Research projects

This study aims to understand student, counselor, and policy maker experiences with state financial aid programs, like the Tuition Incentive Program, and how they shape student postsecondary decisions and the affordability of postsecondary options in Michigan. Using interviews with high school students, high school counselors, college advisors, and those tasked with outreach and implementation, we will better understand multiple perspectives on state financial aid implementation and its usefulness at giving students more postsecondary choices.  We plan to talk to students and counselors...

The purpose of this project is to evaluate how the Tuition Incentive Program (TIP), a large first-dollar aid program in Michigan, impacts postsecondary outcomes for low-income high school students. This project is the first rigorous evaluation of TIP, which will yield broader lessons for college affordability policy in other states and at the federal level.The research team is using a mixed-methods approach. In the first stage of the project, the researcher team has utilized administrative data to perform a descriptive analysis of program eligibility and take-up. To estimate TIP program...

The Boston Early Adulthood study is the second phase of an ongoing study, which follows 12,740 children who applied to the Boston Pre-K program between 2007 and 2011. The Boston Pre-K program is somewhat unique in the national landscape as it uses evidence- and play-based language, literacy, and math-focused curriculum, pays teachers on the same scale as their K-12 peers, provides coaching supports to teachers, and is open to children in Boston, regardless of family characteristics.  The first students to experience the program are just reaching early adulthood, allowing our team to estimate...

The barriers facing community college students are numerous. An elite higher education institution, like the University of Michigan, can play a transformative role in the economic mobility of low-income students through programs like HAIL Scholars, but relatively few low-income students ever matriculate at such institutions. Community colleges are  good places to find high-achieving, low-income students who would benefit from further enrollment at institutions like U-M. In this project, researchers will develop and implement a randomized controlled trial of an intervention that aims to...

The COVID-19 crisis upended life for young children, their families, and the early care and education (ECE) programs that serve them. Leaders need a clear understanding of the pandemic’s impact, particularly as the Biden administration makes historic investments in ECE. To meet this need, a team of early childhood experts synthesized findings from 76 high-quality studies, spanning 16 national studies, 45 studies from 31 states, and 15 local studies. The experts then collaborated with ECE policy and practice leaders from multiple states to identify actionable, evidence-backed, and...

In partnership with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), the research team is analyzing administrative education records to describe transitional kindergarten programming in Michigan (i.e. Young Fives) and to examine its impacts on children’s kindergarten readiness and K-3 outcomes. This study also has several connections to the COVID-19 crisis. Program data will be used to describe the progress of cohorts of children more versus less directly affected by COVID-19. Additionally, surveys of families, teachers, and districts on their COVID-19-related experiences and challenges will be...

This study gathers and analyzes data from qualitative interviews with high school students in Michigan. These interviews ask students to describe their college decision making process and to what extent financial aid programs or interventions were effective at influencing their postsecondary decisions. The information gathered through this project provides vital insight, directly from the student perspective, on how financial aid interventions work and who they work for. Moreover, this project sheds light on the link between postsecondary inequality and student decision-making. Finally, the...

In 2020, the Michigan Legislature asked that the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) produce a report analyzing trends in college acceleration program participation in Michigan and the extent to which postsecondary access and outcomes is improved as a result of these programs. To meet these aims, MDE has partnered with EPI to study enrollment, performance, and postsecondary outcomes for students who enrolled in international baccalaureate (IB), advanced placement (AP), dual or concurrent enrollment (DE), early or middle college high schools (EMC), and career and technical education (CTE)...

This study aims to examine the extent to which COVID-19 has led to changes in the total number and composition of students enrolled in K-12 public schools in Michigan. The study team will use student-level data to better understand which specific types of students did not enroll or return in the fall of 2020. For instance, whether re-enrollment patterns were different by prior year achievement, attendance, economically disadvantaged status, race, and district and neighborhood characteristics. Separately, the research team will complement the Michigan data with nationally-representative data...

The Michigan Department of Education is using the federal Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant to support literacy development in five districts in the state. Over the course of the five-year, $16 million grant, districts and statewide partners will work to advance literacy skills for children from birth through grade 12. The five districts awarded funding are: Benton Harbor Area Schools  Detroit Public Schools Community District  Flint Community Schools  Muskegon Heights Public School Academy System  Pontiac School District The goal of the grant funding is to...

Higher education institutions play an outsized role in facilitating skill development, yet employers regularly cite a gap between the skills they need and those new college graduates possess. One explanation for this disconnect is that technological change, industrial restructuring, and international trade are continuously evolving the demand for skills in the labor market, but that investment is slow to respond. This project uses several quasi-experimental techniques, and the universe of all online job ads paired with novel data on college course-taking over the past decade, to study how...

Literacy knowledge and skills developed in the early elementary grades predict long-term literacy achievement, on-time graduation, and later-life outcomes. In recognizing the critical importance of establishing early literacy skills, there has been substantial instructional and policy attention given to improving rates of reading proficiency in the elementary grades. In 2016, based on the recommendation of the Michigan Third Grade Reading Workgroup, the Michigan legislature passed the Read by Grade Three Law (RBG3), which requires schools to identify learners who are struggling with reading...

The Boston Universal Pre-K study is a mixed-methods implementation study of the expanded universal Pre-K program in Boston. In April 2019 the City of Boston announced a historic investment in expanding high-quality universal preschool for four year olds through a combination of community-based programs and existing public school seats. We are studying the implementation of this mixed-delivery program with an emphasis on identifying the barriers and facilitators of scaling quality programming. This study has evolved over the course of the pandemic and the study team has worked closely with...

Building on the work of the Mellon Research Forum, University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) has brought together seven 4-year postsecondary institutions (U-M, the City University of New York, Georgia College and State University, Indiana University, Truman State University, University of Houston and University of California, Irvine) to pilot measures of the liberal arts educational experience linked to various long-term outcomes for students. This collaboration is laying the foundation to scaling the work and develop the kind of large data...

The central aim of this project is to estimate the causal effect of students’ college major choices  on their postsecondary and labor market outcomes. The combination of a research design that can identify causal effects of major choice with rich administrative data that allow us to track students from high school through college and into the labor market is novel in the higher education literature and will provide new and important evidence on how college major choices affect students during college and...

The Sustaining the Boost project was an Institute of Education Sciences-funded study of the Boston Public Schools Pre-K program. It was a retrospective efficacy study of the short- and medium-term impacts of the Boston public Pre-K program on key child academic and school progress outcomes through the end of third grade. The team used new and innovative methods that have not yet been applied to public Pre-K programs, including a lottery-based identification strategy and impact variation across sites. Key outcomes in the study were children’s persistence in the Boston Public Schools from K-3,...

The Expanding Children’s Early Learning (ExCEL) project is part of the Early Learning Network, an Institute of Education Sciences-funded network examining current policies and practices, identifying malleable factors associated with early learning and achievement, and developing tools to assess early learning instruction, interactions, and environments. The Boston ExCEL project is led by MDRC and has followed a cohort of Boston students from Pre-K to 5th grade. The longitudinal study is focused on identifying malleable factors that promote children’s success into elementary schools, including...

EPI researchers and University of Michigan administrators developed and piloted the HAIL scholarship research program to attract low-income, high-achieving students to consider applying to and enrolling in the university. The project addresses three issues known to affect college application behavior among low-income, high-achieving students: uncertainty about their suitability for an elite school, over-estimates by students and parents of the net cost of college, and procedural barriers such as aid applications. The intervention targets low-income, high-achieving students in Michigan, as...

Preparing to Succeed was the first study for the Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership and, in many ways, it kicked off our long-term partnership. The study examined the effects of the Boston Public Schools Pre-K program in 2008-2009, after BPS made evidence-based investments in the quality of the program. The study found Boston Pre-K program has some of the largest positive effects on kindergarten readiness of any Pre-K program in the country. Related publications are linked...

It has long been said that the transition from high school to college is a difficult one and that the presence of college remedial classes can be instrumental in helping students catch up to advanced coursework. This is especially true for math, a subject in which, as of 2003-2004, almost 40% of college students required remedial learning. Dual-credit policy seeks to solve this problem by offering high school students the opportunity to learn college content and earn college credit while still in high school. This intervention aligns high school and college coursework, not only to reduce the...

Virtual education is touted as a promoter of both quality and access for students across the country. Several states require that students enroll in at least one online course before they graduate, and many states have recently passed legislation encouraging the use of online learning. Yet despite the burgeoning popularity of virtual schools, there remains a stark lack of evidence that these methods actually improve educational opportunity. Our project will fill this gap by exploring how access to the online sector affects students’ academic performance, as well as the effect of various...