Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This paper studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school...

The modern concept of the wealth of nations emerged by the early twentieth century. Capital embodied in people human capital mattered. The United States led all nations in mass postelementary education during the human-capital century.' The American system of education was shaped by New World...

The United States led all other nations in the development of universal and publicly-funded secondary school education and much of the growth occurred from 1910 to 1940. The focus here is on the reasons for the high school movement' in American generally and why it occurred so early and swiftly...

Human capital accumulation and technological change were to the twentieth century what physical capital accumulation was to the nineteenth century -- the engine of growth. The accumulation of human capital accounts for almost 60% of all capital formation and 28% of the per capita growth residual...

We estimate long-run impacts to the Pathways to Education program, a comprehensive set of coaching, tutoring, group activities and financial incentives offered to disadvantaged students beginning in Grade 9. High school administrative records are matched to income tax records to follow...

This paper studies the effect of exposure to female and male "high-achievers" in high school on the long-run educational outcomes of their peers. Using data from a recent cohort of students in the United States, we identify a causal effect by exploiting quasi-random variation in the exposure of...

Recent research has focused on what shapes gender differences in academic achievement and students' choice of university field of study. In this paper we examine how teachers' gender role attitudes and stereotypes influence the gender gap by affecting the school environment. We explore the...

Many U.S. students arrive on college campus lacking the skills expected for college-level work. As state leaders seek to increase postsecondary enrollment and completion, public colleges have sought to lessen the delays created by remedial course requirements. Tennessee has taken a novel...

This paper examines the dynamics of the gender gap in high math achievement over the high school years using data from the American Mathematics Competition. A clear gender gap is already present by 9th grade and the gender gap widens over the high school years. High-achieving students must...

We examine the impact of having a same-race teacher on students' long-run educational attainment. Leveraging random student-teacher pairings in the Tennessee STAR class-size experiment, we find that black students randomly assigned to a black teacher in grades K-3 are 5 percentage points (7%)...