Nora Gordon and Kaylee Matheny will examine whether schools could be more effective if they changed how they allocated their resources. They will examine how school leaders decide how much to spend; how they prioritize spending across categories, such as teacher salaries and curricula; and the extent to which they draw on research to inform those decisions. The project’s findings will appear in a research paper and a policy brief.
Thomas Toch and Peg Tyre will examine how some school districts have sought to maintain the rigor of their advanced education programs while expanding access to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. They will develop a “playbook” for school leaders seeking to increase representation of disadvantaged students in advanced classes through reforms such as the adoption of universal screening and making advanced classes available in early grades.
William Gormley, Sara Anderson, Katherine Magnuson, and Amy Claessens will examine whether early childhood educational programs can contribute to social mobility by improving high school academic achievement and rates of college enrollment. They will analyze a variety of educational and criminal justice system data for young people who were enrolled in Tulsa’s universal pre-kindergarten program in 2006. The project’s findings will appear in a series of papers and policy briefs.
Sara Bjerg Moller will research and write a book examining the variety of battlefield coalitions used by the U.S. military in conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq and assessing their relative effectiveness.