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation for participating students. The District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has operated in the nation's capital since 2004, funded by a federal government appropriation. Because the program was oversubscribed in its early years of operation, and vouchers were awarded by lottery, we were able to use the “gold standard” evaluation method of a randomized experiment to determine what impacts the OSP had on student outcomes. Our analysis revealed compelling evidence that the DC voucher program had a positive impact on high school graduation rates, suggestive evidence that the program increased reading achievement, and no evidence that it affected math achievement. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent policy developments including the reauthorization of the OSP and the enactment or expansion of more than a dozen school voucher or voucher‐type programs throughout the United States in 2011 and 2012.     

The Social and Productive Impacts of Zambia's Child Grant

Accumulated evidence from dozens of cash transfer (CT) programs across the world suggests that there are few interventions that can match the range of impacts and cost‐effectiveness of a small, predictable monetary transfer to poor families in developing countries. However, individual published impact assessments typically focus on only one program and one outcome. This article presents two‐year impacts of the Zambian Government's Child Grant, an unconditional CT to families with children under age 5, across a wide range of domains including consumption, productive activity, and women and children's outcomes, making this one of the first studies to assess both protective and productive impacts of a national unconditional CT program. We show strong impacts on consumption, food security, savings, and productive activity. However, impacts in areas such as child nutritional status and schooling depend on initial conditions of the household, suggesting that cash alone is not enough to solve all constraints faced by these poor, rural households. Nevertheless, the apparent transformative effects of this program suggest that unconditional transfers in very poor settings can contribute to both protection and development outcomes.     

Intelligence,Crisis, and Democracy: Institutional Punctuations in Brazil,Colombia, South Africa,and India

This article analyzes why institutional crises are bound to happen and how they impact on national intelligence systems’ development. Punctuated Equilibrium theory is reviewed and employed to explain one institutional crisis in each of Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, and India. In Brazil, the case study is the fall of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) director in 2008, following the Satiagraha operation conducted by the Federal Police Department (DPF). In Colombia, the 2009 wiretapping scandal known as chuzadas is examined. In South Africa, the investigation in Project Avani (2006–8) is reviewed. Finally, in India the case study is the intelligence crisis following the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. We found that institutional crises are inevitable because there are tensions between security and democracy, both being co-evolutionary dimensions of successful contemporary state building. However, the impacts of such crises vary across the four cases pending on three variables: (1) degree of functional specialization inside the national intelligence system; (2) degree of external public control over the national intelligence system; (3) whether effectiveness, legitimacy or both were the main drivers of the crisis. Our analysis of the four case studies suggests that the amount of positive institutional change in the aftermath of an intelligence crisis is greater in countries with more functional specialization and stronger external control mechanisms.     

Inside national service: AmeriCorps' impact on participants

This study examines the short‐ and long‐term impact of AmeriCorps participation on members' civic engagement, education, employment, and life skills. The analysis compares changes in the attitudes and behaviors of participants over time to those of individuals not enrolled in AmeriCorps, controlling for interest in national and community service, member and family demographics, and prior civic engagement. Results indicate that participation in AmeriCorps led to positive impacts on members, especially in the area of civic engagement, members' connection to community, knowledge about problems facing their community, and participation in community‐based activities. AmeriCorps had some positive impacts on its members' employment‐related outcomes. Few statistically significant impacts were found for measures of participants' attitude toward education or educational attainment, or for selected life skills measures. Within a subset of community service programs that incorporate a residential component for members, the study also uncovered a short‐term negative impact of participation on members' appreciation for ethnic and cultural diversity, which disappeared over time. The implications of these findings for future research on national service are discussed. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Practices of Implementation of Sexual Harassment Policies: Individual Versus Collective Strategies1

abstract This article examines the implementation of sexual harassment law in the workplace in Germany and the United States. Both countries have developed different approaches to the issue, with certain trade‐offs for the pursuit of gender equality and changes in gender workplace culture. Germany has developed a corporatist, collective strategy. Yet, few German employers have adopted policies and training programs. New policy approaches focus on sexual harassment as a group‐based, but gender‐neutral, issue in the context of general unfair workplace practices of “mobbing.” In contrast, sexual harassment is primarily understood as an individual rights issue in the U.S. This approach emphasizes individual (internal) redress. Social and organizational change comes at a high cost for individuals who have been harassed. Employers’ practices in both countries have turned sexual harassment into a gender‐neutral issue. I conclude that a synthesis of both individual and collective approaches with an explicit focus on gender inequality would be desirable.     

An effectiveness‐based evaluation of five state pre‐kindergarten programs

Since 1980, the number of state pre‐kindergarten (pre‐K) programs has more than doubled, with 38 states enrolling more than one million children in 2006 alone. This study evaluates how five state pre‐K programs affected children's receptive vocabulary, math, and print awareness skills. Taking advantage of states' strict enrollment policies determined by a child's date of birth, a regression‐discontinuity design was used to estimate effects in Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia. For receptive vocabulary, only New Jersey and Oklahoma yielded significant standardized impacts, though two of the three other coefficients were in a direction indicating positive effects. For math, all the coefficients were positive but only Michigan and New Jersey yielded reliable results. The largest impacts were for print awareness, where all five coefficients were positive and four were reliable in Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and West Virginia. The five states were not randomly selected and, on average, have higher quality program standards than non‐studied states, precluding formal extrapolation to the nation at large. However, our sample of states differed in many other ways, permitting the conclusion that state pre‐K programs can have positive effects on children's cognitive skills, though the magnitude of these effects varies by state and outcome. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Families,divorce and voter turnout in the US

How large a role does the family play in civic development? This paper examines an important aspect of family influence by tracing the impact of divorce on voter turnout during adolescence. We show that the effect of divorce among white families is large, depressing turnout by nearly 10 percentage points. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we demonstrate that the impact of divorce varies by racial group and can rival the impact of parents’ educational attainment, which is generally regarded as the most important non-political characteristic of one’s family of origin. We attempt to explain the divorce effect by examining the mediating impacts of parental voter turnout, active social learning, income loss, child–parent interaction, residential mobility, and educational attainment.     

New York city and subsidized housing: Impacts and lessons of the city's $5 billion capital budget housing plan

Abstract

New York City has devoted far more resources to the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing than any other U.S. city, investing more than $4 billion from 1986 to 1997. This article surveys the impact, status, and implications of New York's housing programs. It looks at correlations between publicly funded housing starts and changes in the housing stock, welfare rolls, and crime and at the economic impact of the city's housing investments within low‐income neighborhoods.

New York's housing programs have transformed neighborhoods, replacing large swaths of abandoned shells and vacant land with new housing and preserving thousands of buildings at risk of abandonment. While these housing investments correlate most strongly with reductions in vacant units and vacant lots, they also show significant correlations with reductions in welfare rolls and violent crime, but uneven economic impacts as well. New York's housing programs are important nationally less for the specifics of particular programs than for the institutional collaborations on which they are founded.     

The Policy Design Effect: Proximity as a Micro‐level Explanation of the Effect of Policy Designs on Social Benefit Attitudes

Public and individual support for a policy is affected by how it is designed – that is, how eligibility is determined. This results in universal policies being more popular than contributions‐based policies, which in turn enjoy more public support than the selective kind. The literature on welfare attitudes have argued that this ‘policy design effect’ can be explained by a combination of self‐interest patterns, public perceptions of the recipient group and whether eligibility under the policy is perceived as fair or arbitrary. The explanations, however, lack micro‐level theory and testing as to why the design of a policy affects individual and public support. This article seeks to explain this policy design effect by theoretically outlining and testing how being proximate to recipients of a social benefit affects attitudes towards the benefit. A survey of attitudes towards spending on five social benefits in Denmark shows a large impact on attitudes from being proximate to recipients under selective policies, little or no impact from universal policies and a pattern that falls in‐between for the contributions‐based policy. This article thus provides micro‐level evidence for the different impacts on attitudes depending on the design of a policy, and a possible explanation for why the design impacts attitudes differently.     

Housing,Welfare Reform,and Self‐Sufficiency: An Assessment of the Family Self‐Sufficiency Program

Abstract

Recently passed welfare reform legislation may have adverse impacts on the incomes of public and assisted housing residents and hence on the rental income of housing authorities. One way to dampen these impacts is to help welfare‐reliant tenants find jobs. The Family Self‐Sufficiency (FSS) programs sponsored by many housing authorities may be an important means of doing this. This article presents the findings of an early study of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's FSS program and explores the program's potential for dampening the impacts of welfare reform. The study involved a mail survey of the coordinators of 564 FSS programs.

The survey results indicate a surprising lack of interest in the early FSS program among potential participants. The results also indicate that these programs are inadequately staffed, and that the programs’ potential to dampen the effects of welfare reform are limited by the relatively small percentage of welfare‐reliant residents enrolled.     

Coalitions and Conservation: Conditional Impacts of Coalitions on Ballot Measures for Open Space

Social scientists have long debated the impact of interest group coalitions on public policies. While views on coalition impacts range from dominance to impotence, an emerging perspective suggests that coalitions have impacts under certain conditions. In this paper, we join and expand that perspective by arguing that coalitions have a conditional impact on public policies through ballot measures. Specifically, we argue that coalitions will have greater impact on ballot measure outcomes in non‐presidential election years, when the stakes involved are high, and when the goals of the measure are diverse. We test these hypotheses with analyses of a dataset of over 2,400 ballot measures on spending for open space at the state and local level between 1988 and 2014. We find strong support for our hypotheses. The findings have implications for scholarly debates on interest groups and coalitions, for the role of ballot measures in American public policy, and for assessments of open space and conservation in American society.     

Testing for Bias in the Impact of AmeriCorps Service on Volunteer Participants: Evidence of Success in Achieving a Neutrality Program Objective

During its nine years of existence, AmeriCorps has had a tremendous impact on its volunteers and the communities it serves. Despite concerns expressed by the Republican congressional leadership, the Corporation for National and Community Service—the federally funded administrative organization that directs AmeriCorps programs at the national level—has made clear its intention to operate in a nonpartisan, politically neutral manner. A study of AmeriCorps programs in four western states finds the corporation is accomplishing its "neutrality" objective and is rebuilding a sense of civic–mindedness in a manner that lacks gender or racial bias—a critical element in reestablishing a strong choral society—all the while properly respecting diversity.     

How Values Shape Program Perceptions: The “Organic Ethos” and Producers’ Assessments of U.S. Organic Policy Impacts

Among the more recognizable programs related to natural and sustainable food is the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. Although the robustness of the organic food market is difficult to contest, many debate the extent to which U.S. organic policy outcomes adequately serve consumers and the organic agriculture producers they rely on. This paper engages the debate from the perspective of certified organic producers. Drawing on the results of a nationwide survey of USDA‐certified producers, we first provide a snapshot of how producers assess the environmental, consumer, and market impacts of U.S. organic food policy. We then examine the extent to which organic producers’ policy impact perceptions are associated with their alignment with an “organic ethos”—understood as producers’ commitment to core organic principles and the organic movement. The paper highlights producers’ values as perceptual filters and cognitive mechanisms that help shape producers’ policy impacts perceptions, illustrating a contributing factor to the enduring nature of organic policy debates.     

Demonstration evaluations and cost neutrality: Using caseload models to determine the federal cost neutrality of New Jersey's reach demonstration

The Reagan Administration's Interagency Low Income Opportunity Advisory Board (ILIOAB) requirement that states conduct impact evaluations of their welfare reform demonstrations no doubt led some states to conduct evaluations when they otherwise might not have. The ILIOAB requirement that demonstrations be cost neutral to the federal government, on the other hand, limited the ability of states to test promising approaches that require more resources. The New Jersey experience with REACH clearly demonstrates the limitations of caseload modeling for assessing cost neutrality. In retrospect, too much might have been asked of a fairly crude forecasting technique. If carefully designed, experiments can provide better information on participant impacts and cost neutrality, although different experimental designs are preferred for estimating participant impacts than for estimating cost neutrality or overall impacts.