Improving student outcomes through economic evaluation for evidence-based decisionmaking in education.

The mission of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education is to promote the rigorous and responsible development and application of cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost methods. The Center builds on work that began in the 1970's and has pursued methodological improvements and new methods of analysis including a software platform, CostOut, for estimating costs using the ingredients method. Application topic areas include high school graduation, early child development, integrated school services, social and emotional learning, college completion, and many others. CBCSE also sponsors training programs in economic evaluation of education for researchers and decision-makers. Its latest summary of methods and applications is found in the third edition of H. Levin, P. McEwan, C. Belfield, A. B. Bowden, and R. Shand, Economic Evaluation of Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis (Sage 2018)

Economic Evaluation In Education

This text (titled Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in previous editions) is the only full-length book to provide readers with the step-by-step methods they need to plan and implement a benefit-cost analysis in education. The authors examine a range of issues, including how to identify, measure, and distribute costs; how to measure effectiveness, utility, and benefits; and how to incorporate cost evaluations into the decision-making process. The updates to the Third Edition reflect the considerable methodological development in the evaluation literature, and the greater empiricism practiced by education researchers, to help readers learn to apply more advanced methods to their own analyses.

News & Reports 

New open-access paper, Empirical Support for Establishing Common Assumptions in Cost Research in Education, by Robert Shand and Brooks Bowden published in Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

New blog post: Small investments for big gains: Transforming wraparound services into an engine of opportunity, co-authored by CBCSE’s Brooks Bowden in Brookings’ Brown Center Chalkboard

New paper, An Economic Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of Providing Comprehensive Supports to Students in Elementary School, by Brooks Bowden, Robert Shand, Henry Levin, Atsuko Muroga, and Anyi Wang published in Prevention Science.