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Helen Ladd’s Presentation on Research Questions at the Workshop on Understanding and Promoting Knowledge Accumulation in Education
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Helen F. Ladd made the following presentation at the Workshop on Understanding and Promoting Knowledge Accumulation in Education: Tools and Strategies for Education Research.
Conceptual framework
Family background of students
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Resources Practices Institutional Context
Research Questions
I. What is the impact of school resources on educational outcomes? (EFFECTS)
Standard production function approach:
At = f (At-1, school resourcest, family backgroundt, peerst)
Where A refers to an outcome such as student achievement
Note ambiguity about the question vis-à-vis practices
and institutional context.
II. What resources would be needed to achieve a given level of output? (ADEQUACY)
Economists’ approach. (1990s): District level analysis.
Start with desired outcomes
Expenditures = f(desired outcomes, cost factors)
Where cost factors are such as the percent of students in poverty or percent of special needs students.
Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball (2002 proposed approach)
Start with instructional goals
Instructional approach needed to attain goals?
Resources needed to implement the approach?
III. How can a given amount of resources be used more productively to increase student achievement? (PRODUCTIVITY)
Starts with resources but focuses on practices and institutional context.
Example: Effective schools research and school improvement models (1970s and early 1980s)
Other examples: Research on catholic schools, whole school reform models, governance reform. See NRC, Making Money Matter (1999).
Big literature. Not my focus today.
Historical Overview of Research on Direct Effects of Resources
1. Equality of Educational Opportunity – Coleman Report 1966 (and Jencks et al. reanalysis 1972) – sociologists
Survey mandated by Civil Rights Act of 1964.
2. Production Function Research – mainly economists
1970s – present
Based on economic theory of production
Opportunistic data sets
3. Tennessee Class Size Experiment
1985, with ongoing analysis of the data
Motivated by a policy problem
4. Teacher Effects – based on state administrative data
1990s and early 2000s, mainly economists
Conclusions about the resource effects literature
Progress is being made.
Off track a bit with the Coleman Report and the Hanushek summaries.
State administrative data sets have great potential.
Even more so if states were to gather information data on family background.
Potential for more experiments related to resources.
Need to be careful about generalizing the results when using them to make policy recommendations.
Would be useful to do more explicit experimenting with policy packages that include various combinations of additional resources and new practices or incentives. 
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