Education reform advocates who base policy decisions on empirical research often face the argument that because background variables explain so much of student outcomes, it follows that policy interventions cannot be effective. This policy brief explains the logical fallacy in the argument,...

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to...

Since 2002, public school teachers in Florida have been permitted to choose between a defined benefit (DB) and a defined contribution (DC) retirement plan. We exploit this unique policy environment to study new teachers’ revealed preferences over pension plan structures. Roughly 30...

Using data on a large sample of recent Italian graduates, this paper investigates the extent to which participation in study abroad programs during university studies impacts subsequent employment likelihood. To address the problem of endogeneity related to participation in study abroad...

Student loan debt and defaults have been steadily rising, igniting public worry about the associated public and private risks. This has led to controversial regulatory attempts to curb defaults by holding colleges, particularly those in the for-profit sector, increasingly accountable for the...

Using data from a longitudinal survey of college students from over 400 institutions, we examine the impacts of occupational internship programs and voluntary academic leave on returning academic achievement, post-college ambitions, and general facets of the college experience. Previous...

School districts throughout the United States are increasingly providing greater autonomy to local public (non-charter) school principals. In 2005–06, Chicago Public Schools initiated the Autonomous Management and Performance Schools program, granting academic, programmatic, and operational...

Historically, the early childhood care and education (ECCE) workforce has been characterized as a low-education, low-compensation, low-stability workforce. In recent years, considerable investments have been made to correct this, but we lack evidence about the extent to which these investments...

School voucher programs have become a prominent aspect of the education policy landscape in the United States. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federally funded voucher program in the United States. Since 2004 it has offered publicly funded private school vouchers to nearly...

Conventional value-added assessment requires that achievement be reported on an interval scale. While many metrics do not have this property, application of item response theory (IRT) is said to produce interval scales. However, it is difficult to confirm that the requisite conditions are met....