education

Publication

IES Predoctoral Fellows Moffett and Wessiman, Weiland, and colleagues explore effects of pre-k classroom organization

Dec 16, 2021

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...

News

2021: A year of public policy

Dec 16, 2021

The Ford School of Public Policy is a top-ranked public policy school dedicated to preparing diverse leaders to take on society’s most pressing challenges and make transformational discoveries through cutting-edge research. Experts from the Ford...

News

Vasquez, Baron, and Hyman receive support for "More School Funding, Less Crime?” project

Dec 16, 2021

“Does investing in public education reduce crime in adulthood?” That is the essential question being examined by Brittany Vasquez, Jason Baron, and Joshua Hyman, recent and current PhD affiliates of the Education Policy Initiative (EPI). Their work...

News

Early education expert Weiland on the Build Back Better bill

Dec 13, 2021

Experts at the University of Michigan are available to discuss the Build Back Better bill making its way to the Senate floor. Below is an excerpt from a Michigan News faculty Q&A. Christina Weiland is an associate professor at the School of...

News

Leveraging technology to improve education outcomes

Nov 29, 2021

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...

Publication

Supporting 'Preschool for All' in Washington state

Nov 12, 2021

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...

Publication

Transitional kindergarten in Michigan: Impacts through elementary school and predictors of a lasting boost

Sep 29, 2021

Access to early education programs have been shown for decades to improve the educational prospects for children in kindergarten and beyond. A new type of early education program widespread in Michigan and California—transitional kindergarten...

News

Causal Inference program’s first PhD graduates reflect on their training

Aug 20, 2021

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...

News

Tribute to Susan Dynarski as she departs the Ford School

Jun 23, 2021

Since 2008, Sue Dynarski has been one of the Ford School's most active faculty working to reform public education, fighting for educational equity and inclusiveness, and training the next generation of education policy experts. She has taught...

News

New policy brief reviews evidence of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on young children's learning and ECE programs, highlighting inequities, and points to solutions

Jun 18, 2021

How has COVID-19 impacted young children's educational experiences and learning outcomes? How has the pandemic impacted early childhood education (ECE) programs and the ECE workforce? A new report from the Education Policy Initiative (EPI) at the...

News

Ford School team examines liberal arts impact on students’ lives a decade after graduation

Jun 11, 2021

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...

State & Hill

Building strength

Jun 10, 2021

With new leading-edge research and faces at the school, the Ford School builds depth in two key policy areas. Energy and the environment Economics, political science, psychology, and community engagement are at the roots of the Ford School’s...

News

MIDAS grant to assist Stange research on liberal arts education

Jun 4, 2021

A challenge in any analysis looking at multiple higher education institutions is that each institution may have different labels for the same course - ENG101 may be "Composition I" at one institution but "Thinking Like an Engineer" at another. Ford...

News

Examining Detroit students' college pathways

May 26, 2021

Academic and non-academic barriers are preventing Detroit high school students from enrolling and succeeding in college. Detroit Students’ College Pathways and Outcomes, a policy brief released by the Youth Policy Lab (YPL) at the University of...

Publication

Michigan’s HAIL scholarship program meaningfully changes students’ college trajectory, report shows

May 19, 2021

Research for years has shown that low-income students face unique barriers to applying to colleges, let alone being able to afford tuition and living costs. To address the concern that not enough high-achieving, low-income students were applying to...

Publication

Career and technical education offers pathways for students with disabilities in Michigan

May 13, 2021

Career and Technical Education (CTE) could offer one way of bolstering educational attainment among and providing valuable job skills to students with disabilities (SWD). A new release by the Youth Policy Lab at the Ford School looks at CTE...

News

Biden's plan for universal preschool, explained - Weiland

May 12, 2021

On April 28, the Biden Administration announced the American Families Plan, which includes universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds. Christina Weiland, associate professor of education at the Ford School, weighed in on the plan and...

In the Media

Lewis: shrinking graduate pipelines, publication bottlenecks, and hope for reimagining graduate education

Feb 15, 2021 The Chronicle of Higher Education

“By the time we get to ’25 or ’26, we may look back and realize that we’ve reached a new plateau, that it [graduate student populaiton] was not as high as it was in 2010, let alone 2015,” said Earl Lewis, commenting on of the effects of the pandemic...

In the Media

Little promotes greater international collaboration between universities

Feb 4, 2021 News Xperts (India)

In a session on partnership in higher education at the Kerala Looks Ahead Conference (KLA), Professor Daniel Little discussed U.S. universities' interest in greater collaboration with foreign universities, noting that the U.S. "is interested to...

In the Media

Ending student loan relief poses a threat to new workers - Dynarski

Dec 7, 2020 NPR Studio 1A

Dynarski says on the NPR Studio 1A segment, Dollars And Sense: Unpausing Student Loan Payment, "We have a lot of people in debt and some people with a problem with that debt, so a small proportion means a lot of people in trouble. We are in the...

News

Dynarski addresses remote learning inequities

May 20, 2020

“The pandemic has revealed enormous inequalities in homes, in schools, in families. So the technological challenges are large, and they are very much connected to a family's financial resources,” according to Ford School professor Susan Dynarski,...

News

The economic downturn may lead to a change in college major choices

May 5, 2020

Research has shown that in an economic downturn, students often shift to studying more career-oriented subjects like health sciences or engineering. The 2008 recession confirmed this trend: after remaining stable for the previous decade, from 2008...

News

Online learning out of reach for millions of students

May 1, 2020

UNESCO, the United Nations’ education agency, released data on April 21 revealing that half of all children currently out of school due to stay-at-home orders do not have access to a computer, and forty percent do not have access to the internet....

News

New collaboration supports education research between U-M, MSU and state of Michigan

Nov 28, 2018

The launch of a new research collaboration and a data center at the University of Michigan marks the start of a unique collaboration between U-M, Michigan State University, the Michigan Department of Education and the Center for Educational...

News

Econ textbook study by Stevenson, Zlotnick highlights gender bias against women

Jan 19, 2018

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...

News

WaPo cites Education Policy Initiative research on MI charter school practices

May 31, 2017

In “What ‘school choice’ means in the era of Trump and DeVos,” Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss explores the varied policies and programs proposed by U.S. school-choice advocates. Strauss' primer on the movement cites recent research from...

News

Faculty publication on Michigan merit curriculum now in educational policy journal

Jan 27, 2017

A paper by Brian Jacob, Susan Dynarski, Kenneth Frank, and Barbara Schneider titled, “Are Expectations Alone Enough? Estimating the Effect of a Mandatory College-Prep Curriculum in Michigan” was published in Educational Evaluation and Policy...

News

Jacob publication: "The measurement of student ability in modern assessment systems"

Jan 27, 2017

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...

News

Dynarski on "Fulfilling the promise of community college: The ASAP demonstrations"

Dec 7, 2016

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...

News

Stange on a new measure of college quality, effects of sector and peers on degree attainment

Oct 19, 2016

“A New Measure of College Quality to Study the Effects of College Sector and Peers on Degree Attainment,” a journal article by Jonathan Smith and Kevin Stange, has been published in the fall 2016 edition of Education Finance and...