Economic Evaluation in Education

This book provides students with the step-by-step methods needed to plan and implement a cost-analysis study. Through the use of numerous examples drawn from the applied literature, the authors demonstrate the four major techniques of cost analysis: cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit, cost-utility, and cost-feasibility.

“"This is a practical and clear text that practitioners can use. The authors make a strong case for the importance of economic evaluations and then provide coherent, sequential, and precise steps for conducting economic evaluations. This is a must-use for any policy methods class."”

"In order to improve our educational systems, we need to increase our understanding of economic evaluation. This text provides the tools for both practitioners and researchers to achieve this end. This is unequivocally the best text in the field."

-- Dan Jorgensen

-- Charol Shakeshaft

"Clear and effective representation of a valuable approach to cost analysis offered by authorities in the field."

-- Charles David Crumpton
This text offers evaluators a rare opportunity to enhance the effectiveness and utility of their work: Policymakers need information on programs’ effects and their costs if they are to make informed decisions. This text clearly teaches both the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of economic evaluation. -- Gary Skolits
"Sound policymaking requires not just a knowledge of "what works", but also an understanding of whether the benefits exceed the costs. This volume presents, in a clear and accessible manner, all of the tools essential to making this determination. It’s an excellent resource for policy students and policymakers alike." -- David Figlio

Policymakers around the world face the challenge of how to use scarce resources to most effectively improve education.  Researchers are supporting their efforts by providing increasingly good evidence on the impacts of a wide range of policy initiatives such as reducing class size, introducing new instructional technologies, and basing teacher compensation on student performance. But since these initiatives have different costs, policymakers find it difficult to use the research evidence.  The third edition of Economic Evaluation in Education by Henry Levin and his colleagues provides a valuable resource to researchers who want to make evidence from impact evaluations useful to policymakers.  Topics include methods for estimating the costs stemming from initiatives and strategies to compare the cost effectiveness of initiatives with similar objectives.  Material new to this third edition includes an expanded description of how to estimate the dollar value of diverse outcomes of education and treatment of different kinds of uncertainty.  One strength of the book is the lucid application of up-to-date economics methods to concrete challenges in estimating costs and evaluating benefits.  A second is the variety of examples used to illustrate application of methods.  A third is the set of discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter.  These strengths make the book a wise choice as a text in Master’s level courses on making research useful to policymakers.

-- Richard J. Murnane

Henry M. Levin is the Director of the Center for Benefit Cost Studies in Education, the William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education and Economics, Emeritus, at Stanford University.  He has been engaged in cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost studies in education and other fields since 1970.  He is the author of 22 books and about 300 scholarly articles on these topics as well as others in the economics of education and educational policy.Patrick J. McEwan is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Director of Latin American Studies at Wellesley College. His research interests include the impact and cost evaluation of education and social policy in Latin America, especially Chile and Honduras. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and other journals of economics and education policy. For more information on his research, R. Belfield is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York. He is also Principal Economist at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, Faculty Member for The Evaluators’ Institute at Claremont Graduate University, and a Research Affiliate at the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Exeter, England. His research interests are economic evaluation of education programs. He has authored three books and over 75 articles in the field of the Economics of Education.A. Brooks Bowden is an Assistant Professor of Methods and Policy in the Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development Department at North Carolina State University. She is the Director of Training and Associate Director at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in Education Policy with a specialization in Economics from Columbia University. She specializes in program evaluation and economic analysis, focusing on applications and methodology of the ingredients method of cost analysis. She recently co-authored publications for the American Journal of Evaluation, the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, and the Journal of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Robert D. Shand is the Novice G. Fawcett postdoctoral researcher in educational studies at The Ohio State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. As a former K-12 teacher, his research focuses on how educational practitioners use evidence on effectiveness and costs to improve decision-making and how teachers improve over time through formal training and learning from colleagues.

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