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This chapter reviews the extensive literature to date on CCTs for education. Section 2 provides background on the origins and expansion of CCTs globally, and describes basic design features and variation in characteristics across programs. Section 3 presents a theory of change and an economic household decision-making model highlighting key comparative statics and empirical predictions for the introduction of an education CCT program. Section 4 discusses key methodological challenges in evaluating the impacts of education CCTs. Section 5 integrates and updates the extensive evidence to date on the impacts of education CCTs on various outcome domains over the life cycle, and provides the most comprehensive view to date on learning impacts by meta-analyzing new evidence from more than 30 studies--substantially more than prior reviews of the literature. Section 6 reviews the evidence on indirect and general equilibrium effects. Section 7 presents a simple model of costs commonly used in the literature, which we extend to analyze cost-effectiveness for a subset of programs. Section 8 concludes and highlights open questions for future research.

Community colleges are under pressure to increase completion rates and efficiency despite limited evidence of the economic consequences of different reform strategies. We introduce an economic model of student course pathways linked to college expenditures and revenues. Using detailed data from a single college, we calculate baseline efficiency and differences in efficiency for students who follow different pathways. We simulate changes in output, expenditures, revenues, net revenues, and efficiency assuming that the college meets particular performance targets. Findings indicate substantial differences in efficiency across pathways and significant differences in efficiency across strategies to help students complete college. They also suggest that increasing the completion rate is difficult and typically requires additional resources beyond the costs of implementing particular strategies. The model has wide practical application for community colleges. Appended are: (1) Measurement of the College Completion Rate; and (2) Outcomes for "U.S.A. Community College". (Contains 7 tables and 12 footnotes.)

Scientific discoveries over the past two decades have transformed the way in which researchers, policymakers, and the public think about early childhood. For example, recent research in brain science has provided a biological basis for prevailing theories about early child development, and cost-benefit analysis has reoriented some of the discussion about early childhood toward prevention programs. Several recent reports have been particularly helpful in translating research findings into practical information that improves policy. This paper summarizes the contributions from the field of economics, which has played an increasingly prominent role in recent discussions about early childhood policy. The insights from economics also have broader implications for social programs focused on prevention, especially during childhood, rather than later-in-life remediation. This research will be of value to individuals who are interested in early childhood policy, including decisionmakers in the public and private sectors, service providers, and the public more generally. (Contains 5 tables and 12 figures.)

Background: The salience of economic evaluation in education -- cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and benefit-cost analysis -- has been on the rise in recent years. In contexts when resources are especially scarce, research to support decision-making to maximize benefits to students is especially valuable. Economic evaluation can help to provide evidence on the strategic and effective ways to address both new and persistent challenges, such as those presented by COVID-19. Nonetheless, researchers have bemoaned the relative paucity of research on the costs of educational interventions since the method was formalized (Levin, 1975). In fact, as of 2002, the vast majority of studies purporting to analyze costs or cost-effectiveness in education were primarily rhetorical in nature (Clune, 2002). Levin (2001) attributed this to a lack of demand for rigorous cost studies among decision-makers and a lack of training. Purpose: Cost studies have garnered new attention in recent years with their adoption by institutions such as JPAL (Dhaliwal, Duflo, Glennerster & Tulloch, 2013) and as a required component for evaluations funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Given this new attention, an update on the prevalence and quality of cost studies in education is in order. We seek to address the following research questions on the state of the literature on economic evaluation in education: Has the prevalence of economic evaluation increased in education research in light of its increased salience? Has the quality and rigor of economic evaluation increased in recent years? Does the prevalence and quality of studies vary by type of analysis and area of specialization? Do rigorous, high-quality studies share common features that are relevant for future researchers and for decision-makers? Do economic evaluations impact education policy in a documentable way? Setting & Subjects: We include in our analysis any education paper that appeared in our search (described below) since 2007 that includes a cost component, even if the cost component was secondary to the main analysis. We include all levels of education and all articles published after 2007 to pick up where the most recent comprehensive review of the literature left off (Ross, Barkoui & Scott, 2007). We include papers regardless of country of origin as long as the paper was available in English. Research design, data collection, & analysis: Our initial list of articles was drawn from a search on the terms "cost," "cost-effectiveness," "cost-benefit," and "economic evaluation" were searched alongside "education" using Web of Science, Google Scholar, EconLit, and ERIC. We found nearly 4,000 citations, the vast majority only tangentially related to education and thus ineligible for analysis. We supplemented this list with additional articles that cited the second and third editions of the Economic Evaluation in Education textbook (Levin & McEwan, 2001 & Levin, McEwan, Bel eld, Bowden & Shand, 2018). The textbook citations list was subjected to the same inclusion criteria as the web search. This work builds on prior comprehensive reviews of the state of economic evaluation of education by adding a novel look at policy reach and influence. We record a list of policy documents that cite each paper, a count of citations, and an Almetric figure. We used the Dimensions and Google Scholar search engines to record each article's citation count and used Dimensions to record the article's presence in policy documents along with its Almetric score. We coded original empirical cost data or specific recommendations for cost analysis on a numeric rubric for quality and rigor, based on the economic evaluation checklist presented in Levin et al. 2018. Papers received a rigor score based on their adherence to the rubric, with papers that met none of these criteria coded 0. Finally, we conducted descriptive analyses on the prevalence and quality of cost studies in education: the number of studies by year, type, area, and quality, and tests to determine if there are statistically significant differences in quality by type and topic of analysis. Findings: Fifty-one percent of the 104 papers analyzed to date were "real" in the sense that they had original cost data or specific recommendations on cost analysis, and 23% of the papers were both authentic cost analyses and rated as high-quality on our rubric. This represents significant progress from the Clune (2002) study, when only 5% of papers met these criteria, although significant work remains to reach even a majority of high-quality cost-studies. Cost-effectiveness analysis is by far the most common type of analysis and the preponderance of papers have been published in higher education, social and emotional learning, general K-12 reforms, and teachers. Quality seems dispersed across topic areas, with most papers coded as partly meeting rigor criteria and no statistically significant differences from the expected distribution based on chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests. Our analysis of policy reach showed a range of influence. Several of the papers included in our analysis had outsized influence but the bulk of papers had modest influence. Conclusions: This review of the economic evaluation literature shows some significant progress since previous reviews. There does indeed seem to be an uptick in both number and quality of studies, notably among cost-effectiveness analyses and in the areas of higher education and social and emotional learning. Nonetheless, there is still much work to be done, as original empirical cost analyses remain relatively rare. Even among this sample, half of the papers had little or no original empirical analysis, suggesting that gathering cost data and performing rigorous analysis remain obstacles. While the increase in frequency and quality is encouraging, further uptake of high-quality cost evaluations would help to fill an essential need in education. In considering the classic tradeoff in economics between efficiency and equity, Rice (2004) argued that applications of economic evaluation to education research can help resolve the dichotomy and simultaneously address both goals in a number of ways. A focus on how resources contribute to outcomes can help provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between inputs, processes, and outcomes, moving beyond debates on whether money matters to focus on how to use resources to maximize the public good.

This paper discusses a framework for education policy, from early childhood through post-secondary education, along with major reform ideas consistent with that framework. We present evidence showing that education is critical to broad-based economic growth. Investments in education yield large returns to both society and the individual. Furthermore, expanding access to high-quality education directly addresses one of the major causes of increased inequality: technological changes that increasingly reward skilled workers. The paper presents evidence suggesting that America's educational system is neither in crisis nor reaching its full potential. To better secure the benefits of a strong education system, the paper outlines an evidence-based strategy that calls for new investments in some areas (such as early education) and structural reforms in others (such as the teacher tenure system). A recently proposed early education program for disadvantaged children and a proposal to dramatically simplify the federal student financial aid system are discussed in detail. (Contains 1 table and 21 footnotes.)

This report examines how the curricular offerings of large secondary schools compare with the curricular offerings of small secondary schools. The study is motivated by theories of production which hold that economies are available in large compared to small schools; it is pointed out, however, that larger schools may not take advantage of existing size economies or may take advantage in varied ways. The first section of the paper reviews ways in which the curriculum of a larger secondary school can differ from that of a smaller secondary school and notes reasons for expecting one type of difference rather than another. Topics include analysis of the relationships among educational services, variation in the mix of services, variation in the means employed to provide services, and the cost of services. The second part of the paper presents an empirical assessment of the relationship between scale and the incidence of the various curricular responses. The conclusion discusses policy implications related to the findings of the study which make a convincing case for maintaining secondary enrollment levels at the 400-pupil level. (JHZ)

This document contains three papers from a symposium on core directions in human resource development (HRD). In "Expertise: The Development of an Operational Definition for Human Resource Development" (Richard W. Herling), expertise is defined as consistent demonstrated actions that are efficient in their execution and effective in their results. "A Methodology for a Cross-disciplinary Critique of Research" (Richard J. Torraco) includes the following phases: problem formulation, population selection, study selection, data analysis, cross-disciplinary synthesis, and reporting of results. "Economics of Human Resource Development--Literature Review" (Eunsang Cho) examines the implications of the following for HRD: human capital theory, screening theory, efficient wage model, internal labor market, agency theory, and transaction cost. (KC)

This review of the literature on interactive video examines research and evaluation reports in the context of the continuing debate over the effectiveness of media debate and Richard E. Clark's argument that media do not have a substantial impact on learning. The literature is examined from four perspectives: (1) behavioral issues (e.g., whether videodisc based programs have helped teachers achieve high levels of student mastery for large and diverse classes); (2) cognitive issues (whether media can activate mental skills); (3) affective issues (whether a learner has a particular preference for a type of medium and how much effort he/she has to invest in order to learn a particular task); and (4) economics and cost-effectiveness (what kind of cost-effectiveness studies can be conducted to examine the role of interactive video in increasing learning efficiency). It is noted that Clark is viewed as being accurate in suggesting that the wrong questions are being addressed in terms of the effectiveness of interactive video. Concluding remarks point out that the literature indicates that new variables are being researched in media comparison studies that might result in more generalizable findings; that the promise for future media research lies in using interactive video as a research tool; and that the need exists to conduct evaluation studies on the medium itself in order to optimize its features and capabilities. Three tables are appended which summarize some of the principal research that has been done on interactive video to date. (39 references) (CGD)

In this paper, the tools of legal and economic analysis are used to analyze the division of decision making authority between state and federal regulators of telecommunications policy. First, the principles of welfare economics are applied to the problem of defining appropriate jurisdictional boundaries. The results of this analysis are normative statements relevant to the problems of identifying a set of legal arrangements or policy rules to maximize economic welfare. Second, the way decisions are actually made is analyzed, and recent law cases resolving jurisdictional disputes arising under the 1934 Communications Act is reviewed. (16 footnotes) (EW)

The Navy is procuring a new kind of destroyer called the DDG-1000 (formerly DD(X)), and wants to procure a new kind of cruiser called the CG(X). Navy plans call for procuring 7 DDG-1000s and 19 CG(X)s between FY2007 and FY2023. The first two DDG-1000s were procured in FY2007. The Navy wants to procure the first CG(X) in FY2011 and the second in FY2013. The Navy's FY2008 budget requests $2,802 million in procurement funding to complete the Navy's estimated procurement cost for the first two DDG-1000s, which are being split-funded (i.e., incrementally funded) across FY2007 and FY2008. The Navy's combined estimated procurement cost for the two ships is $6,370 million. The two ships received $1,010 million in FY2005 and FY2006 advance procurement funding, and $2,557 million in FY2007 procurement funding. The Navy's FY2008 budget also requests $151 million in advance procurement funding for the third DDG-1000, whose procurement cost the Navy estimates at $2,563 million. The DDG-1000/CG(X) program raises several potential oversight issues for Congress, including the accuracy of Navy cost estimates for the program, the program's affordability and cost effectiveness, the acquisition strategy for the third and subsequent DDG-1000s, and the program's potential implications for the shipbuilding industrial base. Potential options for Congress for the DDG-1000/CG(X) program include supporting the Navy's proposed plans or curtailing the DDG-1000 and/or CG(X) programs and pursuing lower-cost alternatives to the DDG-1000 and/or CG(X) designs. The House Armed Services Committee, in its report (H.Rept. 110-146) on the FY2008 defense authorization bill (H.R. 1585), recommended approval of the Navy's request for FY2008 procurement funding for the DDG-1000. The report recommended increasing the Navy's FY2008 request for research and development funding for the DDG-1000 program by $9 million for work on permanent magnet motor technology. The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its report (S.Rept. 110-77 of June 5, 2007) on the FY2008 defense authorization bill (S. 1547), recommended approval of the Navy's request for FY2008 procurement funding for the DDG-1000. The report recommended increasing the Navy's FY2008 request for research and development funding for the DDG-1000 program by $15 million, of which $9 million would be for work on a permanent magnet motor system and $6 million would be for work on wireless encryption technology for use on Navy ships. This report will be updated as events warrant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]