This report analyzes the fiscal capacity of eight local levee districts in southern Louisiana to shoulder the burden of operating and maintaining the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System ...and other key hurricane protection infrastructure currently under construction by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, specifically focusing on operation and maintenance costs.
This report assesses the Texas experience in the context of national competency-based higher-education movement. Competency-based education in Texas is examined through six institutions that ...currently offer these programs and recent state efforts to support them. The approach included review of relevant documents, webpages, and interviews with program administrators, a sample of students enrolled in one of the programs, and a state policymaker.
Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students' test scores in reading, ...mathematics, and science and on English learners' (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intentto-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in fifth and eighth grades, ranging from 13% to 22% of a standard deviation, reflecting 7 to 9 months of learning. We find little benefit in terms of mathematics and science performance but also no detriment. By sixth and seventh grade, lottery winners' probabilities of remaining classified as EL are 3 to 4 percentage points lower than those of their counterparts. This effect is stronger for ELs whose native language matches the partner language.
This report examines how military service affects earnings, especially how these effects differ by the number of years of service and military occupational specialties and how external factors and ...policies affect these impacts. The authors also examined how economic conditions in the civilian labor market when individuals exit active duty affect postservice earnings.
India has joined a worldwide trend in which nations are seeking to improve the quality of their higher education systems by giving greater autonomy and accountability to higher education ...institutions. In this report, the authors review India’s and other countries’ higher education systems and suggest seven policy actions that the Indian national government and other stakeholders can take to improve higher education by linking funding to quality.
This paper examines the secondary effects of policies that extend or deny in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants. Drawing upon repeated cross-sections of 15-17-year-olds in the ...Current Population Survey across 1997-2010, we assess changes in high school enrollment rates among Mexican-born non-citizen youth—a proxy for the undocumented youth population. We find that Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that deny in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 49 % less likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. Conversely, Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that grant in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 65 % more likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. The enactment of these policies is unrelated to changes in school enrollment among naturalized citizens. Our findings lend support to the proposition that that the implementation of in-state tuition policies sends signals to immigrant youth about their future educational possibilities in the long-term, which in turn influences the extent to which they engage in school in the short-term.
To inform decisions about whether community college baccalaureate degree programs should be expanded in Texas, this report assesses unmet workforce-development needs in nursing and four applied ...science occupations: computer and information technology, management of fire sciences, management of production/operations technicians, and health information technology.
To inform decisions about whether community college baccalaureate degree programs should be expanded in Texas, this report summarizes findings on unmet workforce-development needs in nursing and four ...applied science occupations: computer and information technology, management of fire sciences, management of production/operations technicians, and health information technology.
•We develop a general methodology for measuring value-added in higher education.•We estimate this model for the 30 public universities in the state of Texas.•We find large unconditional differences ...in persistence rates, graduation, and earnings that decrease substantially upon controlling for selection.•This methodology highlights the importance of selection when developing value-added measures in higher education for either public reporting or for incentivizing behavior.
This paper develops a general methodology for measuring the value added of institutions of higher education using commonly available administrative data. Our approach recognizes the data limitations and selection problems inherent in higher education, and highlights the challenges these issues pose for education policy. Combining information from different administrative sources in the state of Texas, we follow the universe of Texas college applicants from the time of application (pre-enrollment) through public college and into the labor market. In specifications that do not control for selection, we find large, significant differences across colleges in terms of persistence, graduation, and earnings; however, these differences decrease substantially when we control for selection. In light of the growing interest in using value-added measures in higher education for both funding and incentivizing purposes, our methodology offers unique evidence and lessons for policy makers.
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