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Robert Shand

American University

Robert Shand is Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Leadership at American University and an affiliated researcher with the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. A former high school economics and government teacher, his interests lie at the intersection of research, policy and practice. His current research focuses on teacher improvement through collaboration and professional development and how schools and teachers use data from economic evaluation and accountability systems to make decisions and improve over time. Recent work at CBCSE has emphasized the unique opportunities and methodological challenges of evaluating complex partnership programs, including the university-school-community partnership Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem, and the comprehensive student support program, City Connects. He is a co-author of the third edition of Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis, and he has contributed to publications in the American Journal of Evaluation, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Email Robert Shand at: Shand@exchange.tc.columbia.edu

NEPC Publications

NEPC Review: The System-Level Effects of Denver’s Portfolio District Strategy: Technical Report (Center for Education Policy Analysis, University of Colorado Denver, December 2021)

Parker Baxter, Anna Nicotera, Erik Fuller, Jakob Panzer, Todd Ely, & Paul Teske
The System-Level Effects of Denver’s Portfolio District Strategy: Technical Report

This report analyzes changes in academic performance as measured by test scores and graduation rates in the Denver Public Schools versus comparable schools in Colorado over 11 years of the district’s experimenting with the “portfolio” approach to school district management. This approach includes central-office oversight of different school types (such as charter schools, innovation schools, and district-run schools), with widespread parental choice under a single enrollment system. The reported academic gains are dramatic and worth drawing attention to, but attributing them specifically to the portfolio reforms seems premature and thus not useful in showing how other districts could replicate that success.

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