We examine the educational production function and efficiency of public school districts in Illinois. Using nonparametric kernel methods, we find that most traditional schooling inputs are irrelevant in determining test scores (even in a very general setting). Property tax caps are the only...

This paper proposes an econometric framework to consistently estimate the average partial effects (APE) of school inputs on academic achievement when students are randomly assigned to schools within each school district but endogenously sort across school districts. We illustrate our method by...

Starting in the 2013-2014 school year, I conducted a randomized field experiment in fifty traditional public elementary schools in Houston, Texas designed to test the potential productivity benefits of teacher specialization in schools. Treatment schools altered their schedules to have teachers...