Research

Working Paper
Education

Experimental Evidence on Early Intervention: The Impact of Full-day Kindergarten

Authors: Chloe R. Gibbs

Nearly all school-age children in the United States attend kindergarten, and approximately three-quarters of kindergarten students are in full-day classrooms. While there have been dramatic increases in provision of and participation in full-day kindergarten, there is little evidence on the impact and cost-effectiveness of such programs and policies, particularly as compared to other types of investments in early childhood.

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Working Paper
Education

College Advising at a National Scale: Experimental Evidence from the CollegePoint initiative

Authors: Zach Sullivan, Benjamin Castleman, Eric Bettinger

In recognition of the complexity of the college and financial aid application process, and in response to insufficient access to family or school-based counseling among economically-disadvantaged populations, investments at the local, state, and federal level have expanded students’ access to college and financial aid advising. Experimental and quasi-experimental studies of these programs demonstrate that they can generate substantial improvements in the rate at which low-income students enroll and persist in college.

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Working Paper
Education

Nudging at Scale: Experimental Evidence from FAFSA Completion Campaigns

Authors: Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman, Jeffrey T. Denning, Joshua Goodman, Cait Lamberton, Kelly Ochs Rosinger

Do nudge interventions that have generated positive impacts at a local level maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? What specific mechanisms explain the positive impacts of promising smaller-scale nudges? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign to encourage students to apply for financial aid for college. 

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Working Paper
Education

The Effect of Reduced Student Loan Borrowing on Academic Performance and Default: Evidence from a Loan Counseling Experiment

Authors: Andrew Barr, Kelli Bird, Benjamin Castleman

Student loan borrowing for higher education has emerged as a top policy concern. Policy makers at the institutional, state, and federal levels have pursued a variety of strategies to inform students
about loan origination processes and how much a student has cumulatively borrowed, and to provide students with greater access to loan counseling.

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Published Research
Education

Are Parents’ Ratings and Satisfaction with Preschools related to Program Features?

Authors: Daniel W. Player, Daphna Bassok, Anna J. Markowitz, Michelle Zagardo

This study examines whether parents’ overall satisfaction with their child’s early childhood education (ECE) program is correlated with a broad set of program characteristics, including (a) observational assessments of teacher-child interactions; (b) structural features of the program, such as teacher education and class size; (c) practical and convenience factors (e.g., hours, cost); and (d) a measure of average classroom learning gains. It then describes associations between parents’ evaluation of specific program characteristics and externally collected measures of those features.

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Published Research
Education

How Principal Leadership and Person-Job Fit Are Associated with Teacher Mobility and Attrition

Authors: Daniel W. Player, Peter Youngs, Frank Perrone, Erin Grogan

While existing studies of teacher retention have attempted to isolate economic and organizational factors that predict teacher turnover, this paper etends the research base by incorporating measures of principal leadership and person-job (P-J) fit. Using data from roughly 3000 teachers from the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2012-13 Teacher Follow-up Survey, we explore how leadership and P-J fit are associated with teachers’ mobility.

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Published Research
Education

Teacher Turnover, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement in DCPS

Authors: James H. Wyckoff, Melinda Adnot, Thomas Dee, Veronica Katz

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. 

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