Isaac M. Opper

Much of the Damage in Maui Will Be Invisible, but Very Real

In addition to decimating buildings and other infrastructure, disasters also destroy human capital, the collective knowledge and skills that drive individual economic earnings, as well as regional economic growth. Failing to address these more-hidden damages is incredibly costly.

Report

Testing the Efficacy of Pretrial Diversion: A Randomized Trial at the San Francisco Neighborhood Courts

An evaluation of Neighborhood Court, a restorative justice diversion program, indicates a statistically insignificant reduction in recidivism, positive perceptions of the program among stakeholders, and a public willingness to pay for its features.

Journal Article

The Effect of Natural Disasters on Human Capital in the United States

Natural disasters affect a region's human capital as well as its physical capital, reducing both student achievement and educational attainment. These effects are persistent, and when monetized are of a similar magnitude as the property damage.

Journal Article

Buprenorphine Treatment Episode Duration, Dosage, and Concurrent Prescribing of Benzodiazepines and Opioid Analgesics: The Effects of Medicaid Prior Authorization Policies

Researchers used Medicaid claims during the period 2006–2013 to investigate the relationship between buprenorphine prior authorization requirements and changes in treatment in the years following policy implementation.

Draft

From LATE to ATE: A Bayesian Approach

Develops a Bayesian model that produces a posterior distribution of the marginal treatment effect function.

Report

The Impact and Implementation of the Chicago Collaborative Teacher Professional Development Program

The authors evaluated the Leading Educators Chicago Collaborative, a teacher professional development program aligned to Common Core State Standards, examining the program's implementation and its impact on student achievement.

Report

Guidance on When to Estimate a Future Price Factor: Development of Criteria and Thresholds

A future price forecast can help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and communities seeking its Public Assistance estimate construction costs. Researchers created a framework for determining when such a forecast could be useful.

Report

Forecasting Public Recovery Expenditures' Effect on Construction Prices and the Demand for Construction Labor

Researchers developed cost-estimating tools and estimated future construction costs for Puerto Rico's recovery from Hurricane María. This report documents their approach, data, findings, and recommendations.

Research Brief

Future Price Forecasting in the Wake of Large-Scale Disasters: The Case of Puerto Rico After Hurricane María

Large-scale disaster recovery projects in isolated areas likely require unique future price forecasting. This brief describes an occupational analysis and model to estimate the effects of recovery on the price of labor, materials, and equipment. 

Journal Article

Optimal Allocation of Seats in the Presence of Peer Effects: Evidence from a Job Training Program

We model optimal treatment assignment in programs with a limited number of seats and study how the presence of peer effects impact the optimal allocation rule and us data from an RCT to show there are peer effects in the job training context.

Draft

Using Machine Learning Techniques to Improving Average Treatment Effect Estimates in Small-Scale Randomized Controlled Trials

Develops a sufficient condition which ensures that the inclusion of covariates does not induce small-sample bias in the effect estimates when analyzing results of randomized controlled trials.

Report

Illustrating the Promise of Community Schools: An Assessment of the Impact of the New York City Community Schools Initiative

This report presents the impact of the New York Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS) through the 2017--2018 school year by assessing the effects along seven outcome domains based on student- and school-level characteristics.

Research Brief

What Is the Impact of the New York City Community Schools Initiative?

In this brief, authors present the impact of the New York Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS) through the 2017–2018 school year by assessing the effects along seven outcome domains based on student- and school-level characteristics.

Report

Teachers' Broad Impact: Understanding How Teachers Influence Students They Do Not Teach

The author discusses the potential ways that teachers can affect students whom they do not teach and how research suggests that a teacher's indirect reach could account for a large proportion of his or her overall contribution to student learning.

Report

Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers' Impact on Student Achievement

The author articulates how research suggests that teachers are important to student achievement and how statistical methods can provide valuable but imprecise estimates of teacher effectiveness.

Report

Value-Added Modeling 101: Using Student Test Scores to Help Measure Teaching Effectiveness

The author discusses the use of value-added models (VAMs) to estimate teacher contribution to student progress, account for students' prior characteristics, and enable relative judgments, as well as the limitations of VAMs.

Research Brief

How Teacher Effectiveness Spills Over into Other Classrooms

RAND study has shown that, by increasing the ability of their own students, effective teachers also increase the ability of their students' future peers -- a significant effect that current "value added" teacher ratings system do not account for.

Draft

Assessing the Short-term Impact of the New York City Renewal Schools Program

Estimates short-term impacts of the New York City Renewal Schools Program based on the first two full years of program implementation.

Journal Article

Does Helping John Help Sue? Evidence of Spillovers in Education

This paper studies the indirect effect of teachers on their students' future peers and shows that these spillover effects are a large fraction of teachers total value.

Report

Preparing School Leaders for Success: Evaluation of New Leaders' Aspiring Principals Program, 2012–2017

This report analyzes whether schools and students led by graduates of New Leaders‘ Aspiring Principals program outperformed comparison schools and students in the same district.

Research Brief

Considerations for Implementing the TNTP Core Rubric

RAND researchers assessed whether the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric produces scores that are representative of teachers' overall instructional practices and whether raters' content expertise influences scores on TNTP Core.

Report

Validation Study of the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric

RAND researchers assess whether the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric produces scores that are representative of teachers' overall instructional practices and whether raters' content expertise influences scores on TNTP Core.