Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education
The mission of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at PennGSE is to promote the rigorous and responsible development and application of cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost methods. The Center builds on work that began in the 1970's and has pursued methodological improvements and new methods of analysis including a software platform, CostOut, for estimating costs using the ingredients method. Application topic areas include high school graduation, early child development, integrated school services, social and emotional learning, college completion, and many others. CBCSE also sponsors training programs in economic evaluation of education for researchers and decision-makers.
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Publication MOOCS in Higher Education: Institutional Goals and Paths Forward(2015-01-01) Hollands, Fiona M; Tirthali, DevayaniIn 2011, MOOCs dominated media reports on higher education and, since then, hundreds of organizations have rushed to produce and offer these courses. Why are institutions offering MOOCs and what are they achieving as a result? This book addresses these questions based on interviews with almost one hundred educators, policy makers, and business people. Hollands and Tirthali identify six major goals for MOOC production and, using real-life examples, assess whether these goals are being achieved and, if not, how they could be accomplished going forward.Publication Evaluating the Talent Search TRIO Program: A Benefit-Cost Analysis and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis(2015-01-01) Bowden, A Brooks; Belfield, Clive RTalent Search was created to improve high school completion and college enrollment for disadvantaged students. Since the program’s inception in 1967, there has not been a valid study on its economic value. In this paper, we perform a full economic evaluation, yielding direct information on the value of Talent Search and highlighting key methodological issues relating to economic evaluations of education programs. We provide rigorous estimates of social costs using the ingredients method. Using prior estimates of impacts from Constantine et al. [(2006). Study Of The Effect of The Talent Search Program On Secondary And Postsecondary Outcomes In Florida, Indiana And Texas: Final Report From Phase II of The National Evaluation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service], we perform a cost-benefit analysis based on new estimates of shadow prices. Finally, to examine site-specific differences in impacts and costs, we undertake cost-effectiveness analysis and derive confidence intervals that illustrate key sensitivity issues. Regarding costs, we find significant resource use beyond federal funding amounts; but we also find that the present value benefits of Talent Search almost certainly exceed the present value of costs by a substantial margin. With regard to cost-effectiveness, we find significant differences across sites and extremely wide confidence intervals. We conclude with an outline of key research issues that need to be addressed to enhance future economic evaluations in educational settings with wide site-specific variation.Publication How Much Does New York City Now Spend Children's Services?(2011-01-01) Belfield, Clive R; Garcia, EmmaThis report estimates the total annual public, tax-related, and philanthropic expenditures on children in New York City. It presents a “fiscal map” classifying expenditures by: age of child (early childhood, elementary, high school); source of funding (public, tax-related, philanthropic); level of government (city, state, federal); domain (prenatal care, early childhood, pediatric care, before/after/summer school, K-12 education, health, social and administration); and level of child disadvantage, as measured using poverty criteria.Publication Leveraging Volunteers: An Experimental Evaluation of a Tutoring Program for Struggling Readers(2016-01-01) Jacob, Robin; Armstrong, Catherine; Bowden, A Brooks; Pan, YilinThis study evaluates the impacts and costs of the Reading Partners program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in under-resourced elementary schools. The evaluation uses an experimental design. Students were randomly assigned within 19 different Reading Partners sites to a program or control condition to answer questions about the impact of the program on student reading proficiency. A cost study, using a subsample of six of the 19 study sites, explores the resources needed to implement the Reading Partners program as described in the evaluation. Findings indicate that the Reading Partners program has a positive and statistically significant impact on all three measures of reading proficiency assessed with an effect size equal to around 0.10. The cost study findings illustrate the potential value of the Reading Partners program from the schools’ perspective because the financial and other resources required by the schools to implement the program are low. Additionally, the study serves as an example of how evaluations can rigorously examine both the impacts and costs of a program to provide evidence regarding effectiveness.Publication Leveraging Volunteers: An Experimental Evaluation of a Tutoring Program for Struggling Readers(2016-01-01) Jacob, Robin; Armstrong, Catherine; Bowden, A Brooks; Pan, YilinThis study evaluates the impacts and costs of the Reading Partners program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in under-resourced elementary schools. The evaluation uses an experimental design. Students were randomly assigned within 19 different Reading Partners sites to a program or control condition to answer questions about the impact of the program on student reading proficiency. A cost study, using a subsample of six of the 19 study sites, explores the resources needed to implement the Reading Partners program as described in the evaluation. Findings indicate that the Reading Partners program has a positive and statistically significant impact on all three measures of reading proficiency assessed with an effect size equal to around 0.10. The cost study findings illustrate the potential value of the Reading Partners program from the schools’ perspective because the financial and other resources required by the schools to implement the program are low. Additionally, the study serves as an example of how evaluations can rigorously examine both the impacts and costs of a program to provide evidence regarding effectiveness.Publication An Economic Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of Providing Comprehensive Supports to Students in Elementary School(2020-01-01) Bowden, A Brooks; Shand, Robert; Levin, Henry M; Muroga, Atsuko; Wang, AnyiThere is growing evidence that out-of-school factors, such as physical and mental health, family support, and social and emotional development, significantly affect student learning (Berliner 2009). To address challenges related to poverty, schools are being charged with serving as a focal point in providing and coordinating support services for students and their families (Adelman and Taylor 2002; Dryfoos 2002). In many schools these support services are provided in fragmented ways that do not address the needs of all students or engage teachers in connecting these services to the academic mission of the school (Walsh and DePaul 2008). An emerging school-based model, broadly termed “comprehensive student support” (Walsh et al. 2016), is designed to overcome such fragmentation. In this paper, we build upon previous effectiveness work with an economic evaluation of a successful support model, City Connects. We find that the benefits of the program exceed the costs, indicating that the program is a sound investment and should be considered an option to address the needs of students and to prevent future crises from disrupting their learning.Publication Cost-Effectiveness and Educational Policy(2002-01-01) Levin, Henry M; McEwan, Patrick JThis Yearbook of the American Educational Finance Association provides methodological treatments of cost-effectiveness in education as well as specific studies using the method.Publication REACH Impact Evaluation(2019-01-01) Shand, Robert; Kushner, Anna; Muroga, Atsuko; Levin, HenryThe Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem program, a partnership between Teachers College, Columbia University, and six schools in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, aims to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership between the university, schools, and community organizations. The program supports schools in five areas – Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Expanded Learning Opportunities, Physical and Mental Health, and Family and Community Engagement. Previous evaluation work has focused on implementation and costs, finding the program is generally implemented with fidelity but not without challenges in sustaining an effective partnership, and that the program is comprehensive but costly at approximately $1500 per student per year, or 10% on top of average per-student spending. This phase of evaluation work focuses on program impacts, estimating its effects on student achievement, student engagement and well-being outcomes tied to program domains, and school climate using an innovative difference-in-differences with matching estimator. Preliminary estimates suggest the program may have modestly positive effects on ELA scores and student attendance in elementary and middle schools, positive effects on high school graduation, and slightly negative effects on school climate survey measures, possibly due to raised expectations.Publication REACH Impact Evaluation(2019-01-01) Shand, Robert; Kushner, Anna; Muroga, Atsuko; Levin, HenryThe Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem program, a partnership between Teachers College, Columbia University, and six schools in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, aims to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership between the university, schools, and community organizations. The program supports schools in five areas – Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Expanded Learning Opportunities, Physical and Mental Health, and Family and Community Engagement. Previous evaluation work has focused on implementation and costs, finding the program is generally implemented with fidelity but not without challenges in sustaining an effective partnership, and that the program is comprehensive but costly at approximately $1500 per student per year, or 10% on top of average per-student spending. This phase of evaluation work focuses on program impacts, estimating its effects on student achievement, student engagement and well-being outcomes tied to program domains, and school climate using an innovative difference-in-differences with matching estimator. Preliminary estimates suggest the program may have modestly positive effects on ELA scores and student attendance in elementary and middle schools, positive effects on high school graduation, and slightly negative effects on school climate survey measures, possibly due to raised expectations.Publication Guiding the Development and Use of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Education(2014-10-01) Levin, Henry M; Belfield, Clive RCost-effectiveness analysis is rarely used in education. When it is used, it often fails to meet methodological standards, especially with regard to cost measurement. Although there are occasional criticisms of these failings, we believe that it is useful to provide a listing of the more common concerns and how they might be addressed. Based upon both previous projects on the subject and a recent project that attempted to construct cost-effectiveness comparisons from the What Works Clearinghouse of the Institute of Educational Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, we have identified a set of recommendations for practice that should have high priority if we are to construct valid cost-effectiveness comparisons for policy uses when choosing among alternative educational interventions.