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Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (135)
State and local educational agencies are grappling with growing mental health needs among school-aged children that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. We undertake a case study of the experiences of one state, Tennessee, to examine the landscape of mental health interventions that are being deployed and to illuminate contextual factors that...
As college promise programs proliferate across the country, supplemental promise programs are emerging to fill gaps in services and resources critical for student success, particularly for students with greater economic needs. This mixed-methods study examines the implementation and efficacy of two such programs in Tennessee, Nashville GRAD and Kno...
Although some students choose to work while enrolled in college, others may have no choice but to work, even if work may be detrimental to their chances of succeeding in college. Leveraging 17 years of statewide student-level records from Tennessee, the authors examine the relationship between working while enrolled and degree completion, time to d...
A field experiment, using a paired audit testing design with testers of different racial and language profiles, was conducted to document and evaluate individual encounters in inquiring about COVID-19 vaccinations in the U.S. states. Testers communicated with state health department and major vaccination site staff about obtaining the COVID-19 vacc...
An emerging body of research links online credit recovery programs to rising high school graduation rates but does not find comparable increases in student learning. This study follows high school students who engaged in online credit recovery into the labor market to understand the longer‐term implications of this growing educational trend. If onl...
Through the lens of administrative burden and ordeals, we investigate challenges that low‐income families face in accessing health and human services critical for their children's healthy development. We employ a mixed methods approach—drawing on administrative data on economically disadvantaged children in Tennessee, publicly available data on res...
Recent increases in high school graduation rates have been linked anecdotally to online course-taking for credit recovery. Online course-taking that supports high school completion could open opportunities for postsecondary education pursuits. Alternatively, poorer quality online instruction could diminish student learning and discourage persistenc...
The adoption of telepresence technology in K–12 schools potentially expands students’ access to course offerings and new ways of learning, but little is known about its implementation and promise for improving student outcomes. We employ a mixed-methods analysis to examine the experiences of students and teachers in telepresence courses in a large,...
The Kenya Cash Transfer Programme for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (CT-OVC) presents a valuable opportunity to examine the effects of imposing monetary penalties for noncompliance with conditions in cash transfer programs, in contrast to providing only guidance (or “labeling”) for cash transfer use. We take advantage of random assignment to a co...
Background
Expectations that students should request assistance from teachers when needed, a set of classroom behaviors termed “help-seeking,” have the potential to contribute to inequitable access to quality learning experiences in traditional classroom settings.
Purpose
This study extends current literature by mapping the nature of help-seeking...
Social impact bonds, known as pay‐for‐success (PFS) initiatives in the United States, have attracted attention as a novel strategy for financing and providing preventive services to the most vulnerable populations. This article provides an exploratory qualitative analysis of the Preschool PFS Feasibility Pilot grant applications and projects initia...
This study investigates how pedagogical, cultural and institutional factors interact with technical knowledge in educational technology integration and how they relate to equitable and effective technology use in low‐resource settings. In the context of a one‐to‐one tablet initiative in rural Kenya, we explore how these factors constrain or support...
This research examines online course-taking in high schools, which is increasingly used by students falling behind in progress toward graduation. The study looks inside educational settings to observe how online courses are used and assess whether students gain academically through their use. Drawing on 7 million records of online instructional ses...
This mixed methods study examines the extent to which the use, and intensity of use, of educational technology is associated with improved academic outcomes for English language learners (ELLs) in both English/Spanish bilingual and traditional English-only classrooms. We also explore the role of teacher capacity and practice in integrating educatio...
The field of education is progressively building capacity and tools for producing rigorous research evidence to use in improving educational practice and outcomes. The knowledge base is lacking, however, in explicating the dynamics of research-based decision making and exploring connections between the work of research–practice partnerships and cha...
Contradictory elements in U.S. immigration policy, reflecting a long-time struggle between inclusionary and exclusionary views, have resulted in federal legislation filled with compromises and tradeoffs that, at state and sub-state levels, play out in unclear interpretations and uneven, highly discretionary administration and enforcement of immigra...
South African adolescents living in poverty are at significant risk for negative outcomes associated with risky sexual activity and substance use. The South African government introduced the Child Support Grant (CSG) to reduce poverty and provide protection from these risks. We use variation in grant receipt by age to estimate potential effects of...
A concern with requiring employers to provide health insurance to full-time employees is that employers may increase their use of part-time workers to circumvent the mandate. In this paper, we study the effect of the employer mandate in the Massachusetts health insurance reform on part-time work using a difference-in-differences strategy that compa...
The study of administrative burden—experienced in individual encounters with government—is being renewed with new theoretical
developments and policy applications. Building on recent developments, this article aims to broaden the conceptual framing
of administrative burden and extend its empirical investigation beyond concerns about access to and e...
Cash transfer programs have achieved wide-ranging success in reducing poverty, yet there is little empirical research on how program rules and administrative capacity might limit program effectiveness. We examine administrative burden and quantify its implications for grant access and impacts in the South African Child Support Grant (CSG) program,...
There is considerable variation in how providers of digital education describe what they do, their services, how students access services, and what is delivered, complicating efforts to accurately assess its impact. We examine program characteristics of digital tutoring providers using rich, longitudinal observational and interview data and then an...
Since modern welfare reform began in the 1980s, we have seen low-income parents leave the welfare rolls and join the workforce in large numbers. At the same time, the Earned Income Tax Credit has offered a monetary incentive for low-income parents to work. Thus, unlike some of the other two-generation mechanisms discussed in this issue of Future of...
School districts are spending millions on tutoring outside regular school day hours for economically and academically disadvantaged students in need of extra academic assistance. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), parents of children in persistently low-performing schools were allowed to choose their child's tutoring provider, and together with sch...
Since modern welfare reform began in the 1980s, we have seen low-income parents leave the welfare rolls and join the workforce in large numbers. At the same time, the Earned Income Tax Credit has offered a monetary incentive for low-income parents to work. Thus, unlike some of the other two-generation mechanisms discussed in this issue of Future of...
Background/Context
Under supplemental educational services (“supplemental services”), a parental choice provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in increasing student achievement are required to offer low-income families free, afterschool tutoring. Existing research shows low attendance r...
Temporary help services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed between THS and other jobs in a sample of disadvantaged wor...
We estimate impacts on earnings and employment of the two primary adult workforce support and training programs under the U.S. Workforce Investment Act (WIA) using administrative data on 160,000 participants from 12 states for up to four years following program entry. We find that participants in the WIA Adult program, who typically enter with poor...
School districts required under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to provide supplemental educational services (SES) to students in schools that are not making adequate yearly progress rely heavily on the private sector to offer choice in services. If the market does not drive out ineffective providers, students may not gain through SES participation. We...
Substantial declines in employment and earnings among disadvantaged men may be exacerbated by child support enforcement policies that are designed to help support families but may have the unintended consequence of discouraging fathers’ employment. Disentangling causal effects is challenging because high child support debt may be both a cause and a...
To examine the roles of facility- and state-level factors in treatment facilities' adoption and diffusion of pharmaceutical agents used in addiction treatment.
Secondary data from the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...
As performance-based contracting in social welfare services continues to expand, concerns about potential unintended effects are also growing. We analyze the incentive effects of high-powered, performance-based contracts and their implications for program outcomes using panel data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assign...
This paper examines the impact of South Africa’s Child Support Grant (CSG) on the schooling and learning attainments of children. Children who were enrolled in the CSG at birth completed 0.14 more grades of schooling than children who were enrolled at age six. There are marked gender differences. Early CSG enrollment improves girls’ grade attainmen...
This research empirically assesses the quality of evidence that agencies provided to the Office of Management and Budget in the application of the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), introduced in 2002 to more rigorously, systematically, and transparently assess public program effectiveness and hold agencies accountable for results by tying them...
The authors use a compilation of administrative data to examine hourly wages, total hours of work, and quarterly earnings to investigate whether temporary help service (THS) jobs pay a compensating differential (or wage premium) relative to traditional jobs. They find lower quarterly earnings at THS jobs relative to non-THS jobs and a wage premium...
One of the most basic and long-standing problems of economic development policy is how to more effectively promote human capital accumulation. In this essay, Heinrich examines the effectiveness of conditional cash transfer programs designed to increase school attendance in the developing world and the provision of supplemental education services in...
As child support debt owed nationally persists at enormous levels, both noncustodial parents and the custodial families who are not receiving support suffer significant hardships, and states are forced to expend greater resources on collection and enforcement efforts. This paper presents findings from an evaluation of a demonstration program develo...
The authors review the evidence based on youth development policies for adolescents, programs seeking to improve educational attainment and employment for in-school youth, and programs that try to "reconnect" those who are out of school and frequently out of work to identify programmatic strategies that are promising or proven based on rigorous eva...
We use the principal-agent model as a focal theoretical frame for synthesizing what we know, both theoretically and empirically, about the design and dynamics of the implementation of performance management systems in the public sector. In this context, we review the growing body of evidence about how performance measurement and incentive systems f...
The use of microeconometric techniques to estimate the effects of development policies has become a common approach not only for scholars, but also for policy-makers engaged in designing, implementing and evaluating projects in different fields. Among these techniques, Propensity-Score Matching (PSM) is increasingly applied in the policy evaluation...
Schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in increasing student academic achievement are required, under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to offer children in low-income families the opportunity to receive supplemental educational services (SES). In research conducted in Milwaukee Public Schools, the authors explore whether parents and studen...
We address focal questions about the growth of “third-party” government and new forms or tools of governance and the extent
and impact of their increasing use to implement public policy and the “public will.“ Our goal is to sharpen this discussion
by bringing empirical evidence to bear on key arguments and assertions in the debate. In particular, a...
Despite the wide‐ranging use of performance measures within the public sector and the growing use of performance bonuses to recognize performance achievements, the use of formal performance standards adjustment procedures in public performance measurement systems is relatively rare. Burt S. Barnow of Johns Hopkins University and Carolyn J. Heinrich...
This study examines public management challenges faced by educational agencies that are required to set up a market for providing choice in supplemental educational services (SES) for students in underperforming schools and to hold nongovernmental providers accountable for their performance in increasing student achievement. The operations and perf...
Two federal job training programs for adults lead to higher wages in the long run. People with poor work histories who enrolled in training through the Workforce Investment Act's Adult Program initially had lower wages, but after 10 quarters they caught up with people who did not receive training. Participants in the Dislocated Worker Program also...
This paper uses a natural experiment approach to identify the effects of an exogenouschange in future pension benefits on workers’ training participation. We use uniquematched survey and administrative data for male employees in the Dutch public sectorwho were born in 1949 or 1950. Only the latter were subject to a major pension reformthat diminish...
Summary Social investment funds (SIFs) aim to strengthen local capacity for design, implementation, and maintenance of social and economic infrastructure projects and to increase community participation in ways that will promote their sustainability and effectiveness. We explore key features of recent SIFs, intended to promote decentralized, partic...
We present findings from a nonexperimental evaluation of an employment program in which both partners in young, low-income,
primarily African-American couples simultaneously participated. Mothers participating in the couples program had larger immediate
gains in employment and earnings and decreases in TANF receipt following their exit from the pro...
The idea that work is the gateway to self-sufficiency and the way out of poverty is a simple, powerful message. Work-based welfare reform aligns the structure of the safety net with the central values of Americans who are not on welfare. As R. Kent Weaver points out in his political analysis in this volume (see chapter 9), a key element of continui...
The authors find an inverse relationship between child support debt and a father's earnings and child support payments. Higher arrears are generally associated with lower payments and lower earnings for fathers, although the patterns vary with fathers’ age and work histories.
Recent reforms intended to promote more accountable and responsive government have increased public attention to performance analysis and accelerated the production and use of information on agency performance and public program outcomes. Drawing from cases and empirical studies, this presentation considers questions about what should count as evid...
To examine state policies associated with adoption of a pharmaceutical agent-naltrexone-by substance abuse treatment facilities to treat alcohol-dependent clients.
Facility-level data from the 2003 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services, and state-level data on policy and environmental factors from publicly available sources.
We use...
Temporary help services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals while also increasing their use of employment subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve employment outcomes for THS workers? We examine the distinct...
Temporary help services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals while also increasing their use of employment subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare‐to‐Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve employment outcomes for THS workers? We examine the distinct...
The Wisconsin Works (W-2) program changed the administrative structure for social welfare services delivery from county government administration to one that includes performance-based contracting and private sector management of programs. We present a theoretical discussion of government contracting and the implications of alternative contract str...
Both the evidence-based policy and performance management movements aim to improve government effectiveness by developing and utilizing a more rigorous base of information and scientific evidence to guide decisions about program design, funding, implementation, and management. In practice, however, differences and tensions between these movements—s...
This research undertakes a theoretical and empirical examination of (high performance bonus) systems in government, that is, incentive payments awarded by the federal government to state organizations or statewide programs to motivate and recognize high performance achievements. The paper draws from a multidisciplinary literature on incentives in o...
The Programa Nacional de Becas Estudiantiles is a conditional cash transfer program designed to promote human capital accumulation and reduce poverty among Argentine youth. This study follows a 1999 cohort of students for five years and uses matching methods with a comparison group of students excluded due to quotas to estimate average and marginal...
The basic patterns of temporary help service (THS) effects are very similar for women and for men and for individuals seeking employment in an economic boom and in a period of relative stagnation. For many individuals, temporary help employment may well be available when other kinds of jobs are not. The concerns that individuals who make the choice...
The performance of governments around the globe is constantly in the spotlight, whether as a celebration or indictment of their activities. Providing evidence on strategies to improve the performance of public agencies is therefore essential to the practice of public management. Originally published in 2006, this important contribution to the debat...
Studies examining welfare-to-work program effectiveness present mixed and sometimes discrepant findings, partly due to research design, data, and methodological limitations. Using administrative data on Missouri and North Carolina welfare recipients, we substantially improve on past estimation approaches to identify the distinct effects of each sta...
A fundamental challenge in the design of performance measurement and incentive systems is the establishment of appropriate benchmark levels of performance, also known as performance standards. Drawing from the information economics, contract theory and public administration literatures, we derive theoretical implications for the construction of per...
The primary objectives of the program are to support the retention, promotion and graduation of students in the EGB, thus increasing educational attainment and promoting human capital development among Argentine youth.
The call for practice improvement in substance abuse treatment is motivated by the ultimate goal of achieving consistently positive post-treatment outcomes. A central hypothesis of the empirical investigation in this study is that consumer-level outcomes are affected either directly or indirectly through clinical practice, by factors originating at...
We explore the effects of temporary help employment on welfare recipients' subsequent employment and welfare dynamics. We find that any employment-in temporary help services or other sectors-yields substantial benefits compared to no employment. Although welfare recipients who go to work for temporary help service firms have lower initial wages tha...
Females with recent participation in public welfare are a disproportionate and growing share of temporary help services firm employees. Research documenting low earnings, frequent job transitions, and low benefit rates among temporary workers has raised concerns that welfare recipients taking these jobs might have poorer labor market outcomes than...
Government and public focus on accountability for program outcomes, combined with practical and ethical constraints on experimental designs, make nonexperimental studies of social programs an increasingly common approach to producing information on program performance. In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of alternative nonexperimental evalu...
Changes in funding, clientele, and treatment practices of public and privately owned substance abuse treatment programs, compelled in part by increased cost containment pressures, have prompted researchers' investigations of the implications of organizational form for treatment programs. These studies primarily probe associations between ownership...
This empirical study of the performance management system in the U.S. Workforce Investment Act (WIA) program identifies challenges and prospects for implementing performance management systems effectively in public agencies. the analyses of performance standard setting processes and relationships among standards and state performance levels demonst...
This study presents an organizing framework for empirical analyses of substance abuse treatment program effectiveness, based on relevant theories of organization and public management and the body of substance abuse treatment studies, and is applied in analyses of treatment program data.
We use descriptive analyses of data from the National Treatme...
Requirements for outcomes–based performance management are increasing performance–evaluation activities at all government levels. Research on public–sector performance management, however, points to problems in the design and management of these systems and questions their effectiveness as policy tools for increasing governmental accountability. In...
