Research on New York City’s schools offers the opportunity to gain insight to guide policy for urban districts everywhere. NYC is engaged in a number of experiments and reforms (e.g., small high schools), and given its diversity of students, variety of schools and differences in settings, the city’s education system is robust site for research on issues facing urban education.

Immigrants and Native-Born Students

co-Principal Investigators: Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz

Public schools across the U.S. are educating an increasing number and diversity of immigrant students. Unfortunately, little is known about their performance relative to native-born students and the extent to which the ‘nativity gap’ might be explained by school and demographic characteristics. Using data from New York City, where 17 percent of elementary and middle school students are immigrants, this research seeks to address questions including how isolated (segregated) are foreign-born students within their schools and within their districts? How does segregation vary across groups with different language skills and from different regions of the world? To the extent there is segregation of immigrant students, how different are the schools attended by immigrant children in terms of student characteristics, teachers, and funding levels? This research is funded by the Spencer Foundation.

How Should We Organize Primary Schooling? Grade Span, School Size and Student Academic Performance

Principal Investigators: Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz, NYU, Ross Rubenstein, Syracuse University & Jeffrey Zabel, Tufts University

This research is one of the first efforts to systematically identify and measure the effects of school grade span organization on student achievement in a large urban school district. The project seeks answers to the following questions: What effect does the grade span configuration of primary schools have on student achievement? Do the observed effects differ depending on student characteristics, such as grade level, income, race, immigrant status, English proficiency, and eligibility for special education? How does the test score gap across students vary with school organizational factors, such as school size, grade span or articulation grade? What related factors (for example, the particular grades served, school size and composition, timing of transitions to new schools) mediate the effects of grade span configuration? We exploit the natural variation found in the country’s largest school district (New York City) and take advantage of unique longitudinal student data that will allow us to examine the performance of cohorts of students through seven years of schooling and as they transition from elementary schools to middle school. Our research focuses on identifying ‘optimal’ ways to organize schools and explore differences in optimal configurations across students of different backgrounds. The research is funded by the Institute for Education Science of the U.S. Department of Education and should be of value to educators, researchers and policymakers.

Schooling and Identity for New Americans

Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Ann Morning

This pilot study explores the role that schools play in shaping concepts of race and nationhood. Our goal is to examine how identities emerge and are transformed during the transition to adulthood and how this process might vary between immigrant, second-generation, and later-generation youth. The project includes both interviews and ethnographic observation in a public New York City high school, to be conducted during the fall of 2006.

Small Schools Effectiveness and Stability in Teachers and Students

Robin Jacobowitz and Meryle G. Weinstein

A two-year mixed methods study to explore the process and outcomes of small high school development in New York City across the past decades. We examine how school-level student and teacher populations change over time in small New York City public high schools, the organizational and instructional practices that contribute to positive small school learning environments, and how changes in these populations over time may influence school practices. Funded by New Visions for Public Schools, the project produced two reports in 2006: one focusing on how student and teacher populations at the NYC small high schools change from year to year as they develop during the first ten years of their existence; the second examines student and teacher demographic characteristics over time, student outcomes over time, and organizational and instructional practices that contribute to positive learning environments in small schools. We anticipate that our findings will have important implications for how new small high schools are established and supported, as more and more small high schools are created throughout New York City.

Cost Effectiveness of Small High Schools

Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Patrice Iatarola, and Colin C. Chellman

Is it less expensive to raise performance in a big school than in a small school? Is there evidence that small school sizes are better for some students (e.g., disadvantaged students) but not others?

Does Title I Funding Improve School and Student Achievement? An Analysis Using New York City Data

Meryle G. Weinstein, Leanna Stiefel, and Amy Ellen Schwartz

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Title I funding in increasing resources and achievement for students attending schools with high concentrations of poverty and assess how school and outcomes differ between Title I schools and non-Title I schools.

The Race Gap in Test Scores

Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Ingrid Gould Ellen

In this project, we examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. How large are racial and ethnic performance differences in New York City schools and how much of the gaps can be explained by student backgrounds, schools and classrooms? Are there mutable school or education programs that can help improve black and Hispanic student performance? How do gaps change over time in the New York City school system?

Small Schools and Teacher Recruitment and Retention

co-Principal Investigators: Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz

How is recruitment and retention different in small and large schools? What are the characteristics of teachers who are recruited to small high schools versus larger high schools? Are teachers in small schools more likely to be recruited from outside the district? Are they recruited from large schools? How do the characteristics of teachers change as small schools mature? Do they begin to resemble the characteristics of teachers at larger, established high schools? Are levels of retention different?

Small Schools and College Preparation and Outcomes

co-Principal Investigators: Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz

Do small high schools better prepare students for college than larger schools? Are the effects the same for all students or do they differ across groups of students (English language learners, immigrants, racial and ethnic groups, etc.)? Do small high schools deliver better college outcomes than larger schools in areas such as applications, matriculation and GPA? Are college outcomes produced equally well by small schools or are some schools too small, for example, to provide the in-depth, specialized work needed to prepare students for college? Do newly created small schools have a different impact on students than older small schools?

Systemwide Effects of Small School Reform

co-Principal Investigators: Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz

To what extent did the creation of new small high schools succeed in increasing the performance of all the district’s students? Did gains in new small schools come at the expense of losses in the existing schools? What evidence is there that creating small high schools might be effective as a system-wide reform? How does such a reform “go to scale” such that it will have a larger impact on the entire school system? How do existing schools become small? How is a location chosen for new small schools?

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) program

Dorothy Siegel

The goal of the ASD program is for every child to be able to function successfully and comfortably in mainstream settings and in the community, with decreasing need for professional support. The role of the Institute is to facilitate the development of the ASD program throughout the New York City public school system. The Institute collaborates with Hunter College's School of Education to provide training for teachers and other program staff and with NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education to provide placements for student teachers.