Publications

Charter schools offer choice to parents who would otherwise be constrained to having their children attend a residentially assigned traditional public school. The number of charter schools has increased steadily in the last decade, reflecting their...

Education provides both investment and consumption benefits; the former being realized after schooling is completed but the latter accruing only while schooling is actually taking place. In this paper, we quantify the importance of consumption value...

Education reform proposals are often based on high-profile or dramatic policy changes, many of which are expensive, politically controversial, or both. In this paper, we argue that the debates over these “flashy” policies have obscured a potentially...

The challenge of designing effective performance measurement and incentives is a general one in economic settings where behavior and outcomes are not easily observable. These issues are particularly prominent in education where, over the last two...

If principals have the authority to dismiss teachers, will they dismiss the less effective ones, or will they instead make perverse decisions by letting the good teachers go? Evidence from low-stakes surveys suggests that principals are able to...

Recent evidence on the large variance in teacher effectiveness has spurred renewed interest in teacher labor market policies. A substantial body of prior research documents that more highly qualified teachers tend to work in more advantaged schools,...

The challenge of designing effective performance measurement and incentives is a general one in economic settings where behavior and outcomes are not easily observable. These issues are particularly prominent in education where, over the last two...

Researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, MIT, and the University of Michigan have released the results of a new study that suggests that urban charter schools in Massachusetts have large positive effects on student achievement at...

The controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) brought test-based school accountability to scale across the United States. This study draws together results from multiple data sources to identify how the new accountability systems developed in...

The charter school landscape includes a variety of organizational models and a few national franchises. The nation's largest network of charter schools is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), with 80 schools operating or slated to open soon. KIPP...

How has the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act affected student achievement? This is no idle question, as the landmark federal law is long overdue for reauthorization. The Obama administration has recently urged Congress to add the issue to its already...

Charter schools affiliated with the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education. These schools feature a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms...

This paper takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining agreement that...

This paper studies the effect of employment protection on worker productivity and firm output in the context of a public school system. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining...

Despite the concern that student plagiarism has become increasingly common, there is relatively little objective data on the prevalence or determinants of this illicit behavior. This study presents the results of a natural field experiment designed...

This paper examines the role of educational expectations in the educational attainment process. We utilize data from a variety of datasets to document and analyze the trends in educational expectations between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s. We...

Charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools. In return for this freedom, charter schools are subject to heightened accountability....

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but...

The effect of vouchers on sorting between private and public schools depends upon the price elasticity of demand for private schooling. Estimating this elasticity is empirically challenging because prices and quantities are jointly determined in the...

Findings of groundbreaking study suggest charter school students in Boston outperform their peers at other public schools in Boston. Results for pilot schools were less clear; some analyses showed positive results at the elementary and high school...

Research on the relationship between teachers' characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. However, most...

Educational interventions are often narrowly targeted and temporary, and evaluations often focus on the short-run impacts of the intervention. Insofar as the positive effects of educational interventions fadeout over time, however, such assessments...

Researchers at the National Center on Performance Incentives recently examined teacher attitudes towards pay for performance policies in education, and how these views vary by teacher experience, subject area specialization, grade level taught,...

Low-achieving students in many school districts are retained in a grade in order to allow them to gain the academic or social skills that teachers believe are necessary to succeed academically. This practice is highly controversial, with many...

In this paper, we examine whether expanded access to sought-after schools can improve academic achievement. The setting we study is the "open enrollment" system in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We use lottery data to avoid the critical issue of...