Using Synthetic Controls to Evaluate the Effect of Unique Interventions: The Case of Say Yes to Education.
BACKGROUND
"Place-based" scholarships seek to improve student outcomes in urban school districts and promote urban revitalization in economically challenged cities. Say Yes to Education is a unique district-wide school reform effort adopted in Syracuse, NY, in 2008. It includes full-tuition scholarships for public and private universities, coupled with extensive wraparound support services in schools.


OBJECTIVES
This study uses synthetic control methods to evaluate the effect of Say Yes on district enrollment and graduation rates. It also introduces the synthetic control method and provides guidance for its use in evaluating single-site interventions.


METHOD
Combining school district-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data and New York State School Report Cards, this article uses synthetic control methods to construct a synthetic comparison district to estimate counterfactual enrollment and graduation trends for Syracuse.


RESULTS
We find that Say Yes to Education was associated with enrollment increases in the Syracuse City School District, a district that had previously experienced decades of sustained enrollment declines. We do not find consistent evidence of changes in graduation rates following adoption of the program.


CONCLUSIONS
Graduation rate analyses demonstrate that estimates of treatment effects can be sensitive to choices that the researcher has to make in applying synthetic control methods, particularly when pretreatment outcome measures appear to have considerable amounts of noise.
['Bifulco|Robert|R|', 'Rubenstein|Ross|R|', 'Sohn|Hosung|H|']
D004517:Education, Professional D004521:Educational Measurement D005257:Fellowships and Scholarships D006801:Humans D009518:New York D016730:Program Development D015397:Program Evaluation D012574:Schools D014495:Universities
Say Yes to Education synthetic control method place-based policy