This paper reports the results of an experimental evaluation of Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI). Developed over 15 years ago, EBLI aims to provide teachers with instructional strategies to improve reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension. Sixty-three teachers in grades 2-5 in seven...

This paper examines whether school COVID-19 policies influenced enrollment differently by student age and race/ethnicity. Unlike much prior research, we (i) analyze enrollments for virtually the entire U.S. public school population for both the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, (ii) compare...

Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively recent entrant into the U.S. early education landscape, combining features of public pre-K and regular kindergarten. We provide the first estimates of the impact of Michigan's TK program on 3rd grade test scores. Using an augmented regression...

Current education reform proposals involve improving educational outcomes through forms of market-based competition and expanded parental choice. In this paper, we explore the impact of choice through open enrollment within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Roughly half of the students within...

We document two empirical phenomena. First, the observational wage returns to hours worked within occupation is small, and even negative in some specifications. Second, the wage return to average hours worked across occupations is large. We develop a conceptual framework that reconciles these...

In this paper, we leverage randomized admissions lotteries to estimate the impact of attending a National Heritage Academy (NHA) charter school. NHA is the fourth largest for-profit charter operator in the country, enrolling more than 56,000 students in 86 schools across 9 states. Unlike several...

Lead poisoning has well-known impacts for the developing brain of young children, with a large literature documenting the negative effects of elevated blood lead levels on academic and behavioral outcomes. In April of 2014, the municipal water source in Flint, Michigan was changed, causing lead...

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents...

This review paper, prepared for the forthcoming Russell Sage volume Changing Poverty, considers the ability of different education policies to improve the learning outcomes of low-income children in America. Disagreements on this question stem in part from different beliefs about the problems...

In this paper, we estimate the impact of receiving an NIH grant on subsequent publications and citations. Our sample consists of all applications (unsuccessful as well as successful) to the NIH from 1980 to 2000 for postdoctoral training grants (F32s) and standard research grants (R01s). Both...