Whole-school reforms have received widespread attention, but a critical limitation of the current literature is the lack of evidence around whether these extensive and costly interventions improve students' long-term outcomes after they leave reform schools. Leveraging Tennessee's statewide turnaround reforms, we use difference-in-differences…

Higher and doctoral education in Kazakhstan underwent a systemic reform since independence in 1990. Reforms have been determined by dynamic socio-economic developments in Kazakhstan, the country's entry into the global market, and the need to increase the competitiveness of its human capital. Kazakhstan joined the Bologna Process and switched to a…

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…

In 2013, the state of Texas passed House Bill 5 (HB 5) which established high school course pathways tailored to student interests by labor market area via the Foundation High School Program (FHSP). The pathway options for students include STEM, Arts and Humanities, Business and Industry, Public Service, and Multidisciplinary. While the intent of…

What works to help community college students progress academically? This brief synthesizes 20 years of rigorous research by MDRC, presenting new evidence about key attributes of community college interventions that are positively related to larger impacts on students' academic progress. Findings: Findings are based on a synthesis of evidence from…

Developmental education is the starting point for many 1st-year college students, especially from underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation populations. One such 1st-year program linked block-scheduled academic skill-development courses with a required interdisciplinary general education science course where instruction was provided…

When Arizona State University announced in 2015 that it would offer a freshman year's worth of credit-bearing "massive open online courses" (MOOCs) for a fraction of the cost of its regular online and in-person classes, the news was met with both excitement and alarm. Education reformers proclaimed the move groundbreaking, saying it…

Local-level, place-based scholarships -- synonymous with "promise" scholarships -- are a policy strategy to improve college completion in the United States by directing financial aid to students in a particular school, district, or geographical area. There are currently upwards of 90 place-based scholarship programs across the US, most…

Corequisite remediation, which mainstreams students deemed academically underprepared into college-level courses with additional learning support, is rapidly being adopted by colleges across the nation. This paper provides the first causal evidence on a system-wide corequisite reform, using data from all 13 community colleges affiliated with the…

High school vocational education has a controversial history in the United States, largely due to a perceived tradeoff between teaching readily deployable occupational skills versus shunting mostly disadvantaged students away from the educational and career flexibility afforded by general academic courses. We study the effects of a nationwide high…

This thesis examines two uncommon topics in the economic literature regarding college access and completion: the role of college proximity in recent high school graduates' enrollment decisions, and how structural changes to the student experience at a postsecondary institution can affect college completion. The first chapter is a review of the…

For decades, college access programs have aimed to improve college readiness and enrollment rates, particularly for underrepresented populations. Though several published reports have produced comprehensive inventories of college access programs (Gandara, 2001; Perna, 2002; Tierney, Bailey, Constantine, Finkelstein, & Hurd, 2009), no systematic…

In July of 2018, the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans released a comprehensive, summative longitudinal report on the effects on student outcomes of the package of reforms implemented in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005. This policy brief reviews the findings of this report by Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen,…

This project represents the beginning of a partnership between the State of Michigan and researchers at the University of Michigan and Michigan State Michigan. The partnership is formalized as the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research (MCER). The goal of MCER is to engage key stakeholders and experts in high quality education research for…

U.S. social programs, set up to address important problems, often fall short by funding specific models/strategies ("interventions") that are not effective. When evaluated in scientifically-rigorous studies, social interventions in K-12 education, job training, crime prevention, and other areas are frequently found ineffective or…