As welfare-to-work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random-assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in...

Previous research has demonstrated that attending center care is associated with cognitive benefits for young children. However, little is known about the ideal age for children to enter such care or the "right" amount of time, both weekly and yearly, for children to attend center programs....

The success of any governmental subsidy depends on whether it increases or crowds out existing consumption. Yet to date there has been little empirical evidence, particularly in the education sector, on whether government intervention crowds out private provision. Universal preschool policies...

Educational policymakers struggle to find ways to improve the quality of the teacher workforce. The early career period represents a unique opportunity to identify struggling teachers, examine the likelihood of future improvement, and make strategic pre-tenure investments in improvement as well...

Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary transfer...

Substantial systematic differences exist in children’s home learning experiences. The few existing parenting programs that have shown promise often are not widely accessible, either due to the demands they place on parents’ time and effort or cost. In this study, we evaluate the effects of...

Test-based accountability including value-added assessments and experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet we know little regarding important properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of...

The study presented here uses data from the NORC General Social Surveys to explore the effects of measurable school characteristics on student achievement. What separates this study from many others is the use of aggregate data on older cohorts, usually associated with research on the influence...

This paper explores a little understood aspect of labor markets, their spatial geography. Using data from New York State, we find teacher labor markets to be geographically very small. Teachers express preferences to teach close to where they grew up and, controlling for proximity, they prefer...