This article draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts to describe challenges associated with lottery-based research. It presents evidence on the prevalence of oversubscribed charter middle schools and compares...

Assesses the effects of specific welfare reform policies, as well as other factors such as the economy, on changes in the food stamp caseload between 1994 and 1999. Suggests that economic growth explains nearly half of the caseload decline over this period. TANF work requirements, work...

This study explores the disparity in access to effective teachers in 29 school districts across the country, revealing that disadvantaged students receive poorer-quality instruction, on average, compared with other students. Mathematica conducted the studies for the Institute of Education Sciences.

A Research Report from the School Dropout Demonstration Assistance Program Evaluation.

Using longitudinal, student-level data, this working paper examines the entry and exit of students in KIPP middle schools, comparing KIPP’s rates of attrition and replacement with rates in nearby district-run schools.

Nonexperimental methods, such as regression modeling or statistical matching, produce unbiased estimates if the underlying assumptions hold, but these assumptions are usually not testable. Most studies testing nonexperimental designs find that they fail to produce unbiased estimates, but these...

Although there is a large literature on the effects of U.S. transfer programs on labor supply, this is the first such study of the Food Stamp Program.