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EPI Policy briefs

The Effectiveness of Need-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Michigan's Tuition Incentive Program

June 1, 2026
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Kevin Stange, Kelcie Ferrara-Gerson, Margaret Peterman, Nelson Oviedo, Nathan Sotherland, Nicole Wagner Lam, Marissa Thompson, Katherine Michelmore
The Michigan Tuition Incentive Program (TIP) is a first-dollar financial aid program that supports low-income students in college. TIP typically covers the cost of tuition and fees for an associate's degree at Michigan community colleges and select o...
Students working together on laptop computer
Other reports

Understanding Michigan’s Reconnect Program Applicants

October 30, 2025
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Brian Jacob, Kevin Stange, Alex Bartik, Brad Hershbein, Bryan Stuart
The Michigan Reconnect Program was launched in 2021, providing free community college tuition to Michiganders who are 25 or older and who have not already earned a college degree. In this report, the authors summarize the characteristics of individua...
A young female checking information on a laptop.
Boston RPP briefs

Scaling high quality: An implementation study of Boston's Universal Pre-K expansion to community-based programs

August 18, 2025
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Christina Weiland, Paola Guerrero Rosada, Anne Taylor, Louisa Penfold, Rachel Kushner, Catherine Snow, Yuzhu Xia, Meghan McCormick
Domain-specific, evidence-based curricula and job-embedded coaching have been called a “best bet” for improving instructional quality in public prekindergarten programs. However, implementation science studies that offer lessons for scaling this appr...
Kids on mat with teacher at the front
Boston RPP briefs

One Score to Rule Them All? Comparing the Predictive and Concurrent Validity of 30 Hearts and Flowers Scoring Approaches

February 15, 2024
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Tiffany Wu, Christina Weiland, Meghan McCormick, JoAnn Hsueh, Catherine Snow, Jason Sachs
The Hearts and Flowers (H&F) task is a computerized executive functioning (EF) assessment that has been used to measure EF from early childhood to adulthood. It provides data on accuracy and reaction time (RT) across three different task blocks (hear...
Teacher high fiving young child
Boston RPP briefs

Instructional alignment is associated with PreK persistence: Evidence from the Boston Public Schools

December 1, 2023
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Meghan McCormick, Cullen MacDowell, Christina Weiland, JoAnn Hsueh, Michelle Maier, Mirjana Pralica, Samuel Maves, Catherine Snow, Jason Sachs
This study uses implementation fidelity data from PreK to 1st grade in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to identify profiles of instructional alignment and examine whether stronger alignment for PreK attenders is associated with sustained benefits of ...
Teacher with young child
Boston RPP briefs

Going the Distance: Disparities in Pre-K Enrollment in Higher-Quality Schools by Geographic Proximity, Race/Ethnicity, Family Income, and Home Language

April 29, 2023
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Meghan McCormick, Mirjana Pralica, JoAnn Hsueh, Christina Weiland, Amanda Ketner Weissman, Anna Shapiro, Samantha Xia, Cullen MacDowell, Samuel Maves, Anne Taylor, Jason Sachs
This study leverages six years of public prekindergarten (pre-K) and kindergarten data (N = 22,469) from the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to examine enrollment in BPS pre-K from 2012–2017 for students from different racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and l...
Learning from lottery-based evaluations of early education programs
Boston RPP briefs

Enrollment in Pre-K and children's social-emotional and executive functioning skills: To what extent are associations sustained across time?

April 20, 2023
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Lillie Moffett, Amanda Weissman, Meghan McCormick, Christina Weiland, Joann Hsueh, Catherine Snow, Jason Sachs
Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) improves the school readiness of all children, but less is known about whether associations between enrollment in Pre-K and different indicators of social–emotional and executive functioning (EF) skills are sustained as child...
Children and teacher reading
Boston RPP briefs

Professional Development in the Time of COVID-19: Evidence and Insights from Early Educators in the Boston Public Schools

April 7, 2023
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Christina Weiland, Meghan McCormick, Tiffany Wu, Cullen MacDowell, Paola Guerrero-Rosada, Anne Taylor, Catherine Snow, Jason Sachs
This brief is part of a larger body of research examining the Boston Universal Pre-K (UPK) expansion and the Expanding Children’s Early Learning (ExCEL) P-3 Project focused on sustaining children’s early learning gains. As we navigate the repercussio...
Teacher wearing a mask elbow bumping with child wearing a mask
Boston RPP briefs

Enrollment in Pre-K and children's social-emotional and executive functioning skills: To what extent are associations sustained across time?

December 22, 2022
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Lillie Moffett, Amanda Weissman, Meghan McCormick, Christina Weiland, JoAnn Hsueh, Catherine Snow, Jason Sachs
Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) improves the school readiness of all children, but less is known about whether associations between enrollment in Pre-K and different indicators of social–emotional and executive functioning (EF) skills are sustained as child...
Students sit around teacher reading, some raising hands
Boston RPP briefs

Learning experiences vary across young children in the same classroom: Evidence from the individualizing student instruction measure in the Boston Public Schools

November 28, 2022
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Christina Weiland, Lillie Moffett, Paola Guerrero Rosada, Amanda Weissman, Kehui Zhan, Michelle Maier, Catherine Snow, Meghan McCormick, JoAnn Hsueh, Jason Sachs
Classroom-level quality measures are widely used in early education settings but may mask important variation in learning experiences across children in the same classroom. This study investigates this possibility using detailed data from an observat...
Students raising hands in classroom
Boston RPP briefs

Mixed-Delivery Public Prekindergarten: Differences in Demographics, Quality, and Children’s Gains in Community-Based versus Public School Programs across Five Large-Scale Systems

September 1, 2022
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Christina Weiland, Meghan McCormick, Jennifer Duer, Allison Friedman-Kraus, Mirjana Pralica, Samantha Xia, Milagros Nores, Shira Mattera
Nearly all states with public prekindergarten programs use mixed-delivery systems, with classrooms in both public schools and community-based settings.  However, experts have long raised concerns about systematic inequities by setting within these pu...
Children and teacher reading