Publications

This paper measures the effect of increased primary school spending on students' college enrollment and completion. Using student-level panel administrative data, I exploit variation in the school funding formula imposed by Michigan's 1994 school...

This chapter assesses the potential for several prominent technological innovations to promote equality of educational opportunities. We review the history of technological innovations in education and describe several prominent innovations,...

The number of students in a classroom has long concerned parents, teachers, and policymakers. This aspect of a student’s educational experience has always seemed to be an important marker of school quality, and a long line of research has confirmed...

Gaps in educational achievement between high- and low-income children are growing. Administrative datasets maintained by states and districts lack information about income but do indicate whether a student is eligible for subsidized school meals. We...

Economists often use test scores to measure a student’s performance or an adult’s human capital. These scores reflect non-trivial decisions about how to measure and scale student achievement, with important implications for secondary analyses. For...

In this paper, we show that the design and decentralized, school-based scoring of New York’s high school exit exams – the Regents Examinations – led to the systematic manipulation of test scores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Our...

Selecting more effective teachers among job applicants during the hiring process could be a highly cost-effective means of improving educational quality, but there is little research that links information gathered during the hiring process to...

This brief describes the findings from a study of the teacher selection system used by the District of Columbia Public Schools, which concludes that smart hiring can be less costly and more effective in raising teacher quality than many popular...

National efforts to promote college enrollment are increasingly delivered through tax-based assistance, including tax credits and deductions for tuition and fees, tax-advantaged college savings plans, and student loan interest deductions. This paper...

We examine the effects of a rigorous high school curriculum designed to improve educational outcomes and prepare high school graduates for college-level courses. One common refrain in the education reform movement is that expectations play an...

This paper examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a statewide college-preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2008 and later. We use a student, longitudinal database for all public school...

Students starting at a two-year college are much less likely to graduate with a college degree than similar students who start at a four-year college but the sources of this attainment gap are largely unexplained. In this paper we simultaneously...

Public investments in repairs, modernization, and construction of schools cost billions. However, little is known about the nature of school facility investments, whether it actually changes the physical condition of public schools, and the...

We describe how the complexity in the FAFSA hinders students’ ability to meet financial aid deadlines and examine the feasibility of using a simplified formula to determine aid...

This paper reports the results of an experimental evaluation of Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI). Developed over 15 years ago, EBLI aims to provide teachers with instructional strategies to improve reading accuracy, fluency and...

Community colleges serve those whose labor market productivity is critical to national economic progress: first-generation college students, displaced workers, minority students, and low-income students. Yet we know relatively little about...

This paper examines the effect of marginal price on students’ educational investments using rich administrative data on students at Michigan public universities. Marginal price refers to the amount colleges charge for each additional credit taken in...

In this paper, I provide an economic perspective on policy issues related to student debt in the United States. I lay out the economic rationale for government provision of student loans and summarize time trends in student borrowing. I describe the...

This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest...

Borrowing for college has risen for decades, and today 7 million of these student loans are in default. Yet the cost of borrowing is far lower than the lifetime payoff to college, which is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover,...

We use admissions lotteries to estimate the effects of attendance at Boston's charter high schools on college preparation, college attendance, and college choice. Charter attendance increases pass rates on the high-stakes exam required for high...

This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We use the random assignment in the Project STAR experiment to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry,...

In the face of declining state support, many universities have introduced differential pricing by undergraduate program as an alternative to across-the-board tuition increases. This practice aligns price more closely with instructional costs and...

Boston’s over-subscribed charter schools generate impressive gains on tests taken through the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Lottery estimates show that each year spent at a charter middle school boosts MCAS scores by about a...

In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. Aid now...