Education

The research will examine the impact of policies that preempt instruction on racial justice and health equity in Iowa school districts.

This research will generate key evidence needed to understand the effects of exclusionary discipline on equitable access to education and potential alternative strategies that address or prevent the behavioral and emotional difficulties that have given rise to exclusion. 

In 2014, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new guidance to allow providers in educational settings to seek Medicaid reimbursement for free preventive services covered by the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit provided to Medicaid-enrolled children. However, following CMS’ announcement, states retained policies restricting reimbursement for these services.

Late elementary school and middle school has long been seen as a critical point in child development, and several studies have shown that students experience a decline in performance when they transition from elementary to middle or middle to high school, and that they do not recover from these dips. Local school boards may choose to operate schools as K-8 combined elementary and middle schools or as K-5 elementary schools with separate middle schools, but little is known about how this structuring of grades might influence health outcomes or behavior.

Leveraging more than a decade’s worth of data, the researchers will examine relationships between at-risk children’s health and education outcomes, as well as access to public services. This is vital information as states across the country, and Tennessee in particular, adopt new laws and resolutions that encompass a wide range of policy actions related to child health and education.

Prior research suggests that universal pre-kindergarten programs can generate lifetime benefits, but the mechanisms generating these effects are not well understood. In 2014, New York City made all 4-year-old children eligible for universal pre-k programs that emphasized developmental and health screening. We examine the effect of this program on health outcomes.

High-quality, early childhood education (ECE) boosts early-life skills in disadvantaged individuals. These skills translate into better outcomes later in life, in areas like employment, education, income, and criminal activity. But ECE is also costly, and as such, it is important to have a complete picture of the social returns throughout life. In particular, it is not known whether ECE can improve health over the course of a lifetime.

In late 2015, the Vancouver Housing Authority (VHA) initiated a new policy experiment for distributing Section 8 housing vouchers. Rather than using basic income eligibility requirements, vouchers would be deliberately deployed to maximize their impact on community health by targeting those with complex medical needs and homeless families with school-age children. The central question this study seeks to answer is whether targeting specific subpopulations to prioritize Section 8 housing vouchers can increase the total impact of those vouchers on key community health indicators.

Due to budget shortfalls, many states and school districts are implementing pay-to-play policies that allow collection of fees for participation in extracurricular activities such as school sports. The number of school districts with these policies has grown over the last decade, with some states reporting a two-fold increase. Although the extent of these policies and the amount of the fees for participation vary greatly, it seems likely that the overall effects of pay-to-pay policies may disproportionally affect low-income students.