Finding an instrument that is orthogonal to the disturbance term in the wage equation has been a topic of great deal of debate. Recently, Chesson et al. (2006) proposed that higher discount rates are significantly associated with a range of sexual behaviours, including having sex before age of...

Using detailed data from North Carolina, we examine the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools as well as the impact of a policy designed to reduce absences. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: when schools are ranked by the fraction of students...

Children's noncognitive skills, mental health, and behavior are important predictors of future earnings and educational attainment. Their behavior in the classroom also affects their peers' behavior and achievement. There is limited prior evidence, however, concerning the impact of school...

The vast majority of research and policy related to teacher quality focuses on the supply of teachers and ignores teacher demand. In particular, the important role of school principals in hiring teachers is rarely considered. Using interviews of school principals in a midsized Florida school...

Many states have used professional judgment panels to determine the resources schools need to meet certain performance targets. This study initiates a critical study of that method. Using budget simulations with hypothetical schools, we collected the judgments of forty-five principals about how...

Educational equality is one important value of justice in education, but it is only one. This article makes a case for a meritocratic principle of educational equality and shows that certain arguments against that principle do not justify rejecting it. It would be wrong to, for the sake of...

This article seeks to move the adequacy issue forward by demonstrating that under a certain set of assumptions, it is possible to provide a set of programmatic offerings that corresponds well with what we consider to be an emerging, research-based consensus about what constitutes best practices....

This article discusses issues of justice concerning school finance with a focus on the development of a conception of equality of educational opportunity. Emphasis is put on discussing the views of the other contributors in this symposium. The main conclusions of the discussion are that (1)...

In this study, a cost function is used to estimate the costs for California districts to meet the achievement goals set out for them by the state. I calculate estimates of base costs (i.e., per pupil costs in a district with relatively low levels of student need) and marginal costs (i.e., the...