Background: Return on investment (ROI) is one of the most popular evaluation metrics. ROI analysis (when applied correctly) is a powerful tool of evaluating existing information systems and making informed decisions on the acquisitions. However, practical use of the ROI is complicated by a number of uncertainties and controversies. The article…

Schools and school systems throughout the nation are increasingly experimenting with using various instructional technologies to improve productivity and decrease costs, but evidence on both the effectiveness and the costs of education technology is limited. A recent report published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute sets out to describe "the…

Although experiments are viewed as the gold standard for evaluation, some of their benefits may be lost when, as is common, outcomes are not defined for some sample members. In evaluations of marriage interventions, for example, a key outcome--relationship quality--is undefined when a couple splits up. This article shows how treatment-control…

"How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement" estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an…

Recent methodological advances are described that enable the analyst to extract additional information from the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology, including goal programming to develop cross-efficiencies, cluster analysis, analysis of variance, and pooled cross section time-series analysis. Some shortcomings of DEA are discussed. (LMO)

A new report published by the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions is a minor variant on six similar reports published by the Friedman Foundation over the past three years. The new report repeats some of the errors in the previous reports, and it follows a parallel structure, arguing that the costs of dropping out are dramatic for the…

Global economic transformations have never been as dramatic as in the twentieth century. Most countries have experienced radical changes in the standards of income per capita, technology, fertility, mortality, income inequality and the extent of democracy in the course of the past century. It is the goal of many disciplines--economics, history,…

This paper examines whether failure to control for family background, aptitude, high school quality, high school curriculum, and community characteristics leads to bias in estimates of the economic return resulting from postsecondary education. High school specific fixed effects were used to control for all observed and unobserved characteristics…