This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically identify and employ decentralized cutoffs in SAT/ACT…

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to explore K-12 educators' perceptions of the use of social media as professional development tools in an independent school district in Texas. The population for the study was approximately 934 teachers, administrators, and instructional design coaches. The sample size was twenty participants. A word…

This study determined the optimal tuition subsidy necessary to increase two- and four-year college graduation in Texas. The study also estimated the per pupil and total cost of potential subsidies, and compared how they might affect college graduation rates. The goal of this exercise was to provide guidance on how the state could achieve the Texas…

An estimated 4,350,000 immigrants reside in Texas, comprising 20% of the workforce and wielding a spending power of up to $112.8 billion. Negative sentiment towards migrants has created a hostile environment, despite their substantial socio-economic contributions. Efforts to mitigate this sentiment involve youth education, targeting younger…

Today's college and career-ready standards emphasize developing students' ability to interpret and analyze complex texts and to assert and defend claims relating to those texts in extended pieces of writing. By providing secondary English language arts teachers with professional development and instructional materials, the UC Irvine Writing…

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,…

Best practice suggests that curricular decisions be made on the evidence base of the content and the contextual fit of the curriculum to the school setting, and with coaching to help teachers effectively use curricula. Messages from the federal government encourage school administrators and researchers to consider the costs of a program. The…

We estimate the societal costs associated with corequisite and traditional pre-requisite English developmental education and compare them to societal benefits. Our context is the randomized controlled trial conducted by Miller et al. (2022) that estimated the effects of three different approaches to English corequisites implemented in 5 Texas…

In this supplement, the cost to implement and operate the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) program across the participating colleges is presented separated into primary cost categories based on program components describing what portion of spending went to training, teacher time in class, teacher time outside of class, advisement,…

Following up on a previous impact and cost study of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model, which used an individual-level randomized controlled trial, this study assesses the costs and cost-effectiveness of the program on longer-term college progress and college attainment. The version of DCMP included in this study diversified the…

Within intercollegiate athletics, there is continued pressure for academic institutions to keep academics a priority over athletics. Revenue sharing and increased television contracts have created more variables within an athletic strain theory. The problem is that schools focus more attention and revenue toward on-field success than academic…

In "Are Texas Teacher Retirement Benefits Adequate?," authors Chad Aldeman and Anthony Randazzo analyze the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) of Texas and find it is not serving all of its members well. Most members will leave their teaching service in Texas with inadequate retirement benefits, and the unfunded liabilities the system has…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to identify recruitment tools, which may effectively increase international student enrollment at a public, state-assisted university in Texas that does not actively recruit internationally through international travel or dedicated recruitment plans structured for international students.…

I compare per pupil revenues, expenditures, and performance levels in public charter schools to district-run public schools in Texas for the 2017-18 school year. After controlling for several school and student characteristics, I find that public charter schools are funded around $1,700 (15 percent) less, and spend around $3,700 (28 percent) less,…

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and…