Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), which combines community investments with reform minded charter schools, is one of the … eliminate the achievement gap or whether the issues that poor children bring to school are too much for educators alone to … overcome. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies lead us to the same story: Harlem Children's Zone is …

This paper describes a field experiment in Oklahoma City Public Schools in which students were provided with free … cellular phones and daily information about the link between human capital and future outcomes via text message. Students …' reported beliefs about the relationship between education and outcomes were influenced by treatment, and treatment students …

After decades of narrowing, the achievement gap between black and white school children widened in the 1990s - a period …

be more effective because students do not know the educational production function, and thus have little clue how to turn …

one agent (students) for various inputs in the education production function (i.e. attendance, behavior, interim … assessments, homework, and uniforms). In Houston, TX, incentives were "vertical" - provided to multiple agents (parents, teachers …, and students) for a single input (math objectives). On outcomes for which we provided direct incentives, there were large …

challenge is to understand the obstacles undermining the development of skill in black and Hispanic children in primary and … secondary school. Second, analyzing ten large datasets that include children ranging in age from eight months old to seventeen … assessments used. The gap does not exist in the first year of life, but black students fall behind quickly thereafter and …

In previous research, a substantial gap in test scores between White and Black students persists, even after …