Improving student outcomes through economic evaluation for evidence-based decisionmaking in education.
The mission of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education is to improve education and human capital development by producing high quality evidence on the costs, effects, and economic benefits of policies and interventions. CBCSE has produced a vast portfolio of research, applied and methodological, with the goals of improving educational investments and the quality of evidence for policy. Our work spans important topics in the economics of education related to early childhood, k-12, postsecondary education, and beyond.
Economic Evaluation In Education
This text (titled Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in 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.
News & Reports
New report, The Benefits of Adequacy: Estimating the Economic Impacts of Pennsylvania’s Basic Education Funding Commission Proposal, by David Loeb, Katie Pullom, & Brooks Bowden. June 2024
New open-access paper, Empirical Support for Establishing Common Assumptions in Cost Research in Education, by Robert Shand and Brooks Bowden published in Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.
New blog post: Small investments for big gains: Transforming wraparound services into an engine of opportunity, co-authored by CBCSE’s Brooks Bowden in Brookings’ Brown Center Chalkboard
New paper, An Economic Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of Providing Comprehensive Supports to Students in Elementary School, by Brooks Bowden, Robert Shand, Henry Levin, Atsuko Muroga, and Anyi Wang published in Prevention Science.