Canonical human capital theories posit that education, by enhancing worker skills, reduces the likelihood that a worker will be laid-off during times of economic change. Yet, this has not been demonstrated causally. We link administrative education records from 1987 through 2002 to nationally...

We use estimates across all known "credibly causal" studies to examine the distributions of the causal effects of public K12 school spending on test scores and educational attainment in the United States. Under reasonable assumptions, for each of the 31 included studies, we compute the same...

Is a school's impact on high-stakes test scores a good measure of its overall impact on students? Do parents value school impacts on tests, longer-run outcomes, or both? To answer the first question, we exploit quasi-random school assignments and data from Trinidad and Tobago. We construct...

Using meta-analysis we find that, on average, sought-after schools do not improve student test scores. A potential explanation for this result is that parents value schools that improve outcomes not well-measured by test scores. We explore this notion using both administrative and survey data...

Social scientists have long sought to examine the causal impact of school spending on child outcomes. For a long time, the literature on this topic was largely descriptive so that it had been difficult to draw strong causal claims. However, there have been several recent studies in this space...

Using exogenous secondary school assignments to remove self-selection bias to schools and peers within schools, I credibly estimate both (1) the effect of attending schools with higher-achieving peers, and (2) the direct effect of short-run peer quality improvements within schools, on the same...

I investigate the importance of the match between teachers and schools for student achievement. I show that teacher effectiveness increases after a move to a different school, and I estimate teacher-school match effects using a mixed-effects estimator. Match quality "explains away" a quarter of,...

I analyze the effects of a program that pays both 11th and 12th grade students and teachers for passing scores on Advanced Placement exams on college outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that affected students of all ethnicities attend college in greater numbers, have...

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, leading to large differences in the school environments to which students of differing initial levels of achievement are exposed. Using both a regression discontinuity design and...

This paper extends the traditional test-score value-added model of teacher quality to allow for the possibility that teachers affect a variety of student outcomes through their effects on both students' cognitive and noncognitive skill. Results show that teachers have effects on skills not...