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Other reports

Charter Schools: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education

December 1, 2011
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Susan Dynarski, Michelle Croft, Caroline Hoxby, Tom Loveless, Mark Schneider, Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, John Witte
Charter schools offer choice to parents who would otherwise be constrained to having their children attend a residentially assigned traditional public school. The number of charter schools has increased steadily in the last decade, reflecting their...
United States Capitol Building
EPI Working papers

Educational Expectations and Attainment

January 1, 2010
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Brian Jacob, Tamara Wilder
This paper examines the role of educational expectations in the educational attainment process. We utilize data from a variety of datasets to document and analyze the trends in educational expectations between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s. We...
Student writing in a journal
Transitions into the labor market

An Empirical Analysis of the Consequences of Major Choice Using Texas Administrative Data

June 2018
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Kevin Stange, Rodney Andrews, Scott Imberman, Michael Lovenheim
The central aim of this project is to estimate the causal effect of students’ college major choices  on their postsecondary and labor market outcomes. The combination of a research design that can identify causal effects of major choice with rich administrative data that allow us to track students from high school through college and into the labor market is novel in the higher education literature and will provide new and important evidence on how college major choices affect students during college and...
Two students collaborating on a computer assignment
Postsecondary preparation & success

Understanding Geographic Differences in Postsecondary Decision Making and Financial Aid Interventions

January 2021
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Susan Dynarski, Elizabeth Burland, Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija, Stefanie DeLuca, Katherine Michelmore
This study gathers and analyzes data from qualitative interviews with high school students in Michigan. These interviews ask students to describe their college decision making process and to what extent financial aid programs or interventions were effective at influencing their postsecondary decisions. The information gathered through this project provides vital insight, directly from the student perspective, on how financial aid interventions work and who they work for. Moreover, this project sheds light on the link between postsecondary inequality and student decision-making. Finally, the...
A block M on the ground on University of Michigan's campus
Postsecondary preparation & success

HAIL Scholars: Increasing Economic Diversity at a Flagship University

January 2014
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Susan Dynarski, Katherine Michelmore, Meghan Oster, Stephanie Owen, Elizabeth Burland, Shwetha Raghuraman
EPI researchers and University of Michigan administrators developed and piloted the HAIL scholarship research program to attract low-income, high-achieving students to consider applying to and enrolling in the university. The project addresses three issues known to affect college application behavior among low-income, high-achieving students: uncertainty about their suitability for an elite school, over-estimates by students and parents of the net cost of college, and procedural barriers such as aid applications. The intervention targets low-income, high-achieving students in Michigan, as...
University of Michigan's HAIL Scholarship
Support for K-12

Enrollment in Michigan's K-12 schools during COVID

September 2020
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Kevin Stange, Tareena Musaddiq, Josh Goodman, Andrew Bacher-Hicks
This study aims to examine the extent to which COVID-19 has led to changes in the total number and composition of students enrolled in K-12 public schools in Michigan. The study team will use student-level data to better understand which specific types of students did not enroll or return in the fall of 2020. For instance, whether re-enrollment patterns were different by prior year achievement, attendance, economically disadvantaged status, race, and district and neighborhood characteristics. Separately, the research team will complement the Michigan data with nationally-representative data...
Elementary student wearing a mask outside of school
Early learning

Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 on Early Educators and Young Children: Understanding the Issues and Identifying Evidence-based Recovery Responses

March 2021 - June 2021
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Christina Weiland, Erica Greenberg, Daphna Bassok, Anna Markowitz, Paola Guerrero Rosada, Grace Luetmer, Rachel Abenavoli, Celia Gomez, Anna Johnson, Brenda Jones-Harden, Michelle Maier, Meghan McCormick, Pamela Morris, Milagros Nores, Deborah Phillips, Catherine Snow, Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija
The COVID-19 crisis upended life for young children, their families, and the early care and education (ECE) programs that serve them. Leaders need a clear understanding of the pandemic’s impact, particularly as the Biden administration makes historic investments in ECE. To meet this need, a team of early childhood experts synthesized findings from 76 high-quality studies, spanning 16 national studies, 45 studies from 31 states, and 15 local studies. The experts then collaborated with ECE policy and practice leaders from multiple states to identify actionable, evidence-backed, and...
Parent walking two children to school with masks on
Transitions into the labor market

Skills, Majors, and Jobs: Does Higher Education Respond?

September 2019
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Kevin Stange, Steven Hemelt, Bradley J. Hershbein
Higher education institutions play an outsized role in facilitating skill development, yet employers regularly cite a gap between the skills they need and those new college graduates possess. One explanation for this disconnect is that technological change, industrial restructuring, and international trade are continuously evolving the demand for skills in the labor market, but that investment is slow to respond. This project uses several quasi-experimental techniques, and the universe of all online job ads paired with novel data on college course-taking over the past decade, to study how...
Two students walking on a college campus
Postsecondary preparation & success

Go Blue Community College Project

September 2021
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Susan Dynarski, Kevin Stange, Silvia Robles, Katherine Michelmore
The barriers facing community college students are numerous. An elite higher education institution, like the University of Michigan, can play a transformative role in the economic mobility of low-income students through programs like HAIL Scholars, but relatively few low-income students ever matriculate at such institutions. Community colleges are  good places to find high-achieving, low-income students who would benefit from further enrollment at institutions like U-M. In this project, researchers will develop and implement a randomized controlled trial of an intervention that aims to...
Go Blue Community College Project
Transitions into the labor market

College and Beyond: Outcomes of a Liberal Arts Education

December 2018
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Kevin Stange, Timothy McKay, Paul N. Courant, Margaret Levenstein, Susan Jekielek, Allyson Flaster
Building on the work of the Mellon Research Forum, University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) has brought together seven 4-year postsecondary institutions (U-M, the City University of New York, Georgia College and State University, Indiana University, Truman State University, University of Houston and University of California, Irvine) to pilot measures of the liberal arts educational experience linked to various long-term outcomes for students. This collaboration is laying the foundation to scaling the work and develop the kind of large data...
College and Beyond teaser

Bringing the Actual Science of Reading to Policy and Practice

Nov 19, 2020 1:29:12

Come learn from four stakeholders renowned for their experience and expertise in improving children's literacy; two professors of education, an education reporter, and the head of one of Michigan's school administrator associations.

Future of education in Detroit: A panel discussion

Oct 23, 2014 1:19:42

Over the last decade, K-12 education in Detroit has undergone unprecedented change with the establishment of the Education Achievement Authority in 2012, the surge of charter school enrollment, and the influence