The evolving educational landscape of our students' needs post-Covid has highlighted that student response to intervention must be of concern to all educators. Our student population has experienced an event that is like no other in our shared educational histories and our response to the aftermath of this event and how we assist students who are…

Preparing K-12 students for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields is an ongoing challenge confronting state policymakers. We examine the implementation of a science graduation testing requirement for high-school students in Massachusetts, beginning with the graduating class of 2010. We find that the design of…

Over the past two and a half decades, digital technologies and virtual education have moved quickly to the top of the K-12 public education reform agenda. Proponents, including business leaders, school reform organizations, foundations, and for-profit and nonprofit service providers, argue that virtual technology will revolutionize teaching and…

High-school exit exams have fallen out of favor in recent years, after research showed that pinning graduation to passing a high-stakes test can push some students to drop out. The future can be grim without a diploma: dropouts have higher rates of unemployment, earn far less money on the job, have poorer physical and mental health, and are more…

Background/Context: Students designated as English Learners (ELs) account for 10.4 percent of all students nationwide but have historically been provided unequal access to educational resources (Gándara et al., 2003; National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Further, education policies are often blind to ELs' strengths and challenges,…

RAND researchers studied more than 450,000 recipients of New Jersey's Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) -- the nation's most generous state-funded grant program per state resident college student -- to explore whether getting larger amounts of grant aid led to higher graduation rates for students at varying income levels and attending two-year, four-year,…

Despite the growing popularity of free college proposals, countries with higher college subsidies tend to have higher enrollment rates but not higher graduation rates. To capture this evidence and evaluate potential free college policies, we rely on a dynamic model of college enrollment, performance, and graduation estimated using rich…

Despite registering positive results, Uganda's Universal Primary Education plan (UPE) faces significant unresolved challenges instigated by widespread corruption in the school system, ghost teachers and ghost schools, lack of enough infrastructure, the lack of schooling materials such as pens, pencils, lunch, and books. Ascribed to the validity of…

This three-study dissertation investigated how socioeconomic factors and policies are associated with educational outcomes for undocumented youth and, in one of the papers, to what extent education and employment outcomes intersect. Guided by the specific questions of each study, the three papers take different theoretical and methodological…

This dissertation includes three chapters focusing on policies directly related to improving college access and success. The first chapter focuses on lifetime eligibility of federal and state financial aid policies. The Pell Grant plays a critical role in helping students across the US to afford undergraduate education. In spite of its importance…

Students with disabilities learn differently and at various rates. The issue is not the students, however, but is the lack of a belief system to have the same expectations for students with disabilities as their non-disabled peers. Rules and regulations have been established to ensure K-12 public schools comply with and provide quality services to…

Race-based affirmative action policies are widespread in higher education. Despite the prevalence of these policies, there is little consensus on how affirmative action policies affect students either before they reach college or after they matriculate into college. This study provides new evidence on the benefits of affirmative action policies…

Effectively educating the large English learner population requires policymakers to ensure developmentally appropriate settings and services throughout the time students are learning English, as well as during their transition to fluent English proficient status--a process termed reclassification. Using longitudinal student-level data from two…

College enrollment and completion rates among low-income and historically underserved students are lower than those of their middle- and upper-income counterparts. "Promise scholarships," also known as "last dollar" scholarships, are becoming an increasingly popular way for states throughout the U.S. to incentivize…

The purpose of this literature review is to systematically examine policy and practice intervention research and assess the impact of those interventions on high school dropout and school completion rates. This systematic review extends the literature by (a) describing both policy and practice interventions, (b) synthesizing findings from…