Text-message based parenting programs have proven successful in improving parental engagement and preschoolers' literacy development. The tested programs have provided a combination of (a) general information about important literacy skills, (b) actionable advice (i.e., specific examples of such...

The success of any governmental subsidy depends on whether it increases or crowds out existing consumption. Yet to date there has been little empirical evidence, particularly in the education sector, on whether government intervention crowds out private provision. Universal preschool policies...

Expansion of the use of student test score data to measure teacher performance has fueled recent policy interest in using those data to measure the effects of school administrators as well. However, little research has considered the capacity of student performance data to uncover principal...

More than one out of every five principals leaves their school each year. In some cases, these career changes are driven by the choices of district leadership. In other cases, principals initiate the move, often demonstrating preferences to work in schools with higher achieving students from...

The literature on effective schools emphasizes the importance of a quality teaching force in improving educational outcomes for students. In this paper, we use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a school's effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development and...

Researchers using cross-sectional data have failed to produce systematic evidence that teacher salaries affect student outcomes. These studies generally do not account for non-pecuniary job attributes and alternative wage opportunities, which affect the opportunity cost of choosing to teach....

This paper models the impact of state finance systems on the distribution of spending levels across districts. The paper assumes sorting of residents into districts based on demand for school spending rather than income, as most previous studies have done. With this approach, I am able to...

Tax deductions and tax credits for educational expenditures are proliferating across states. For example, in Minnesota taxpayers can deduct up to $1625 for elementary students or $2500 for secondary students for tuition, textbooks, transportation, academic summer camps, and summer school....

School accountability—the process of evaluating school performance on the basis of student performance measures—is increasingly prevalent around the world. In the United States, accountability has become a centerpiece of both Democratic and Republican federal administrations' education...