The HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally_ scholarship program, which began in 1993, is one of the most popular public policies ever enacted in the state of Georgia. This lottery-funded program pays for tuition, fees, and books at any public college or university in the state for any...

The ability of propensity score analysis (PSA) to match impact estimates derived from random assignment (RA) is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within study comparisons, the estimates provided by PSA and RA differ substantially when PSA...

In this brief we take a closer look at the mechanisms used to distribute resources across public schools. We first present what we know about the current distribution of educational resources within New York City and other large city districts. Then we discuss current efforts to promote greater...

Classic epidemiology looks at what happens to people who live in a defined region over time. For example, birth rate, the number of births that occur among populations over a year, is a common statistics that we're all familiar with. Since the early 1990s we have conducted research at Dartmouth...

This paper estimates the redistributive effects of welfare state expenditures on social and economic disparities in the economic well-being of citizens in ten nations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources for cash and non-cash social...

In June 2003 the New York State Court of Appeals altered the education-finance landscape with its ruling in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York. This ruling called for “[r]eforms to the current system of financing school funding” designed to ensure “that every school in New York City...

New York State provides aid to local schools through a confusing maze of aid programs that are, according to many commentators, unfair to the neediest school districts, often defined as those with many students who are poor or otherwise "at risk." For example, New York City, which, by any...

Performance standards have been at the center of recent debates on educational reform. Many states have implemented new performance standards, often based on student test scores, and a district's state aid is sometimes linked to its success in meeting the standards. This focus on performance is...

Hospice is a system of end-of-life care that’s not used to its full potential. That is, hospice is not used in the way that would benefit patients and families as much as it could. My argument is that this is an issue of usability, or ergonomics—the science of design. I illustrate how to...

This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways. We show how pupil weights, which are included in...