I identify the effects of class size on student achievement using longitudinal variation in the population associated with each grade in 649 elementary schools. I use variation in class size driven by idiosyncratic variation in the population. I also use discrete jumps in class size that occur when a small change in enrollment triggers a maximum or minimum class size rule. The estimates indicate that class size does not have a statistically signi�cant effect on student achievement. I rule out even modest effects (2 to 4 percent of a standard deviation in scores for a 10 percent reduction in class size). I.

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This work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The authors wish to thank participants of the “Teachers and Low Performing Schools ” panel at the November, 2001 APPAM Conference in Washington, D.C., as well as those participants of the University of Maryland Labor and Public Finance seminar, for their helpful comments and suggestions. Changing Labor Market Opportunities for Women

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, a Research Centre based at the University of Bristol, was established in 1998. The principal aim of the CMPO is to develop understanding of the design of activities within the public sector, on the boundary of the state and within recently privatised entities with the objective of developing research in, and assessing and informing policy toward, these activities. Centre for Market and Public Organisation

graciously sponsored the survey, and Briggs McAndrews at NYSCOSS provided significant help with all aspects of the survey. Deborah Cunningham, Charles Szuberla, Johanna Duncan-Poitier, Nancy Willie-Schiff, and Joe Porter of the New York State Education Department (SED) reviewed the survey and provided helpful comments. Brenda Budka at SED provided the teacher certification data, and patiently answered our many questions about this data. Dan Goldhaber and Michael DeArmond of the University of Washington had a number of valuable suggestions on both the content and design of the survey. Willow Jacobson at the University of North Carolina, Pat Ingraham at Syracuse University, and Mark Robbins and Bill Simonsen, at the University of Connecticut, critiqued the survey instrument, and proposed a number of revisions to reduce length and improve clarity. We also want to thank Jeff McLellan, Kim Kirsch, and Bob Bifulco for their comments on preliminary draft of the report. We appreciate the willingness of Robert Strauss of Carnegie Mellon University to allow us to borrow from his survey on teacher hiring practices in Pennsylvania. Errors and omissions are, of course, solely the responsibility of the authors.

This paper investigates the extent and ways in which childhood school quality factors causally influence later-life health outcomes. The study analyzes the health trajectories of children born between 1950 and 1975, and followed through 2007, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), spanning four decades linked with multiple data sources containing detailed neighborhood attributes and school quality resources that prevailed at the time these children were growing up. I estimate the long-run impacts of court-ordered school desegregation plans on later-life health by exploiting quasi-random variation in the timing and scope of desegregation implementation during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I find school desegregation significantly narrowed black-white adult health disparities for the cohorts exposed to integrated schools during childhood. The analysis disentangles the effects of neighborhood and school quality. Difference-in-differences estimates and sibling-difference estimates indicate that school desegregation and accompanied increases in school quality resulted in

For more than 40 years, communities across the United States have grappled with Brown’s mandate to provide equality of educational opportunities to Black children by ending school segregation. Despite considerable unambiguous evidence that desegregation enhances students ’ long-term outcomes such as educational and occupational attainment, the situation with respect to short-term outcomes is more ambiguous and more highly contested. Using survey data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a North Carolina district that used mandatory busing to desegregate its schools, the author demonstrates the direct and indirect negative effects of segregation on academic achievement in ways not employed previously. The distinctive research design includes a longitudinal measure of exposure to racially isolated Black elementary education, multiple indicators of educational outcomes, measures of track placement, and a large representative sample of grade 12 students from the entire school system. By demonstrating how both direct and indirect effects of segregated education impair Blacks ’ academic outcomes,

Acknowledgments: We appreciate comments from Hampton Lankford of the University of Albany and

the New York State Board of Regents, and education scholars, researchers and policymakers from New York and around the country. By bringing education researchers together with policymakers, the Consortium seeks to address critical questions about the state of public education in New York. The Consortium’s mission is to foster an exchange of information and ideas that informs education policy decisions, assist education policy decision-makers in identifying issues that require initial or further study, and produce quality and timely research that contributes to the development of sound education policy. The Consortium is housed in the Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany – SUNY. Condition reports are written using education data compiled by New York State agencies and from data independently collected by the researchers. Consortium researchers work closely with agency staff to identify and analyze trends in school district spending, school staffing and student performance. The condition reports describe various characteristics of New York State's public school systems and also identify potential areas for further study.

Acknowledgements: This project would not have been possible without significant help from a number of