The Ford School successfully grew our faculty in 2024, bringing in experts to deepen our focus on early childhood education, health and aging, better government, and criminal justice policy. Additionally, we welcomed distinguished policymakers in...
A new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) lays out a new vision for high-quality preschool curricula that support equitable early education for all children. The report recommends that in the next five...
Student enrollment in districts that provided in-person schooling in fall 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic showed a greater decline among nonwhite students than white students.But in districts that offered virtual learning, the opposite was true,...
What’s on the barbie?
Economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson were on the guest list as the White House hosted a State Dinner for Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in October.
Skills match
More than fifty...
Sue Dynarski’s research is cited in a recent Inside Higher Ed analysis of an initiative that expanded access to the SAT for low-income, first-generation, and minority students.
2019 marked the highest number of SAT test-takers to date: 2.2...
On Thursday, September 19, Ford School Professor Susan Dynarski was named one of nine inaugural recipients of the University of Michigan Distinguished Diversity & Social Transformation Professorship.
The designation was recently created to...
A research study that centered around a large maize-and-blue-striped envelope caught the attention of more than just the students it sought to target. The work launched a larger initiative at the University of Michigan and is being lauded as...
The administrators of Grow Detroit’s Young Talent, a youth summer employment program, always knew that the program made a difference in participants’ lives. Now, that intuition is backed up by data.
Researchers at the University of Michigan,...
In her latest piece for the Brookings Institution, Susan Dynarski writes on the benefits of providing universal SAT and ACT testing, arguing their usefulness towards detecting academically talented students who typically “fall off the path to...
In his most recent report for the Brookings Institution, Brian Jacob highlights the many advantages of support programs for community college students, with data showing a profound impact on students receiving these interventions.
Jacob’s piece,...
In this Sunday’s New York Times print edition, Susan Dynarski will dispute the effectiveness of online courses, particularly for less proficient students.Drawing on research Dynarski did for the Brookings Institution last October, Dynarski’s new New...
New research conducted by Associate Professor of Public Policy Betsey Stevenson and Hanna Zlotnick (MPP ‘19) is highlighted in The Economist’s “How gender is (mis)represented in economics textbooks” and Inside Higher Ed’s “Gender Bias, by the...
Susan Dynarski will testify in front of the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing “Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Financial Aid Simplification and Transparency.” The hearing will be livestreamed...
In "How the U.S. Department of Education can foster education reform in the era of Trump and ESSA," Brian Jacob describes Michigan's disappointing performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. According to Jacob's analysis,...
Community colleges throughout the United States have low graduation rates, yet preliminary evidence from a new randomized trial suggests an effective policy prescription, write Susan Dynarski and Meghan Oster. Their article, “Fulfilling the promise...
David Leonhardt’s November 4 New York Times op-ed, “Schools that work,” features charter school research and commentary by Susan Dynarski, co-director of the Ford School’s Education Policy Initiative. The op-ed concerns a controversial ballot...
Enrolling at the University of Michigan seemed like a far-fetched dream for Devin Raymond.Despite his 3.9 high school GPA, being the president of student council, and his involvement in choir, band, musical theater and other extracurricular...
New research from the Education Policy Initiative at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy found that many Michigan K-12 students experience very large core classes—with 40 or more students—but that some students are at greater...
Susan Dynarski, writing for The New York Times, explains “Why American schools are even more unequal than we thought.” In the piece, Dynarski describes a new measure of economic hardship—one that reveals an even more troubling picture of the...
Once, she was a first-generation college student from a working-class suburb of Boston. Now, she is an internationally renowned professor of education policy with the ear of the White House. So Susan Dynarski knows that education can be...
Susan Dynarski’s economic view, “Why talented black and Hispanic students can go undiscovered,” was published in this Sunday's New York Times. “Public schools are increasingly filled with black and Hispanic students, but the children identified as...
In a recent interview on Michigan Radio, Alford Young Jr. discusses the lack of faculty diversity in the U.S. with Michigan State professor Django Paris. According to the article, 3.3 percent of University of Michigan faculty members are black,...
On September 21st, State Representative Adam Zemke, State Senator Rebekah Warren, and Governor Rick Snyder honored Professor Susan Dynarski with a special tribute from the state for her work on the HAIL (High Achieving Involved Leaders) Scholarship...
Last weekend throughout the state, an estimated 1,000 economically disadvantaged high school students with high GPAs and ACT scores found a major opportunity in their mailboxes from the University of Michigan. The students received a customized...
Sue Dynarski was quoted in a MarketWatch story addressing the struggles of low-income and first-generation students at Ivy League schools. While Columbia University served as the backdrop for “The Ivy League’s hidden poor,” published today, the...
Education Week highlights Isaac McFarlin Jr.’s latest study in “Failing a Placement Exam Does Not Discourage College Enrollment,” posted by Caralee Adams on January 15.“State test cited in lower college enrollments,” a 1995 Dallas Morning News...
A current Education Policy Initiative study is the topic of the September 26 MLive article by Roberto Acosta, “University of Michigan studies reading system that Flushing woman created; state officials interested in results.”
The system is...
Policy Talks @ the Ford School,
EPI Speaker Series,
Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling Health Policy Fund
Join Professor Brian Jacob for a conversation on the academic impacts of the Flint Water Crisis 7-8 years later, and the big picture implications for young people in the community, featuring Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha - recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century for her role in uncovering the Flint water crisis and leading recovery effort - alongside Dr. Sam Trejo, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, and Flint Community Schools Superintendent Kevelin Jones.
Tompkins-Stange will discuss a proposal that nurtures increased collaboration between one Detroit neighborhood and philanthropy to improve the quality of early childhood education programs.
