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Presumed Averageness: The Mis-Application of Classical Hypothesis Testing in Education

December 4, 2013

CEPR Faculty Director Thomas Kane discusses the importance of statistical significance in the following Brookings Institution paper. 

Imagine yourself having had a heart attack.  An ambulance arrives to transport you to a hospital emergency room.  Your ambulance driver asks you to choose between two hospitals, Hospital A or Hospital B.  At Hospital A, the mortality rate for heart attack patients is 75 percent.  At Hospital B, the mortality rate is just 20 percent.  But mortality rates are imperfect measures, based on a finite...

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New Study of Massachusetts' Charter Schools Finds Urban Charter Schools Boost Achievement Sharply, but Results for Nonurban Charters are Mixed

February 4, 2011

Researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, MIT and the University of Michigan have released the results of a new study that suggests that urban charter schools in Massachusetts have large positive effects on student achievement at both the middle and high school levels.... Read more about New Study of Massachusetts' Charter Schools Finds Urban Charter Schools Boost Achievement Sharply, but Results for Nonurban Charters are Mixed

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