The federal Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) program provides loans to parents of dependent undergraduate students to help pay for education expenses. To bring the standards in line with those used by banks, the U.S. Department of Education tightened the credit standards for PLUS...

This report presents descriptive analyses of the enrollment patterns, background characteristics, test scores, and graduation rates of students enrolled in three types of public high schools in Philadelphia: alternative disciplinary schools; alternative accelerated schools for students who...

This report summarizes the evidence on measures of student achievement growth used in teacher evaluation that do not rely on traditional annual state assessments, and that instead use commercially available assessments, locally developed common assessments, and teacher-developed student learning...

This report evaluates the impacts of Philadelphia’s accelerated schools—alternative high schools serving students at high risk of dropping out—on enrollees’ graduation rates and on rates of credit accumulation for recent enrollees.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate autonomously, outside the direct control of local school districts, and generally enroll students through the choices of their parents rather than through residential assignment. These schools have proved popular nationwide. The authors...

This article measures the achievement impacts of 41 Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter middle schools nationwide and found consistently positive and statistically significant test-score effects in reading, math, science, and social studies.

This working paper discusses a new analysis, using data from Florida and Chicago, suggesting that charter high schools are not only increasing postsecondary educational attainment but may also boost students' long-run earnings.