Education and Family
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Transforming the Lives of 600 Million Girls through Evidence: An Interview with Dr. Thoai Ngo
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Dr. Thoai Ngo is an epidemiologist and demographer with expertise in managing, designing, and evaluating global development and health interventions and programs in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Ngo is the director of the Population Council’s Poverty, Gender, and Youth (PGY) Program, and he also directs the Council’s new Girl Innovation, Research…
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Teachers’ Unions Improve Student Achievement: Insights from California Charter Schools
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Over the past several decades, public sector unionization rates have held fairly steady, even as private sector unionization rates have plummeted. Among economists and social scientists, a debate persists as to whether public sector unions serve the public interest. Proponents argue that these unions increase the efficiency of the public…
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Paying for Prejudice: How Public Funds Are Being Used to Fund Discrimination in Schools
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With the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as the United States Secretary of Education, the subject of vouchers has gained a powerful mouthpiece. Currently, 15 states and the District of Columbia offer some form of publicly funded tuition voucher or voucher-like education savings accounts to subsidize private school enrollment. Another 16…
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Do Charter Schools Raise Student Earnings? Evidence from Texas
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Texas education policy in the 1990s provided the blueprint for Bush-era school reforms. In 1993, the Texas legislature introduced high-stakes testing, followed by the authorization of Texas’ first charter schools—schools that are publicly funded but privately managed—in 1995. When George W. Bush left the Governor’s Mansion for the White House,…
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How Does Compulsory Math Education Close the Racial Income Gap?
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STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education has been a national imperative for decades. More recent administrations have prioritized STEM in schools due to the rising importance of mathematical skills in the labor market. The American Competitive Initiative, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006, committed a…
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Unconditional Cash Transfers: Lessons from Ecuador
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Poor people, especially in developing countries, have inadequate financial resources and face liquidity issues which constrain expenditures on their children’s health and education. Cash transfers ease these constraints by providing households with financial support. To ensure that cash transfers are spent on essential needs, transfers can be attached to specific…
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Sustaining Human Capital Investment: Local Women Leaders in Conditional Cash Transfers
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Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are social programs that provide stipends to low-income families and individuals who meet certain conditions, such as ensuring their children receive mandatory vaccinations or meet school attendance requirements. CCTs have had a positive impact on the lives of poor people, particularly in Latin America, by providing…
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Education Migration: Why Teachers Are Leaving the Profession
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Teacher shortages are a harsh reality in states across the nation. From California to South Carolina, recruiting and retaining teachers is an imminent concern for school districts, parents, and students. These problems are often more pronounced in high poverty, racially segregated (HPRS) schools. In 2000, annual turnover rates for all…
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Toxic Policy: The Impact of the Flint Water Crisis on the City’s Children
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In 2015, reports of elevated lead levels in the city’s water supply put Flint, Michigan into the national spotlight. The state-appointed emergency manager’s 2014 decision to approve municipal use of water from the Flint River, in an attempt to help the cash strapped city cut costs, is thought by many…
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Higher Education in the Digital Age: A Conversation with Michael Lovenheim
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Since its inception, online education has faced heavy skepticism, if not downright opposition. A recent study by David Deming, Michael Lovenheim, and Richard Patterson finds that students benefit from the education quality improvements that traditional brick-and-mortar institutions make in response to the disruptive threat posed by their online competitors. Michael…
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Building School Latrines in India to Increase School Enrollment
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UNESCO estimates that there are still 263 million children ages six to 17 years old who do not attend school. Of these children, 23 percent reside in India. One of the contributing factors to low enrollment in India is a lack of sanitation in school. Without school latrines, students are…