Schools and school systems throughout the nation are increasingly experimenting with using various instructional technologies to improve productivity and decrease costs, but evidence on both the effectiveness and the costs of education technology is limited. A recent report published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute sets out to describe "the…

Rapidly declining response rates and the associated threat of nonresponse bias call into question the validity of data obtained through telephone surveys, a tool often used in evaluation. This article explores changes in nonresponse bias over time by examining three data points (1991, 1996, and 2002) from an annual household telephone survey…

The new "Weighted Student Formula Yearbook 2009" from the Reason Foundation provides a simple framework for touting the successes of states and urban school districts that grant greater fiscal autonomy to schools. The report defines the Weighted Student Formula (WSF) reform extremely broadly, presenting a variety of reforms under the WSF umbrella.…

A report from the School Choice Demonstration Project examines issues concerning the funding formula used for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). It finds that the program generates a net saving to taxpayers in Wisconsin but imposes a significant fiscal burden on taxpayers in Milwaukee. However, these findings depend significantly on how…

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University conducted a large-scale analysis of the impact of charter schools on student performance. The center's data covered 65-70% of the nation's charter schools. Although results varied by state, 17% of the charter school students have significantly higher math results than …

"How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement" estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an…

A new report published by the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions is a minor variant on six similar reports published by the Friedman Foundation over the past three years. The new report repeats some of the errors in the previous reports, and it follows a parallel structure, arguing that the costs of dropping out are dramatic for the…

Methods of using simplified time series analysis (STSA) in evaluating clinical programs are discussed. STSA assists in addressing problems of attrition/augmentation of subjects in programs with changing populations. Combining individually calculated "C" statistics in a simple aggregate analysis of restraint usage by nursing home staff…

A new report published by the Manhattan Institute for Education Policy, "The Effect of Special Education Vouchers on Public School Achievement: Evidence from Florida's McKay Scholarship Program," attempts to examine the complex issue of how competition introduced through school vouchers affects student outcomes in public schools. The…

A Friedman Foundation report attempts to find empirical support for the contention that competition from private schools, through voucher programs, improves the effectiveness of public schools. In the first year of Ohio's new EdChoice voucher program, the report claims to have found substantial academic gains at public schools exposed to the…

A beverage-server intervention project at two West Coast Navy bases that attempted to reduce levels of alcoholic intoxication via policy changes and server training is described. Data obtained via interviews and structured observations of 1,511 club customers indicate methodological bias and self-selection effects. Bias adjustments were performed…