Research

Published Research
Education

The Effects of Universal State Pre-Kindergarten on the Child Care Sector: The Case of Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten Program

Authors: Daphna Bassok, Luke Miller, Eva Galdo

Over the past two decades states have drastically increased their investments in pre-kindergarten programs. One major question about state investments in early childhood education programs is to what extent these initiatives create new child care options rather than crowd-out existing private child care options.

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Published Research
Education

Jump-starting early childhood education at home: Early learning, parent motivation, and public policy.

Authors: Benjamin Converse, Chloe Gibbs, E.A. Mahoney, S.C. Levine, S.L. Beilock

By the time children begin formal schooling, their experiences at home have already contributed to large variations in their math and language development, and once school begins, academic achievement continues to depend strongly on influences outside of school. It is thus essential that educational reform strategies involve primary caregivers. 

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Published Research
Education

Head Start Origins and Impacts

Authors: Chloe Gibbs, Jens Ludwig, Douglas L. Miller ed., Martha J. Bailey, Sheldon Danziger

Many believe that the War on Poverty, launched by President Johnson in 1964, ended in failure. In 2010, the official poverty rate was 15 percent, almost as high as when the War on Poverty was declared. Historical and contemporary accounts often portray the War on Poverty as a costly experiment that created doubts about the ability of public policies to address complex social problems.

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Published Research
Education

Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Care and Education

Authors: Christopher J. Ruhm, Jane Waldfogel

This paper critically reviews what we know about the long-term effects of parental leave and early childhood education programs. We find only limited evidence that expansions of parental leave durations improved long-run educational or labor market outcomes of the children whose parents were affected by them, perhaps because benefits are hard to measure or confined to sub-groups, or because leave entitlements were sufficiently long, even before recent extensions, to yield most potential benefits. 

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Published Research
Education

Does Head Start Do Any Lasting Good?

Authors: Chloe Gibbs, Jens Ludwig, Douglas Miller, Martha Bailey, Sheldon Danziger

Head Start is a federal early childhood intervention designed to reduce disparities in preschool outcomes. The first randomized experimental study of Head Start, the National Head Start Impact Study (NHSIS), found impacts on academic outcomes of .15 to .3 standard deviations measured at the end of the program year, although the estimated impacts were no longer significant when measured at the end of kindergarten or first grade.

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Published Research
Education

Pensions and K-12 Teacher Retirement: An Analysis Using National Teacher Data

Authors: Leora Friedberg, Sarah Turner

The retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last thirty years – except for public school teachers and other state and local government employees. Many private-sector employers have stopped offering traditional retirement plans, while most state and local employees remain covered by defined benefit (DB) pension plans. 

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Published Research
Education

Labor Market Effects of Pensions and Implications for Teachers

Authors: Leora Friedberg

While the retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last twenty years, traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans remain the overwhelming norm for K–12 teachers. Because DB plans pay off fully with a fixed income after retirement only if a teacher stays in the profession for decades and yield little or nothing if a teacher leaves early, DB plans induce a strong, nonlinear relationship between years of tenure and benefit accrual.

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Published Research
Education

The Impact of the National School Lunch Program on Child Health: A Nonparametric Bounds Analysis

Authors: John Pepper, Craig Gunderson, Brent Kreider

Children in households reporting the receipt of free or reduced-price school meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are more likely to have negative health outcomes than observationally similar nonparticipants. Assessing causal effects of the program is made difficult, however, by missing counterfactuals and systematic underreporting of program participation. 

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Published Research
Education

Turning around Chronically Low-Performing Schools: A Practice Guide

Authors: T. Dee, R. Herman, P. Dawson, J. Greene, S. Redding, M. Darwin

This guide identifies practices that can improve the performance of chronically low-performing schools — a process commonly referred to as creating “turnaround schools.” The four recommendations in this guide work together to help failing schools make adequate yearly progress.

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