Abstract Both research and practice of value-added models (VAM) have been growing in recent years due to the widespread effort to quantify teacher effectiveness. The existing VAM literature has not yet tested the sensitivity of value-added estimates to the rules that define which students...

We consider situations in which externally observable characteristics allow experts to quickly categorize individual households as likely or unlikely to contain a member of a rare target population. This classification can form the basis of disproportionate stratified sampling such that...

In this study we reconsider the relationship between heavy and persistent marijuana use and high school dropout status using a unique prospective panel study of over 4500 7th grade students from South Dakota who are followed up through high school. Propensity score weighting is used to adjust...

In this paper we consider the challenges and implications of controlling for school contextual bias when modeling teacher preparation program effects. Because teachers from any one preparation program are hired in more than one school and teachers are not randomly distributed across schools,...

We describe and evaluate a one percent clustered sample of the 1990 Census of China, the largest publicly-available micro sample of any Chinese census, using direct inspection as well as comparisons with published data drawn from the complete enumeration. In the absence of official...