A Higher Level for Education Research
IPR elevates program, capitalizes on recent arrivals

Fall, 2008, Volume 30, Number 2

David Figlio talks with students at a Florida elementary school.

The stakes for education research have never been higher. Failing public schools, tumbling rates of U.S. student achievement, drops in funding for schools, the persistence of the black-white achievement gap, and retention of effective teachers are just a few of the critical issues that school districts across the nation face every day. More often than not, the path to a sound policy solution is either littered with flawed
studies—or worse, completely washed out by a lack of reliable data.

This is why the Institute for Policy Research is elevating its longstanding education policy research area to a full-fledged research program.  The new program area will regroup nine faculty fellows, representing the fields of education and social policy, psychology, statistics, sociology, economics, and management and strategy.

Over the past three years, four researchers with an education focus have arrived at the Institute. David Figlio, Michelle Reininger, Sergio Urzúa, and Larry Hedges have joined fellow IPR researchers Thomas D. Cook, James Rosenbaum, James Spillane, and others. Figlio, Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy, will lead the new program.

“There is too little information about which education interventions are most effective in terms of student achievement and even costs,” Figlio noted. “By nurturing IPR’s vibrant and multidisciplinary community of education researchers, we hope to create an even larger pool of rigorous research and policy-relevant solutions to address the pressing problems faced by teachers, students, and parents.”

IPR Director Fay Lomax Cook said, “From some of the first studies of Comer schools and evaluations of urban school reforms to a current push to understand the effects of No Child Left Behind, teacher effectiveness, and high school-to-college transitions—IPR faculty have been at the forefront of a broad range of education issues.”

IPR Fellows and Research

The nine IPR faculty fellows who are part of the new program on education research share interests with other IPR research programs, such as Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies; Poverty, Race, and Inequality; Nonprofits and Philanthropy; and the Center for Improving Methods for Quantitative Policy Research, or Q-Center, which Cook and Hedges co-direct.

David Figlio
Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy;
Professor of Human Development, Social Policy, and Learning Sciences

Figlio, who came to Northwestern from the University of Florida, is one of IPR’s newest faculty fellows and will be leading its education research program. He is currently directing the evaluation of Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships Program, the largest school voucher program in the United States, with more than 20,000 recipients across the state. He also studies the effects of school accountability design on student achievement and school policies and practices, showing, for example, how accountability affects principals’ performance and the teacher labor market. He is one of the founding editors of the American Education Finance Association’s journal, Education Finance and Policy, published by MIT Press. (See the related article on p. 16.)

Thomas D. Cook
Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair in Ethics and Justice;
Professor of Sociology, Psychology, and Education and Social Policy

As an independent reviewer of the national study of Title I (No Child Left Behind), Cook is at the forefront of evaluating the most significant change to U.S. education policy in recent years. He is also a leading scholar in the area of quasi-experimental methodology, organizing an annual summer workshop for practitioners and researchers in education (see p. 11). Cook’s research covers a wide variety of issues, including a comprehensive evaluation of Comer schools, the achievement gap and “Sesame Street,” the effectiveness of state pre-K programs and Head Start, and use of randomized experiments in education. He is also leading a MacArthur working group on housing and families with children (see p. 6). Cook is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former chair of the Russell Sage Foundation board.

Larry Hedges
Board of Trustees Professor in Statistics and Social Policy

A national leader in the fields of education statistics and evaluation, Hedges is best known for his work on meta-analysis that includes co-writing Statistical Methods for Meta-Analysis with Ingram Olkin. He has conducted studies on the black-white achievement gap, teacher effectiveness using Tennessee STAR data, and frameworks for international comparative studies on education. He is a co-organizer of the summer institute supported by the Institute of Education Sciences on randomized cluster trials (see the p.1 story on Methods). Hedges is a founder of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) and the founding editor of SREE’s new journal. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Education.

James Spillane
Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Chair in Learning and Organizational Change

Spillane’s work explores the policy implementation process at the state, school district, school, and classroom levels. His current research focuses on relations between policy, school administrative structures, and teaching. He is principal investigator of the Distributed Leadership Study, which investigates school leadership and management in urban schools. He is also studying principal preparation, recruitment, retention, and career paths with Michelle Reininger. He is author of Standards Deviation: How Local Schools Misunderstand Policy (Harvard University Press, 2004), Distributed Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006), Distributed Leadership in Practice (Teachers College Record, 2007), and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Charles F. Manski
Board of Trustees Professor in Economics

Manski’s research spans econometrics, judgment and decision making, and analysis of social policy. He has written several books on methodology for empirical research in the social sciences. He has also co-authored books on postsecondary schooling choice and on evaluation of welfare and training programs. His studies on education have investigated many topics, including perceptions of the returns to schooling, vouchers and social mobility, factors that influence college-going behavior, and the decision to become a teacher. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Therese McGuire
ConAgra Foods Research Professor
Professor of Management and Strategy

McGuire’s areas of expertise include state and local public finance, fiscal
decentralization, property tax limitations, education finance, and regional economic development. She has written about and advised various governments on state tax reform and on the impact of taxes on economic growth. Her work on education finance has looked at the effects of using property taxes as funding for local schools and possible alternatives to property taxes, in addition to how tax limitations affect student performance. She is currently editor of the National Tax Journal.

James Rosenbaum
Professor of Human Development and Social Policy

Rosenbaum has an extensive body of research looking into public housing and mobility programs, including Chicago’s Gautreaux Program. As part of his studies of Gautreaux, Rosenbaum has examined the effects of moving poor black families to white middle-class suburbs—in particular, how the moves affect children’s educational outcomes. More recently, Rosenbaum has focused on college for all and the high school-to-work transition. He currently is studying the barriers to college access faced by disadvantaged students. Rosenbaum serves as an adviser to Education Week, the National Assessment of Career and Technical Education, the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, and New York Mayor Bloomberg’s Task Force on Career and Technical Education.

Michelle Reininger
Assistant Professor of Human Development and Social Policy

Reininger’s broad research agenda is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the dynamics of teacher labor markets, including preparation, recruitment, and retention. Specifically, she studies the importance of geography in the occupational decision making of teachers as well as the role of community colleges in the supply of teachers in areas with hard-to-staff schools. She has launched a two-year study of how to identify and target promising student teachers in the Chicago Public School system. She is also studying principal preparation,
recruitment, retention, and career paths with James Spillane.

Sergio Urzúa
Assistant Professor of Economics

Urzúa’s research has focused on the role of cognitive and socioemotional skills and health as determinants of schooling decisions, labor market outcomes, and social behavior. His research has found socioemotional skills such as motivation, persistence, and self-esteem can influence schooling decisions and labor market outcomes as much as cognitive ability. Urzúa’s research has also examined the economic channels through which family and school environments can affect schooling decisions and labor market outcomes. Recently, he has also studied the effects of early childhood interventions in Latin America.

For more information about these and other IPR faculty, please visit
www.northwestern.edu/ipr/people/faculty.html.