In 1996, New York State began requiring all graduating high school students (starting with the Class of 1999) to pass rigorous end-of-course exams in five subjects. This study explores whether high school resources have been reallocated in the wake of these new standards and whether reallocation...

This article describes the potential for using K–12 education data to support school improvement efforts and the effective and efficient use of education resources. It examines the availability and transparency of education data in California as part of the Getting Down to Facts effort to...

One of the key provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act requires states to ensure that every teacher be “highly qualified.” Though the meaning of “highly qualified” remains hotly contested, the legislation's emphasis on teachers is well founded. Nearly all modern research on the...

Households pay a premium to live in houses assigned to high quality public schools, and the housing market yields information about the demand for public school quality. The current study estimates a two-stage house price hedonic emphasizing the role that private schools play in the willingness...

In 2002, Florida adopted a test-based promotion policy in the third grade in an attempt to end social promotion. Similar policies are currently operating in Texas, New York City, and Chicago and affect at least 17 percent of public school students nationwide. Using individual-level data on the...

Using new institutional-level data, we assess the impact of changing federal aid levels on institutional-level Pell revenues. Using various policy instruments associated with Pell generosity, we quantify the sensitivity of institutional Pell revenues to the generosity of the Pell Grant program....

The retirement behavior of Pennsylvania public school teachers in 1997–98 and 1998–99, a period when state early retirement incentives were temporarily increased, is modeled using a choice framework that emphasizes both pecuniary and nonpecuniary factors of the retirement decision under a...

Governance is widely believed to be an important determinant of the effectiveness of educational systems. Yet there are few systematic evaluations of the linkages between educational governance and student outcomes, or cogent frameworks for evaluating the effectiveness of governance arrangements...

Certain studies and the California legislature have recently concluded that seniority preference rules in teacher collective bargaining agreements facilitate a teacher ‘quality gap’ by permitting senior teachers to transfer to schools with higher-performing and more affluent children. This...