| JPAM Preview ▪ September 2012 |
| JPAM Preview is a newsletter that calls attention to forthcoming articles in JPAM. JPAM Preview provides brief summaries of content now available digitally in Early View, Wiley's online publication system. |
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| Feature Article The Expected Impact of State Immigration Legislation on Labor Market Outcomes Julie L. Hotchkiss In response to the dramatic rise in the number of unauthorized immigrants to the United States, every state has passed some form of immigration legislation. These laws appear to be predicated on a belief that unauthorized immigrants impose greater costs than benefits to state and local communities, including the labor market. The purpose of this paper is to examine some evidence on what workers should expect if the immigration legislation is successful in eliminating undocumented workers from states' labor markets. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Feature Article Intensifying Social Exchange Relationships in Public Organizations: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment Morten Jakobsen and Simon Calmar Andersen In accordance with social exchange theory, prominent streams of management research emphasize the importance of reciprocal exchange relationships between organizations and their employees. When employees perceive themselves as supported by the organization, they reciprocate with increased work motivation. However, we do not know how this knowledge can be developed into management initiatives that increase public employees' perceived support, because severe endogeneity problems make it difficult to estimate the effect of organizational support on employee commitment outside the laboratory. We use a randomized field experiment involving more than 800 public employees to estimate the effect. We find no average effect of the organizational support treatment on the employees' perceived organizational support. Yet, a subgroup analysis shows a positive treatment effect when the employees' local front-line managers felt less supported prior to the intervention. We discuss the implications for theory and management practice. ©2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Feature Article Do Child Development Accounts Promote Account Holding, Saving, and Asset Accumulation for Children's Future? Evidence from a Statewide Randomized Experiment Yunju Nam, Youngmi Kim, Robert Zager, Margaret Clancy, and Michael Sherraden This study examines the impacts of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) on account holding, saving, and asset accumulation for children, using data from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment (SEED OK). SEED OK, a policy test of universal and progressive CDAs, provides a 529 college savings plan account to every infant in the treatment group with automatic account opening and an initial deposit. SEED OK also encourages treatment participants to open their own 529 accounts with an account opening incentive and a savings match. Using a sample of infants randomly selected from birth records (N = 2,670) and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, this study runs probit and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. Analyses show significant differences between treatment and control groups in all outcome measures in the targeted accounts. Nearly 100 percent of the treatment group accepted the automatically opened state-owned account. Compared to 1 percent of the control group, 16 percent of the treatment group hold a participant-owned account. On average, the treatment group has saved significantly larger amounts in participant-owned accounts, although a difference in savings amount is modest between the two groups ($47 vs. $13). A difference in total 529 assets of $1,040 is estimated between the treatment and control groups. These early findings from SEED OK suggest that CDAs have positive effects on savings and asset accumulation for children's future development. Further research is required to test long-term cost effectiveness of CDAs. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Feature Article The Use and Efficacy of Capacity-Building Assistance for Low-Performing Districts: The Case of California's District Assistance and Intervention Teams Katharine O. Strunk, Andrew McEachin, and Theresa Westover The theory of action upon which high-stakes accountability policies are based calls for systemic reforms in educational systems that will emerge by pairing incentives for improvement with extensive and targeted technical assistance (TA) to build the capacity of low-performing schools and districts. To this end, a little discussed and often overlooked aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated that, in addition to sanctions, states were required to provide TA to build the capacity of struggling schools and Local Education Agencies (LEAs, or districts) to help them improve student achievement. Although every state in the country provides some form of TA to its lowest performing districts, we know little about the content of these programs or about their efficacy in improving student performance. In this paper, we use both quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore the actions taken by TA providers in one state-California-and examine whether the TA and support tied to California's NCLB sanctions succeeds in improving student achievement. Like many other states, California requires that districts labeled as persistently failing under NCLB (in Program Improvement year 3, PI3) work with external experts to help them build the capacity to make reforms that will improve student achievement. California's lowest performing PI3 districts are given substantial amounts of funding and are required to contract with state-approved District Assistance and Intervention Teams (DAITs), whereas the remaining PI3 districts receive less funding and are asked to access less intensive TA from non-DAIT providers. We use a five-year panel difference-in-difference design to estimate the impacts of DAITs on student performance on the math and English language arts (ELA) standardized tests relative to non-DAIT TA during the two years of the program intervention. We find that students in districts with DAITs perform significantly better on math California Standards Tests (CSTs) averaged over both treatment years and in each of the first and second years. We do not find evidence that students in districts with DAITs perform higher on ELA CSTs over the combined two years of treatment, although we find suggestive evidence that ELA performance increases in the second year of treatment relative to students in districts with non-DAIT TA. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions that explore the association between specific activities fostered by DAITs and changes in districts' gains in achievement over the two years of treatment show that DAIT districts that report increasing their focus on using data to guide instruction, shifting district culture to generate and maintain high expectations of students and staff, and increasing within-district accountability for student performance, have higher math achievement gains over the course of the DAIT treatment. In addition, DAIT districts that increase their focus on ELA instruction and shift district culture to one of high expectations have higher ELA achievement gains than do DAIT districts that do not have a similar focus. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Methods for Policy Analysis External Validity in Policy Evaluations that Choose Sites Purposively Robert B. Olsen, Larry L. Orr, Stephen H. Bell, and Elizabeth A. Stuart Evaluations of the impact of social programs are often carried out in multiple sites, such as school districts, housing authorities, local TANF offices, or One-Stop Career Centers. Most evaluations select sites purposively following a process that is nonrandom. Unfortunately, purposive site selection can produce a sample of sites that is not representative of the population of interest for the program. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model of purposive site selection. We begin with the proposition that a purposive sample of sites can usefully be conceptualized as a random sample of sites from some well-defined population, for which the sampling probabilities are unknown and vary across sites. This proposition allows us to derive a formal, yet intuitive, mathematical expression for the bias in the pooled impact estimate when sites are selected purposively. This formula helps us to better understand the consequences of selecting sites purposively, and the factors that contribute to the bias. Additional research is needed to obtain evidence on how large the bias tends to be in actual studies that select sites purposively, and to develop methods to increase the external validity of these studies. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Professional Practice Open Government Initiatives: Challenges of Citizen Participation Angela M. Evans and Adriana Campos This paper reviews the current state of open government activities at the national level and suggests approaches to advance public discourse and participation. Because the goal of open government is to critically inform citizens about issues and substantively engage with policymakers, public managers must advance transparency efforts beyond those focused upon data information technologies. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Professional Practice Does Measuring Performance Lead to Better Performance? Mary Bryna Sanger Performance measurement-documenting whether an organization is reaching its goals-has become a growth industry in the United States. But it is not clear what the current vogue for performance measurement has actually produced, especially for municipal governments. In fact, our research suggests that performance measurement rarely leads to improved government performance or more efficient and accountable municipal management. Forthcoming in JPAM 32(1). Link to JPAM Early View. If you want to cite this article before it is in print, please use the DOI number listed with each article. |
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| Journal of Policy Analysis and Management is published by Wiley Periodicals on behalf of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Editor-in-Chief: Maureen Pirog ▪ Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs (and) University of Washington, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs Managing Editors: Robert Kaestner ▪ University of Illinois at Chicago Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter ▪ University of California, Irvine | |
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