Over the last decade, the federal government has directed schools to provide educational instruction for students with special needs in general education settings to the extent possible. While there is mixed evidence on the effects of these inclusion policies on the students with special needs, research examining potential spillovers of inclusion…

The California class size reduction program provided schools with cash rewards for K-3 classes of 20 or fewer students. I show how program rules made it possible for schools to save money by using mixed-grade classes to meet class size reduction obligations while maintaining larger average class sizes. I also show that this smoothing of students…

This paper analyzes 12 recent within-study comparisons contrasting causal estimates from a randomized experiment with those from an observational study sharing the same treatment group. The aim is to test whether different causal estimates result when a counterfactual group is formed, either with or without random assignment, and when statistical…

In recent years, propensity score matching (PSM) has gained attention as a potential method for estimating the impact of public policy programs in the absence of experimental evaluations. In this study, we evaluate the usefulness of PSM for estimating the impact of a program change in an educational context (Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement…

The past two decades have seen a rising trend in the minimum entrance age for kindergarten in the U.S. A little-noticed, but potentially large, consequence of raising the minimum entrance age is that it imposes additional childcare costs for families whose children are forced to stay out of school for an additional year. This paper develops a…

Kindergarten policy varies widely both across and within states. Over the past decade, a number of states have instituted a full-day kindergarten requirement and others are considering it as a way to increase educational achievement. Many parents also support full-day kindergarten as a source of child care. This paper uses the Early Child…