Robert Bifulco
Biographic Data
| ID | 280679 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Bifulco |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Bifulco |
| SIGNATURE | BIFULCO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 238 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Salience in Email Recruitment
Text reminders and mailed flyers with behaviorally informed messages are regularly used in public sector communication. Mass email blasts are another inexpensive option to communicate with target audiences. Evidence suggests that email recipients may have become habituated to “spam” and frequently discard these messages before they read them. Thus, email may be less effective than other communication forms because they never reach their intended …
Fiscal Impacts of the Opioid Crisis on State and Local Governments
Adverse effects of the opioid crisis on individuals influence the need for state and local government expenditures and erode their tax bases. Systematic estimates of the magnitude of such fiscal impacts are lacking. We estimate the magnitude of the effect of the opioid crisis on state and local expenditures and discuss approaches that might be taken to evaluate the impact of the crisis on revenues. We find that the fiscal impacts of the opioid cr…
Who Benefits from Accountability‐Driven School Closure? Evidence from New York City
We estimate the effects of accountability‐driven school closure in New York City on students who attended middle schools that were closed at the time of closure and students who would have likely attended a closed middle school had it remained open. We find that students who would have entered the closed school had it not closed attended schools that perform better on standardized exams and have higher value‐added measures than did the closed sch…
Evaluating the Effects of Universal Place‐Based Scholarships on Student Outcomes: The Buffalo “Say Yes to Education” Program
A growing number of cities and states have been providing large tuition subsidies for residents through initiatives often called “place‐based” or “Promise” scholarship programs. We examine the effects of a prominent last‐dollar, place‐based scholarship program, Say Yes to Education in Buffalo, NY, on college matriculation and persistence. Employing a difference‐in‐differences strategy comparing changes across cohorts of students eligible and inel…
Can Nonexperimental Estimates Replicate Estimates Based on Random Assignment in Evaluations of School Choice? A Within‐Study Comparison
The ability of nonexperimental estimators to match impact estimates derived from random assignment is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within‐study comparisons, nonexperimental estimates differ from estimates based on random assignment when nonexperimental estimators are implemented without pretreatment measures of academic performance. With comparison groups consisting of students drawn …
Debt and Deception: How States Avoid Making Hard Fiscal Decisions
Government borrowing occurs whenever the government forgoes control over some future flow of resources or benefits in order to acquire resources for current use. Based on this definition, the authors identify several ways that state governments borrow, which include widely recognized forms of debt as well as types of actions that are less transparent. Case studies for Connecticut, Illinois, and New York document the large amounts of future commit…
The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of one's geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfact…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Informing the Future of School Choice Policy
Public school choice and integration evidence from Durham, North Carolina
The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina
Using an individual panel data set to control for student fixed effects, we estimate the impact of charter schools on students in charter schools and in nearby traditional public schools. We find that students make considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in public schools. The large negative estimates of the effects of attending a charter school are neither substantially biased, nor substantially offset, by …
School choice, racial segregation, and test‐score gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's charter school program
Using panel data that track individual students from year to year, we examine the effects of charter schools in North Carolina on racial segregation and black‐white test score gaps. We find that North Carolina's system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both black and white students, and has widened the achievement gap. Moreover, the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of black students is…
Institutional Change and Coproduction of Public Services: The Effect of Charter Schools on Parental Involvement
Recent discussions of school choice have revived arguments that the decentralization of governing institutions can enhance the quality of public services by increasing the participation of intended beneficiaries in the production of those services. We use data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to examine the extent to which the decentralization of authority to charter schools induces parents to become more involved in their children's schools.…
Does whole-school reform boost student performance? The case of New York City
Thousands of schools around the country have implemented whole-school reform programs to boost student performance. This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the impact of whole-school reform on students' reading performance in New York City, where various reform programs were adopted in dozens of troubled elementary schools in the mid-1990s. This paper complements studies based on random assignment by examining a broad-based reform …
Identifying low-performance public schools
School choice, racial segregation, and test‐score gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's charter school program
Using panel data that track individual students from year to year, we examine the effects of charter schools in North Carolina on racial segregation and black‐white test score gaps. We find that North Carolina's system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both black and white students, and has widened the achievement gap. Moreover, the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of black students is…
Public school choice and integration evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Institutional Change and Coproduction of Public Services: The Effect of Charter Schools on Parental Involvement
Recent discussions of school choice have revived arguments that the decentralization of governing institutions can enhance the quality of public services by increasing the participation of intended beneficiaries in the production of those services. We use data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to examine the extent to which the decentralization of authority to charter schools induces parents to become more involved in their children's schools.…
Can Nonexperimental Estimates Replicate Estimates Based on Random Assignment in Evaluations of School Choice? A Within‐Study Comparison
The ability of nonexperimental estimators to match impact estimates derived from random assignment is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within‐study comparisons, nonexperimental estimates differ from estimates based on random assignment when nonexperimental estimators are implemented without pretreatment measures of academic performance. With comparison groups consisting of students drawn …
The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of one's geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfact…
Debt and Deception: How States Avoid Making Hard Fiscal Decisions
Government borrowing occurs whenever the government forgoes control over some future flow of resources or benefits in order to acquire resources for current use. Based on this definition, the authors identify several ways that state governments borrow, which include widely recognized forms of debt as well as types of actions that are less transparent. Case studies for Connecticut, Illinois, and New York document the large amounts of future commit…
Does whole-school reform boost student performance? The case of New York City
Thousands of schools around the country have implemented whole-school reform programs to boost student performance. This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the impact of whole-school reform on students' reading performance in New York City, where various reform programs were adopted in dozens of troubled elementary schools in the mid-1990s. This paper complements studies based on random assignment by examining a broad-based reform …
Who Benefits from Accountability‐Driven School Closure? Evidence from New York City
We estimate the effects of accountability‐driven school closure in New York City on students who attended middle schools that were closed at the time of closure and students who would have likely attended a closed middle school had it remained open. We find that students who would have entered the closed school had it not closed attended schools that perform better on standardized exams and have higher value‐added measures than did the closed sch…
Evaluating the Effects of Universal Place‐Based Scholarships on Student Outcomes: The Buffalo “Say Yes to Education” Program
A growing number of cities and states have been providing large tuition subsidies for residents through initiatives often called “place‐based” or “Promise” scholarship programs. We examine the effects of a prominent last‐dollar, place‐based scholarship program, Say Yes to Education in Buffalo, NY, on college matriculation and persistence. Employing a difference‐in‐differences strategy comparing changes across cohorts of students eligible and inel…
Identifying low-performance public schools
Does whole-school reform boost student performance? The case of New York City
Thousands of schools around the country have implemented whole-school reform programs to boost student performance. This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the impact of whole-school reform on students' reading performance in New York City, where various reform programs were adopted in dozens of troubled elementary schools in the mid-1990s. This paper complements studies based on random assignment by examining a broad-based reform …
The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina
Using an individual panel data set to control for student fixed effects, we estimate the impact of charter schools on students in charter schools and in nearby traditional public schools. We find that students make considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in public schools. The large negative estimates of the effects of attending a charter school are neither substantially biased, nor substantially offset, by …
School choice, racial segregation, and test‐score gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's charter school program
Using panel data that track individual students from year to year, we examine the effects of charter schools in North Carolina on racial segregation and black‐white test score gaps. We find that North Carolina's system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both black and white students, and has widened the achievement gap. Moreover, the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of black students is…
Institutional Change and Coproduction of Public Services: The Effect of Charter Schools on Parental Involvement
Recent discussions of school choice have revived arguments that the decentralization of governing institutions can enhance the quality of public services by increasing the participation of intended beneficiaries in the production of those services. We use data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to examine the extent to which the decentralization of authority to charter schools induces parents to become more involved in their children's schools.…
The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of one's geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfact…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Informing the Future of School Choice Policy
Public school choice and integration evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Can Nonexperimental Estimates Replicate Estimates Based on Random Assignment in Evaluations of School Choice? A Within‐Study Comparison
The ability of nonexperimental estimators to match impact estimates derived from random assignment is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within‐study comparisons, nonexperimental estimates differ from estimates based on random assignment when nonexperimental estimators are implemented without pretreatment measures of academic performance. With comparison groups consisting of students drawn …
Debt and Deception: How States Avoid Making Hard Fiscal Decisions
Government borrowing occurs whenever the government forgoes control over some future flow of resources or benefits in order to acquire resources for current use. Based on this definition, the authors identify several ways that state governments borrow, which include widely recognized forms of debt as well as types of actions that are less transparent. Case studies for Connecticut, Illinois, and New York document the large amounts of future commit…
Who Benefits from Accountability‐Driven School Closure? Evidence from New York City
We estimate the effects of accountability‐driven school closure in New York City on students who attended middle schools that were closed at the time of closure and students who would have likely attended a closed middle school had it remained open. We find that students who would have entered the closed school had it not closed attended schools that perform better on standardized exams and have higher value‐added measures than did the closed sch…
Evaluating the Effects of Universal Place‐Based Scholarships on Student Outcomes: The Buffalo “Say Yes to Education” Program
A growing number of cities and states have been providing large tuition subsidies for residents through initiatives often called “place‐based” or “Promise” scholarship programs. We examine the effects of a prominent last‐dollar, place‐based scholarship program, Say Yes to Education in Buffalo, NY, on college matriculation and persistence. Employing a difference‐in‐differences strategy comparing changes across cohorts of students eligible and inel…
Fiscal Impacts of the Opioid Crisis on State and Local Governments
Adverse effects of the opioid crisis on individuals influence the need for state and local government expenditures and erode their tax bases. Systematic estimates of the magnitude of such fiscal impacts are lacking. We estimate the magnitude of the effect of the opioid crisis on state and local expenditures and discuss approaches that might be taken to evaluate the impact of the crisis on revenues. We find that the fiscal impacts of the opioid cr…
Salience in Email Recruitment
Text reminders and mailed flyers with behaviorally informed messages are regularly used in public sector communication. Mass email blasts are another inexpensive option to communicate with target audiences. Evidence suggests that email recipients may have become habituated to “spam” and frequently discard these messages before they read them. Thus, email may be less effective than other communication forms because they never reach their intended …
Political science (12 works) · School Choice and Performance (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Mathematics education (8 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · School choice (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Business (3 works)