Charter schools offer something that public school systems, parents, and teachers need: a way to experiment with alternative ways of teaching, motivating students, organizing schools, using technology, and employing teachers. While people came down on both sides of support for or against charter schools, everyone was surprised by how difficult it was to assess charter school performance. The first part of this book focuses on how to improve estimates of charter schools' performance, especially their benefits to students who attend them; the second part suggests how policymakers can learn more about charter schools and make better use of evidence. The editors and authors suggest ways states and localities can improve the quality of data on which charter school studies are based and trace some of the ways charter school research influences policy.

Charter schools offer something that public school systems, parents, and teachers need: a way to experiment with alternative ways of teaching, motivating students, organizing schools, using technology, and employing teachers. While people came down on both sides of support for or against charter schools, everyone was surprised by how difficult it was to assess charter school performance. The first part of this book focuses on how to improve estimates of charter schools' performance, especially their benefits to students who attend them; the second part suggests how policymakers can learn more about charter schools and make better use of evidence. The editors and authors suggest ways states and localities can improve the quality of data on which charter school studies are based and trace some of the ways charter school research influences policy.

The past decade has seen increased attention to cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analysis in education as administrators are being asked to accomplish more with the same or even fewer resources, philanthropists are keen to calculate their "return on investment" in social programs, and the general public is increasingly scrutinizing how resources are allocated to schools and colleges. This text (titled Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in its previous editions) is the only full-length book to provide readers with the step-by-step methods they need to plan and implement a benefit-cost analysis in education. The authors examine a range of issues, including how to identify, measure, and distribute costs; how to measure effectiveness, utility, and benefits; and how to incorporate cost evaluations into the decision-making process. The updates to the Third Edition reflect the considerable methodological development in the evaluation literature, and the greater empiricism practiced by education researchers, to help readers learn to apply more advanced methods to their own analyses. SAGE congratulates author Henry M. Levin, winner of the 2017 AERA Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award.