Richard Murnane

The partnership team will evaluate Massachusetts' long-standing policy of requiring students to pass high school exit examinations (HSEE) in core subjects to earn a high school diploma. The team will generate robust causal evidence of the impact of Massachusetts exit examinations administered between 2002 and 2019 on long-term student outcomes including educational attainment, labor market earnings, and criminal justice involvement. During the state's transition to a new assessment (2020-202...

This project will evaluate the impact of high stakes (for students and schools or for schools only) testing in Massachusetts. Massachusetts began administering the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) mathematics and English/language arts examinations in 1998. For the class of 2003, the 10th grade tests became high-stakes exit examinations. Students must pass both tests in order to receive a high school diploma.

Given the current interest in national and state initiatives to expand early childhood programming, questions of under what conditions impacts can be sustained, and for whom, are of great practical importance. Among the unanswered questions in the literature are the effects of a uniform curriculum across a large-scale program and how such impacts vary depending on the specific curricula used. The proposed regression discontinuity study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the i...

Over the past two decades, a growing number of states have implemented high-stakes exit examinations that students must pass to graduate from high school. Exit exams are often justified as a means to verify that high school graduates have mastered important knowledge and skills. However, concerns have been raised that exit exams may cause students, particularly those from low income and urban backgrounds who are already struggling in the educational system, to drop out of high school or de...

Understanding Recent Trends in the Black-White Achievement Gap: An Analysis of NAEP Long-term Trend Using the Oaxaca Decomposition