A Benefit-Cost Analysis of City Connects
A Benefit-Cost Analysis of City Connects
复制标题
城市互联的效益成本分析
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Melisa Morales
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Levin;R. Shand;Anyi Wang;Melisa Morales
学校在提供服务以满足学生的社交和情感、家庭、健康和学业需求方面历来发挥着越来越重要的作用。以与学校的学术使命战略一致并有效满足所有学生需求的方式协调这些服务通常具有挑战性且成本高昂。这项研究是对波士顿学院城市连接计划的初步调查，该计划通过评估学校所有学生的需求并将他们与主要由社区合作伙伴组织提供的服务联系起来来支持学生和学校。该计划旨在通过为学生提供个性化的服务来帮助他们，以满足他们的学术、社交/情感、家庭和健康需求。该计划还旨在通过将学校与社区机构和服务提供商联系起来来协助学校，并简化学生支持转介和管理，使提供全面方法支持学生学习的过程更具战略性和效率。先前的研究表明，与未实施该计划的类似学校相比，城市连接在提高成绩和教育程度方面是有效的（城市连接进展报告，2014 年；Walsh 等人，2014a；2014b）。必须在效益成本分析中权衡这些积极影响与该计划的成本，以确定该计划是否是一项值得的社会投资。报告显示，City Connects以相对较低的成本为学校提供了全校综合服务，学校本身只承担该项目核心成本的10%左右。然而，在考虑与社区组织的伙伴关系时，这项工作的方法复杂性涉及到总成本的估计。结果显示，从幼儿园到五年级，每名学生参与 City Connects 六年的总成本（衡量效果的剂量）为 4,570 美元，其中包括 City Connects 学校学生接受的社区合作伙伴服务成本的一部分。根据社区合作伙伴服务中被认为高于和超出基准水平的比例，总成本估算范围为每位学生 1,540 美元到 9,320 美元。根据实施数据最合理的模型，效益成本比为 3.0，每个学生的净效益为 9,280 美元。这一结果意味着，在六年内向 100 名学生提供该项目将花费社会 457,000 美元，但会产生 1,385,000 美元的社会福利，净收益为 928,000 美元。即使在关于成本和收益的最保守的假设下，该计划的收益也超过了其成本。敏感性测试表明，效益成本比介于 1 到 11.8 之间，最佳估计为每美元成本带来 3.00 美元的效益。进一步的研究可以调查项目、学校和社区合作伙伴之间的关系，以及在治疗学校和对照学校中合作伙伴提供的服务如何进行比较。
Schools have historically and increasingly played an important role in providing services to meet students’ social and emotional, family, health, and academic needs. Coordinating these services in a way that is strategically aligned with a school’s academic mission and that efficiently addresses the needs of all students is often challenging and costly. This study is an initial investigation of Boston College’s City Connects program, which supports students and schools by evaluating the needs of all students in a school and connecting them to services that are largely provided by community partner organizations. The program aims to help students by connecting them with an individualized set of services to address their academic, social/emotional, family, and health needs. The program also aims to assist schools by connecting them with community agencies and service providers, and streamlining student support referral and management to make the process of providing comprehensive approaches to supporting student learning more strategic and efficient. Prior research has shown evidence of effectiveness of City Connects in terms of increased achievement and educational attainment relative to similar schools that have not implemented the program (City Connects Progress Report, 2014; Walsh, et al., 2014a; 2014b). These positive effects must be weighed against the program’s costs in a benefit-cost analysis to determine whether the program is a worthwhile social investment. This report shows that City Connects provides a whole-school comprehensive service at relatively low cost to the schools—schools themselves only bear about 10% of the core costs of the program. However, the methodological complexity of this work is entailed in the estimation of the total cost when considering the partnerships with community organizations. The results show that the total cost of six years of participation in City Connects from kindergarten through fifth grade (the dosage under which effects were measured) is $4,570 per student, which includes a portion of the costs of the community partner services received by the students in City Connects schools. Depending on what share of the community partner services are considered to be above and beyond the baseline level, the total cost estimate can range from $1,540 to $9,320 per student. Under the model that is most plausible based on implementation data, the benefit-cost ratio is 3.0 and the net benefits are $9,280 per student. This result implies that providing the program to a cohort of 100 students over six years would cost society $457,000 but yield $1,385,000 in social benefits, for a net benefit of $928,000. Even under the most conservative assumptions regarding costs and benefits, the program’s benefits exceed its costs. Sensitivity tests show that the benefit-cost ratio lies somewhere between 1 and 11.8, with a best estimate of $3.00 in benefits per dollar of cost. Further research can investigate the relationship between the program, schools, and community partners and how services provided by partners compare in treatment versus comparison schools.