David N. Figlio
What are the effects of school accountability design on student achievement and school behaviours? This is part of David Figlio’s active research agenda that he will be pursuing as CESifo visiting researcher from 5 to 8 September. In a joint project, Mr Figlio is currently analysing original survey data collected from a three-wave census of public school principals in Florida and a two-wave survey of teachers in a state-representative sample of Florida schools. The researchers hope to measure the degrees to which accountability is changing school policies and practices in an attempt to get “inside the black box” of the performance effects of accountability. Related research deals with how school accountability has influenced the teacher labour market, the effects of school accountability on family sorting across neighbourhoods as well as the effects of Florida’s recent accountability-based reform of the teacher tenure system.
As director of the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at Northwestern University, David Figlio conducts research on a wide range of educational and tax issues from school accountability and standards to welfare policy and policy design. His current research projects involve evaluating the Florida Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships Program, the largest school-voucher program in the United States and following children from birth through their school career to study key questions regarding early childhood policy and inequality. He is leading a National Science Foundation-sponsored national network to facilitate the use of matched administrative datasets to inform and evaluate education policy.
Mr Figlio’s work has been published in numerous leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Law and Economics and Journal of Human Resources. Organisations supporting his research include the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the US Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services.
Mr Figlio is an inaugural member of the CESifo Research Network Area on the Economics of Education and is also research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995. In addition to being IPR Director, he is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.