Career and technical education (CTE) has existed in the United States for over a century, and only in recent years have there been opportunities to assess the causal impact of participating in these programs while in high school. To date, no work has assessed whether the relative costs of these programs meet or exceed the benefits as described in…

This study examines the supply-side decision to participate in interdistrict school choice by incorporating a district's own characteristics, those of its neighbors and a strategic component based on neighboring districts' decisions. A spatial Durbin probit model is applied to data from Massachusetts and estimates of direct, indirect, and total…

Career and technical education (CTE) has existed in the United States for over a century, and only in recent years have there been opportunities to assess the causal impact of participating in these programs while in high school. To date, no work has assessed whether the relative costs of these programs meet or exceed the benefits as described in…

The purpose of this report is to provide readers with a comparative analysis of the Massachusetts workforce "system" structures and performance reporting processes compared to other states. Though the federal workforce development system is often examined in its entirety and individual state systems are at times examined independently,…

Learning depends on the social, emotional, physical, & mental health of students. This resource shares policy recommendations to transform disjointed resources for children into potent systems of integrated student support. The systems that come together to support young people's learning and development include schools, community…

This study examined the cost-effectiveness of a 50-lesson mathematics intervention program focused on whole number concepts for at-risk kindergarten students, ROOTS. The study utilized a randomized block design with 1,251 at-risk students within 138 classrooms randomly assigned to one of two active treatment conditions (small groups of either two…

This study examined the cost effectiveness of a 50 lesson mathematics intervention program focused on whole number concepts for at-risk kindergarten students, ROOTS. The study utilized a randomized block design with 1,251 at-risk students within 138 classrooms randomly assigned to one of two active treatment conditions (small groups of either two…

A master plan in higher education is developed to address the academic and workforce needs of a particular state. The master plan helps serve as the roadmap for implementation of proposed strategies to reach state goals in education and degree attainment. In Tennessee, Drive to 55 is a state-wide effort to increase the number of Tennesseans with a…

Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

Open Educational Resources (OER) are online teaching and learning resources available for instructors and students to utilize at no cost to them. This case study reports on the impact of OER resources on students' academic performance in an undergraduate introductory astronomy course at a 4-year private university. As part of this study, we…

Charter public schools began as the "research and development" alternative to traditional public schools over 20 years ago, but today they account for significant portions of student enrollment in many cities. In more than 190 districts across the country, charter school attendance makes up at least 10 percent of public school student…

Some policies try to maximize net benefits by targeting different individuals to participate. This is difficult when costs and benefits of participation vary independently, such as in land conservation. The authors share a classroom game that explores cases in which minimizing costs may not maximize benefits and vice versa. The game is a…

A growing number of public schools have adopted reforms that increase the amount of time students spend in school. However, the potential costs of such reforms are not well understood. In this article, we report findings from a resource-cost study conducted in four schools that participated in the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative.…

On Dec. 21, 2020, Congress lifted the 26-year ban on federal student aid--specifically, the Pell grant--for those who are incarcerated. The decision came after a long push for prison reforms that included calls for a greater emphasis on rehabilitation, reducing prison populations, and making prison sentences less harsh. New England has long been a…

The "New England Journal of Higher Education" ("NEJHE") Executive Editor John O. Harney had the chance to catch up with Lasell College President Michael Alexander about the small Newton, Massachusetts, college's plans to challenge the higher education business model. The interview is presented in this article.