In the first rigorous study of the impacts of Expeditionary Learning (EL) model schools, Mathematica found that EL middle school students perform better in reading and math than their counterparts in other public 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...

Most research on equal educational opportunity has focused on inputs like teacher experience and degrees. This brief estimated teachers’ value added (contribution to student achievement growth) and measured access to highest-performing teachers in high- and low-poverty schools. Across 10...