Rebecca Unterman's research while affiliated with MDRC and other places
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Publications (11)
In recent years, policymakers’ and practitioners’ interest in school climate as a contributor to K-12 student learning and classroom processes has increased, both in the US and internationally. However, researchers have not yet examined the influence of school climate on the youngest learners in these contexts — prekindergartners. Using data from t...
Preschool improves children's kindergarten readiness, but the cognitive outcomes of preschool enrollees and nonenrollees tend to converge partially or fully in elementary school. In older programs, most of this convergence occurs in kindergarten (Li et al., 2016), but evidence from today's programs is sparse. Using data on 4,971 children who applie...
The present paper uses a rich dataset based on naturally‐occurring lotteries for 68 new small non‐selective high schools in New York City, which we refer to as small schools of choice (SSCs), to address two related questions: (1) What high school features are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students? and (2) What...
This study leverages naturally occurring lotteries for oversubscribed Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program sites between 2007 and 2011, for 3,182 children (M = 4.5 years old) to estimate the impacts of winning a first choice lottery and enrolling in Boston prekindergarten versus losing a first choice lottery and not enrolling on children’s...
Universal public prekindergarten programs have been expanding in recent years, but not all eligible families apply to these programs, for reasons that are not well understood. Using two cohorts of students (N = 8,391) enrolled in Boston Public Schools, we use geographic information systems to combine administrative records with census data to compa...
This paper provides rigorous evidence (for 12,130 participants in a series of naturally occurring randomized lotteries) that a large-scale high school reform initiative (New York City's creation of 100+ small high schools of choice between 2002 and 2008) can markedly and consistently increase high school graduation rates (by 9.5 percentage points o...
Building on prior research by two of the present authors, which uses lottery-like features in New York City’s high school admissions process to rigorously demonstrate that new small public high schools in the district are markedly improving graduation prospects for disadvantaged students, the present paper demonstrates that these graduation benefit...
Taking advantage of lottery-like features in New York City’s high school admissions process, this study provides rigorous evidence that new small public high schools are narrowing the educational attainment gap and markedly improve graduation prospects, particularly for disadvantaged students.
Citations
... For example, Boston used an early reading assessment called DIBELS for many years while surrounding districts did not and further, such data were not compiled at the state level. A study of Boston Prekindergarten that leveraged these data could do so accordingly only for children who remained in BPS schools (Weiland, Unterman, & Shapiro, 2021). But when available and when equivalent across districts, these data offer promise for providing more timely, policy relevant evidence on the effects of preschool programs. ...
... In the elementary and secondary school contexts, researchers have leveraged this random assignment to estimate the causal impacts of charter schools (Abdulkadiroğlu et al., 2011;Dynarski, Hubbard, Jacob, & Robles, 2019;Unterman, Bloom, Byndloss, & Terwelp, 2016;Unterman, 2017) and small schools of choice (Bloom & Unterman, 2014). This design has been leveraged in preschool in only two peer-reviewed studies to date (Gray-Lobe, Pathak, & Walters, 2023;Weiland et al., 2020), though at least five teams total (represented on our authorship team) are now leveraging this methodological approach to investigate policy and practice questions in large-scale systems. ...
... Of course, any additions must be balanced against administrative burden for participants and equity issues. Research has already shown that some of the groups most likely to benefit from public preschool programs are the least likely to apply (Shapiro, Martin, Weiland, & Unterman, 2019) and that administrative burden is a barrier for some families interested in public preschool programs (Weixler, Valant, Bassok, Doromal, & Gerry, 2020). ...
... 25 All children with custodial father were with high behavior problems. It is in contrast with that in USA 26 indicating high behavioral problems that may be caused by single motherhood associated with lower incomes, increased poverty, poor maternal wellbeing, poor parenting, and a host of other disruptions. In UK, father absence is associated with absenteeism, delinquency, crime and poor school achievement; especially for boys from low income families. ...
Reference: Impact of Divorce on Children Wellbeing
... In contrast, Kantabutra and Tang, (2006) focusing on rural-urban characteristic indicated that in both areas school size had positive effect in students' performance while Newman et al., (2006) in a cross-country study revealed the complexity of school size effects, suggesting the pursuit of the optimal school size. In the same direction, Bloom et al. (2010) analyzing educational reform in New York City after 2002, Schwartz et al., (2013) that examined the same reform concluded that new small schools increased students' educational outcomes and Humlum and Smith (2015) indicated a positive effect on students' performance and graduation rate. The specific finding for the Greek secondary schools' case is written on the side of the studies that support the positive relationship between the two variables. ...
