Lottery-Based Evaluations of Early Education Programs: Opportunities and Challenges for Building the Next Generation of Evidence / Christina Weiland, Rebecca Unterman, Susan Dynarski, Rachel Abenavoli, Howard Bloom, Breno Braga, Ann-Marie Faria, Erica H. Greenberg, Brian Jacob, Jane Arnold Lincove, Karen Manship, Meghan McCormick, Luke Miratrix, Tomás E. Monarrez, Pamela Morris-Perez, Anna Shapiro, Jon Valant, Lindsay Weixler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weiland, Christina.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Unterman, Rebecca.

Dynarski, Susan.

Abenavoli, Rachel.

Bloom, Howard.

Braga, Breno.

Faria, Ann-Marie.

Greenberg, Erica H.

Jacob, Brian.

Arnold Lincove, Jane.

Manship, Karen.

McCormick, Meghan.

Miratrix, Luke.

Monarrez, Tomás E.

Morris-Perez, Pamela.

Shapiro, Anna.

Valant, Jon.

Weixler, Lindsay.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30970.

NBER working paper series no. w30970

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.

Summary:

Lottery-based identification strategies offer potential for generating the next generation of evidence on U.S. early education programs. Our collaborative network of five research teams applying this design in early education and methods experts has identified six challenges that need to be carefully considered in this next context: 1) available baseline covariates may not be very rich; 2) limited data on the counterfactual; 3) limited and inconsistent outcome data; 4) weakened internal validity due to attrition; 5) constrained external validity due to who competes for oversubscribed programs; and 6) difficulties answering site-level questions with child-level randomization. We offer potential solutions to these six challenges and concrete recommendations for the design of future lottery-based early education studies.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2023.