The last three decades the accumulation of quantitative research evidence has led to the development of systematic methods for combining information across samples of related studies. Although a few methods have been described for accumulating research evidence over time, meta-analysis is widely...

In experimental designs with nested structures entire groups (such as schools) are often assigned to treatment conditions. Key aspects of the design in these cluster randomized experiments include knowledge of the intraclass correlation structure and the sample sizes necessary to achieve...

Multilevel models are widely used in education and social science research. However, theeffects of omitting levels of the hierarchy on the variance decomposition and the clusteringeffects have not been well documented...

This study examines high school effects on the labor market success of young adults, above and beyond individual and family characteristics. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples: the National Longitudinal Study and the High School and Beyond study and the 5th and...

This study examines gender differences in the earnings of young adults in the 1980s and 1990s. We determine changes in the gender gap over time in the middle, the tails, and the variability of the earnings distribution. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples of high...

We examined the persistence of teacher effects from grade to grade on lower-performing students using high-quality experimental data from Project STAR, where students and teachers were assigned randomly to classrooms of different sizes. The data included information about mathematics and reading...

This study examines the gender gap in wages of young adults in the late 1970s, mid 1980s, and 2000, in the middle and the tails of the wage distribution using quantile regression. We also examine the importance of school quality indicators in predicting future labor market performance. We...

"Judging the success of school reform requires an interpretative context in which to judge whether effects obtained are large enough to be important or so small as to be a disappointment. The logic of school reform suggests two frameworks with which to judge the importance of effects. One is the...

Much of the research that has followed welfare reform and new policies such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has focused on identifying the variations in how different states have put the new policy into practice. Less is known however, about how this new policy affects the...