Analytic methods

Christina Weiland, co-director of the Education Policy Initiative and professor at the Ford School, delivered her inaugural lecture as the Karl and Martha Kohn Professor of Social Policy. Weiland, who is also a professor at the Marsal Family School...

Research conducted by the Ford School's Sarah Cohodes has been cited for "defining education in 2024." The 74 network, a non-profit education news service, highlighted Cohodes' research among 11 other studies as some of the "biggest discoveries from...

Brian Jacob, Ford School professor discussed his recent papers "Did COVID-19 Shift the “Grammar of Schooling”?" and "The Lasting Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic" coauthored with Cristina Stanojevich about how schools have been transformed since the...

A new $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education will improve Michigan’s statewide longitudinal data system, the go-to source for critical education data going to researchers and other stakeholders in Michigan and nationwide. The grant...

What are the dynamics of inequity in labor markets? How do we determine appropriate categories for people in a multicultural society?  How is the U.S. approach to ethnicity and nationality different from what they are doing in Europe?  These were...

The 2023 Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute (JSI) has welcomed 23 students from 11 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This year’s cohort will spend seven weeks taking classes, participating in...

The value of Pre-K education has been widely acknowledged through decades of research. However, much of that research has come from studying older and often smaller programs than those currently being implemented across the country. To determine how...

Rigorous research in early care and education requires high-quality data, often gathered through intensive in-person fieldwork. The COVID-19 pandemic upended the ECE sector, making it much more challenging to safely and successfully collect data in...

When examining the effect on the labor market of post-secondary education in a particular state, researchers often use administrative outcome data – statewide statistics that look at university graduates and the effect on their employment. Yet when...

Four research projects conducted by affiliates of the Education Policy Initiative (EPI) at the University of Michigan received a total of nearly $10 million in new grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of...

The state of Michigan’s Tuition Incentive Program (TIP) has a unique structure that distinguishes it from other state need-based financial aid programs. Currently funding some 25,000 students annually, the program is a “first-dollar" scholarship...

Determining the monetary value of an education often is calculated based on what students pay in tuition and fees compared to what they earn after graduation. But, Kevin Stange, Ford School associate professor of public policy, and four other...

Education Week has unveiled the 2022 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, which rank the 200 university-based scholars in the United States who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy. Brian Jacob and Christina Weiland...

What are the best ways to judge how instruction in pre-kindergarten classrooms is organized? Linkages between facets of classroom organization such as better organization of materials, smooth transitions, and clear routines are thought to make...

Who would pay if we stop using natural gas? New research co-authored by economist Catherine Hausman considers the equity impacts of transitioning from natural gas to other energy sources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration,...

Researchers from U-M campuses and all across the country are using education data provided by the State of Michigan to study a wide variety of topics ranging from the effects of COVID-19 on public school enrollment to the role of neighborhood...

Policy Brief from the University of Michigan’s Education Policy Initiative outlines a vision for high-quality universal preschool in the state of Washington High-quality preschool helps prepare children for kindergarten and promotes their long-term...

The Education Policy Initiative (EPI) Training Program in Causal Inference in Education Policy Research (CIEPR) graduated its first full cohort of PhDs in 2021. First funded in 2015, the focus of the program is to prepare doctoral students to...

What is the impact of a liberal arts education on students’ lives? University of Michigan researchers, including Ford School faculty members Paul Courant and Kevin Stange, were recently awarded a $1.1 million grant extension to answer this question...

A paper by Brian Jacob and Jesse Rothstein (U-C Berkeley), "The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems," was published in the Summer 2016 edition of the American Economic Association's Journal of Economic Perspectives. The piece...

Brian Jacob was called to testify last week as a witness for the prosecution in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, in which prosecutors allege a dozen educators engaged in a “widespread, cleverly disguised” conspiracy to improve their...