Study of Framingham Adult ESL Plus

The study reconstructs eight years of semiannual randomized enrollment lotteries for the Framingham Adult ESL Plus program. The program uses its own recruitment methods, and courses have consistently been oversubscribed. The random lottery to enroll in the program takes place every January and August. To enter the lottery, individuals submit an in-person application. Staff members then publicly draw lottery numbers and invite individuals whose lottery numbers are drawn to take a formal placement exam. The placement exam determines an individual's level of English proficiency, and lottery winners are allocated to open seats based on their proficiency level and the time preference indicated on their application. Seats are allocated within those two criteria in the order in which the lottery number was drawn. If an individual wins the lottery, and a seat is not available at their preferred time, they are placed on a wait list. They can join a prep class led by volunteers and join a class led by a teacher if a seat becomes available in the first three weeks. About 25 percent of those who do not win the lottery ultimately enroll in the program about 2.5 semesters later on average. The study reconstructed lottery outcomes using enrollment data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on all students in public adult education programs, wait list records of students for whom a seat was not initially available, and administrative records and lottery notes from the program. The study triangulated these three sources of data and manually reconstructed the lottery outcomes based on the probability of being offered a seat due to their preference for morning or evening classes, the semester they applied in, and their level of English proficiency. In total, the study sample includes 4,761 individuals who applied for the first time between fall 2008 and spring 2016, with 1,248 in the intervention group and 3,513 in the comparison group.