The policy brief is a written group project where students will evaluate a hypothetical proposed education policy. The brief should be written as if it is a report to an elected official or set of officials (e.g. a school board, a district superintendent, the governor) that provides a discussion of the research on the impacts of the policy, discusses examples of where the policy has been implemented, provides a discussion of the costs and benefits of the policy, and finally make a recommendation for whether or not the policy should be implemented. The reports should be between 10 and 12 double-spaced pages and in 12 point Times New Roman font. Students will divide into groups of four and one group member must email me the names of everyone in the group before the start of class on Monday, October 13. After that time any incomplete groups will be combined and students remaining without groups will be assigned to groups randomly. Once you have your group you will choose to write on one of the following proposals:
(1) The East Lansing school board wants to set a maximum class size for elementary students of 14 which would reduce the size of many classes.
(2) The State of Michigan wants to increase school funding by 5%.
(3) Michigan proposes to change its accountability system so that it is based on test score growth instead of proficiency.
(4) Michigan considers increasing the number of charter schools that will be permitted to operate in the state.
(5) Lansing Public Schools wishes to implement a teacher incentive pay system that will pay a cash bonus to the top 20% of teachers each year based on their value-added.
You may distribute duties (e.g. writing, reading papers, reviewing policies that have been implemented, etc.) within each group however you wish. However, all students are expected to contribute fully and equally to the project. That is, no free-riding!Each report should be sure to have at least the following sections:
- An introduction that sets out what the policy proposal is and what economic theory says could be the result of the proposal.
- A discussion of the potential costs and benefits of implementing such a policy.
- A review of research that describes research studies on the proposed intervention and/or closely related issues. For this portion you are required to read and describe the results from at least 7 articles from the following list of academic journals and working paper series:
American Economic Review
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
CES-IFO Working Paper Series
Economics of Education Review
Education Evaluation and Policy
Education Finance and Policy
IZA Working Paper Series
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Journal of Economic Literature
Journal of Human Resources
Journal of Labor Economics
Journal of Public Economics
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
Journal of Political Economy
Journal of Urban Economics
Labour Economics
NBER Working Paper Series
Quarterly Journal of Economics
Review of Economics and Statistics
Review of Economic Studies
All of these can be accessed through MSU libraries electronic journals and many can be accessed directly from any on-campus computer. You are welcome to use references from other sources as well but only these sources will count towards the 7 source minimum.
- A description of cases where similar policies have already been implemented.
Describe where the policies have been implemented, why they were implemented, consequences of the policies, and any results from evaluations of the policies, if available.- Finally, write a conclusion where you summarize the research evidence and the existing implementations and provide a recommendation for whether or not the policy should be implemented based on these factors.