Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school-based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low-performing students face in retaining and attracting high-quality teachers. Most clear...

Much of the controversy about whether mortgage lenders discriminate against minorities can be explained in terms of the confusion about how to define discrimination. Based on the legal definition, careful studies of loan denial rates, such as that done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston,...

Although the federal No Child Left Behind program judges the effectiveness of schools based on their students' achievement status, many policy analysts argue that schools should be measured, instead, by their students' achievement growth. Using a 10-year student-level panel data set from North...

Although a relatively new idea in the U.S., weighted student funding (WSF) for individual schools has a long history in the Netherlands. This country of about 16.5 million people has been using a version of WSF for all its primary schools (serving children from age 4 to 12) for 25 years. In this...

Using panel data that track individual students from year to year, we examine the effects of charter schools in North Carolina on racial segregation and black-white test score gaps. We find that North Carolina's system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both black and white...

The vote on Massachusetts' Proposition 2½-and by extension the votes to restrain or roll back taxes in other states as well-should not be interpreted simply as expressions of the narrowly defined self-interest of the voters. This study shows that other characteristics such as sex, race,...