Over the past 25 years or more, scholars and policy makers have pushed several different education reform agendas. The No Child Left Behind Act reflected a nationwide push for assessment-based accountability that has since lost momentum. During this same time period, advocates of charter schools and voucher systems launched successful campaigns in some states and cities to expand parental choice, at least among disadvantaged families. Evaluation research reports mixed results from all of these efforts, and to date, researchers have not reached consensus concerning the design of policies that would generate more of the success stories of the past two decades while avoiding more of the failures. The panel discussed how lessons learned during the past two decades should shape education policy going forward.
Participants on the panel included:
- Dennis Epple, Thomas Lord University Professor of Economics, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
- Derek Neal, Professor in Economics, the Committee on Education, and the College, University of Chicago
- Christopher Walters, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley.
- Moderator: Kevin Murphy, institute co-chair and George Pratt Shultz Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Chicago