RAND's research on pre-K, K-12, and higher education covers issues such as assessment and accountability, choice-based and standards-based school reform, vocational training, and the value of arts education and policy in sustaining communities and promoting a well-rounded community.
Many factors contribute to a student's academic performance, but research suggests that, among school-related factors, teachers matter most. What's less clear is how to measure an individual teacher's effectiveness. A new RAND Education website features fact sheets, blog posts, research briefs, and more on this important issue.
Research Brief
The Post-9/11 GI Bill increased the higher education benefits available to eligible individuals. Offering benefits to nearly 2 million veterans, it is more generous than previous bills but beneficiaries report challenges in using the new benefits.
Past Event
Join RAND experts in learning about the effectiveness of performance-based accountability systems in five sectors—child care, education, health care, public health emergency preparedness, and transportation—and RAND's recommendations for improvement.
Report
Coordinating the work of the many different institutions involved in after-school activities—including schools, nonprofits and municipal agencies like parks and libraries—holds the promise of making programs better and more accessible to urban children and teens who need them.
News Release
Coordinating the work of the many different institutions involved in after-school activities -- including schools, nonprofits and municipal agencies like parks and libraries -- holds the promise of making programs better and more accessible to urban children and teens who need them.
Research Brief
Five cities that received a grant from The Wallace Foundation, along with three other cities that were not part of the initiative, were successful in using data from management information systems to improve out-of-school-time programs.
Research Brief
Five cities that received a grant from The Wallace Foundation to increase collaboration, access, quality, information sharing, and sustainability in their out-of-school-time systems used different planning approaches to meet the initiative's goals.
Journal Article
Describes the Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT), a three-year study intended to assess the effect of financial rewards for teachers whose students showed unusually large gains on standardized tests.
Report
Explores correlations between school structure and academic outcomes, and evaluates the effects of Small Learning Communities implementation on school structure and academic outcomes in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Report
The Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act funds programs that have been proven effective in curbing crime among juvenile probationers and young at-risk offenders. This report summarizes, for fiscal year 2008–2009, Corrections Standards Authority-mandated outcome measures from each of the programs, as well as county-determined supplemental outcomes.
Report
The third in this three-volume series presents in-depth case studies of five cities that received funding from The Wallace Foundation to improve out-of-school-time program provision: Providence, Boston, New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
News Release
Middle school students in the United States feel less positive about learning conditions and report more physical and emotional problems at their schools than their peers in 11 other nations, according to a RAND Corporation study that highlights challenges facing American middle schools.
News Release
Community-Based Drug Treatment Programs Can Help Youths Curb Drug Use, Improve Mental Health.
Project
The California Preschool Study sought to understand achievement gaps among the state's children, whether existing preschool education programs is adequate, and what efficiencies could be achieved through public funding of early childhood education.
Report
The second in this three-volume series describes how Wallace Foundation grantees and three other cities used management information systems to collect and use data on out-of-school-time programs, including enrollment, attendance, and outcomes.
Journal Article
This paper examines the impact of a gifted program on retention in an urban school district using a regression discontinuity design.
Journal Article
This paper examines the impact of a gifted program on retention in an urban school district using a regression discontinuity design.
Announcement
The Los Angeles Times has published a series of articles and developed a database that include value-added statistical estimates of the effectiveness of individual teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District based on analyses of student test scores. Although the Times has sought to be clear on this point, some readers of the coverage have inferred that the RAND Corporation did these analyses. That inference is wrong; RAND was not involved in the Times' analysis or reporting.
Periodical
Features discuss retirement patterns of baby boomers, marijuana legalization, drug enforcement in Europe, and No Child Left Behind; news items cover the Gulf coast, food allergies, the U.S. health reform law, police benefits, and Pakistani militants.
Report
Performance-based accountability systems can improve how employees deliver public services, but evidence demonstrating how effective these systems are at achieving their performance goals is rare.
Journal Article
It is unclear if vouchers increase educational productivity or are purely redistributive, benefiting recipients by giving them access to more desirable peers at others' expense. To examine this, the authors study an educational voucher programme in Colombia which allocated vouchers by lottery.
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