United States public schools in the first decade of the twenty-first century are faced with increasing demands for improving performance; simultaneously, government budgets are stagnant or shrinking. Thus it is particularly important to consider ways in which schools and school districts can use...

While academic researchers and policymakers debate the relative merits of ranking public schools and the alternative methodologies for doing so, classifications of public schools have become a feature of the educational landscape. In many cases, the goal is to distinguish the "best" schools or...

In the spring of 2007, the New York City Department of Education announced an ambitious plan to change the way it distributes resources across its more than 1,400 schools. The plan, known as the “Fair Student Funding” initiative, is intended to change funding methods in two ways: first, by...

This study examines the effects of negative equity on children's academic performance, using data on children attending Florida public schools and housing transactions from the State of Florida. Our empirical strategy exploits variation over time in the timing of family moves to Florida in order...

<bold>Problem:</bold> Policymakers and community development practitioners view increasing subsidized owner-occupied housing as a mechanism to improve urban neighborhoods, but little research studies the impact of such investments on community amenities. <bold>Purpose:</bold> We examine the impact of subsidized...

This article was presented at a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in April 2005, "Urban Dynamics in New York City." The goal of the conference was threefold: to examine the historical transformations of the engine-of-growth industries in New York and distill the main...