The role of experimentation in education policy

Sally Sadoff

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2014, vol. 30, issue 4, 597-620

Abstract: As the gold standard for programme evaluation, experimentation is gaining increasing attention from education researchers and policy-makers. In this article I discuss how experimentation can be used to shape education policy moving forward. I first discuss how well-designed experiments can both build upon and inform a general framework for the education production function. Experiments within this framework can be particularly powerful when they draw on a wide range of disciplines including child development, psychology, and behavioural economics. Insights from these areas can help identify underlying mechanisms of the education production function and inform the design of interventions in ways that increase (cost-) effectiveness. Additionally, I argue that there should be a rich array of experiments in education, ranging from lab-like basic research to policy-level efficacy trials. Finally, I discuss the policy-maker’s role in integrating experimentation into policy decision-making, including how to address concerns commonly raised with experimentation in education.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grv001 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:30:y:2014:i:4:p:597-620.

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().