Leveraging Managerial Autonomy to Turn Around Low-Performing Schools: Evidence from the Innovation Schools Program in Denver Public Schools

Abstract

Improving performance in struggling urban schools is one of the most persistent challenges in education. In Denver, Colorado, a program called Innovation Schools provided urban public schools with autonomy to implement comprehensive managerial and educational reform plans by waiving district policies. I evaluate the Innovation Schools reform using a difference-in-differences design and find that the program increased end of year standardized test scores by .1-.3 standard deviations in Innovation Schools. However, exploration of how these effects developed over time suggests that the early impacts of the program faded out following year 2 of implementation. These findings suggest the program was able to rapidly turn around low performing schools, but these schools struggled to sustain results. This suggests school turnaround may be possible, but schools need to sustain efforts over time to preserve results.