EdTech Decision-making in Higher Education

The study “EdTech Decision-making in Higher Education” investigates the decision-making inputs, processes, and practices around the acquisition of technology to facilitate teaching and learning at colleges and universities. A summary of findings and recommendations, a more detailed report which includes many examples and quotations from study participants, and a repository of resources for EdTech decision-makers is available at: www.edtechdecisionmakinginhighered.org

The Economics and Child Development Science of Intergenerational Trauma

This dissertation utilizes insights from economics and child development science to examine how trauma transmits across generations from mother to child. The first chapter consists of a literature review in which I survey the existing literature across multiple disciplines on maternal trauma and the early childhood home environment. Specifically, I investigate psychosocial pathways through which maternal trauma may affect maternal capacities and investment decisions, particularly through a mother’s behavioral responses to trauma, and its consequential effects on the early childhood home environment for children. I identify methodological challenges to estimating the effects of maternal trauma on the early childhood home environment, and discuss policy implications and possible avenues for future research. In my second chapter, I take an intergenerational perspective and review research across disciplines to demonstrate that childhood trauma should be conceptualized as an intergenerational phenomenon that plays a role in the dynamics of inequality. In doing so, I develop a conceptual framework for studying how a mother’s childhood trauma affects her future capacities as a mother and the early developmental outcomes of the next generation. To understand how traumatic environments affect early childhood development, scholars previously have concentrated on two processes: (1) how early adversity and potentially traumatic experiences affect the immediate cognitive and socio-emotional development of children, and (2) the extent to which caregivers, and mothers in particular, can buffer against the potentially detrimental effects of these early experiences. These frameworks acknowledge the importance of environmental influences on both processes, parenting practices and early childhood development. However, they largely ignore the intergenerational dynamics of traumatic experiences, and the consequences of the mother’s own previous traumas on the early childhood home environment she shapes for her children. I focus on the mother as the primary caregiver in the early years of a child’s development, and examine behavioral mechanisms, and specifically parenting, as a potential pathway for the intergenerational transmission of a mother’s childhood trauma. I conclude by discussing future avenues for research and implications for public policy. Finally, in my third chapter, I present empirical evidence on the intergenerational effects of childhood trauma using the specific case of a mother’s childhood exposure to armed conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. A mother’s nurturing care is a critical input to early development, particularly for children at elevated risk of early adversity. Little is known, however, about how a mother’s own childhood adversity affects her ability to provide such nurturing care. In this chapter, I use geo-located data on armed conflicts in three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa combined with geo- located household level data on parenting practices and early childhood development to estimate the intergenerational effects of a mother’s childhood exposure to armed conflict on her parent- ing practices and the early developmental outcomes of her children. Difference-in-differences estimates use identifying variation in geographic differences in exposure to conflict across sub- national regions and temporal variation across maternal birth cohorts. I find that mothers exposed to conflict in their early childhood are more likely to use abusive disciplinary practices. They are also less likely to stimulate their children through educational activities, material investments, or sending their children to early childhood education centers. These mothers are also more likely to experience intimate partner violence, and engage in early marriage and early sex, which may be mechanisms by which a mother’s childhood exposure to conflict affects her future maternal capacities and investments, and the early developmental outcomes of her children. Together, these essays advance our conceptual understanding of the potential long run and intergenerational effects of childhood trauma, and provide causal evidence on aspects of its inter- generational consequences in a specific context in Sub-Saharan Africa

Investment in Education Technology Across the Globe: Where Profit Meets Purpose

Increasing demand for educational technology (Ed Tech) products and services has coincided with rapid growth in the marketplace, sparking opportunity for both innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper seeks to advise ed tech entrepreneurs on what motivates investors to support certain products over others, the importance of balancing financial returns (profit) and educational outcomes (purpose), and best practices in planning and execution to help ensure success when taking their products to market

Minnesota Reading Corps Pre-K Program Cost Analysis

The Minnesota Reading Corps (MRC) program is a statewide AmeriCorps early literacy initiative that aims to foster emergent literacy skills of children to ensure reading proficiency by the end of grade 3. MRC and its host organization, Reading & Math, Inc. (RMI), aim to address the resource gaps within under-resourced schools by bringing AmeriCorps members into Pre-K classrooms to provide literacy enrichment for the whole class and tutoring services for specific at-risk students. An impact evaluation of the program conducted in 2013-2014 by the University of Chicago-based research center, NORC, showed positive impacts on emergent literacy outcomes for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (Markovitz et al., 2015). Building on the existing evidence on the program effectiveness, this study estimates the costs of providing the MRC Pre-K program that are associated with the impact measured by the 2013-2014 impact evaluation. Rigorous economic evaluations of educational interventions provide important information about the resources necessary to implement a program. Such evaluations bridge the gap between knowledge on program implementation and program impact by identifying the resources utilized to generate outcomes of interest. As such, cost analyses intend to inform policymakers facing decisions to replicate or scale up a program, or trade-offs related to limited resources. Our study used the ingredients method—an approach widely applied to examine costs of educational interventions—to estimate the MRC Pre-K program’s cost (Levin, McEwan, Belfield, Bowden & Shand, 2018). We conducted interviews, surveys, and classroom observations, as well as reviews of program documents, administrative records and past research in order to collect data on all resources utilized to derive program impact based on its theory of change. Wherever important data were missing, we used a Monte Carlo simulation strategy to explore site-level variation on resource use and costs. Overall, the costs of MRC were identified as $1.5 million per year to serve 1,261 students across twenty-five schools, or$1,210 per pupil on average. Costs were found to vary substantially by site, by ingredient category and by who bears the burden of the costs across the 25 sites evaluated. Our analyses of the distribution of who bears the costs suggest that the average cost per student per site borne by schools ranges from $680 to$210, or approximately 25% of the total costs per student. Comparable cost estimates are limited by a lack of similar Pre-K programs that have conducted both impact and cost analysis evaluations. Our study is one of the few rigorous cost analyses in Pre-K programs conducted alongside effectiveness research on a supplemental Pre-K literacy program to date. Nevertheless, these results suggest the Minnesota Reading Corps program leverages a substantial amount of resources into Pre-K classrooms in a way that feasibly distributes costs

The Cost of Being an Orphan: Psychosocial Well-being, Cognitive Development and Educational Advancement among Orphans and Abandoned Children in Five Low Income Countries

Development policymakers and child-care service providers are committed to improving the educational opportunities of the growing population of 153 million orphans worldwide. Nevertheless, the relationship between orphanhood and education outcomes is not well understood. Varying factors associated with differential educational attainment in multiple contexts leave policymakers uncertain where to intervene. Positive Outcomes for Orphans (POFO) is a longitudinal study, following a cohort of single and double orphans and abandoned children (OAC) in institutional and community-based settings, that aims to better understand the characteristics associated with child well-being. Using cross-sectional and child-level fixed effects regression analyses on 1,480 community based children, this manuscript examines associations between emotional difficulties, cognitive development, educational attainment, and a variety of correlates including trauma. Results show that factors such as trauma and lower socio-economic status are correlated with higher emotional difficulties, and that increases in emotional difficulties are associated with lags in cognitive development. In contrast, wealth and caregiver literacy rates hold stronger associations with a child’s grade for age than the level of emotional difficulties experienced by the child. These findings suggest that interventions targeting both the psychosocial development of the child and the socioeconomic status and education of the caregiver may help to reduce barriers to a child’s educational attainment. Family based interventions to stabilize socioeconomic conditions or increase caregiver education may also help overcome psychosocial challenges that otherwise would present as barriers to the child’s educational advancement