Caroline Hoxby
Economist and education-policy scholar who is the Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and director of NBER’s Economics of Education Program. Her research focuses on college opportunity, school choice, student finance, and education policy.
Education Reform Depends on Using Outcome Data to Make Hard Choices
Caroline Hoxby argues that education policy should use outcome data to make harder distinctions: paying teachers for measured effectiveness, underwriting student loans based on evidence of college progress, and judging institutions by the results they deliver. The main obstacle, she says, is usually not a lack of data or technical capacity but political resistance to unequal treatment and accountability. Hoxby also makes the case for state and local autonomy to test such policies, provided results can be measured and compared.
College Opportunity Requires Better Underwriting, Testing, and Information
Economist Caroline Hoxby argues that college opportunity is fairer when public policy distinguishes between early uncertainty and later evidence. She makes the case for front-loaded grants, better underwriting and institutional accountability in student lending, alongside admissions tests and targeted information that allow qualified students from less advantaged backgrounds to demonstrate ability and find colleges that match their potential.
Wisconsin’s Differentiated Teacher Pay Improved Achievement and Recruitment
Economist Caroline Hoxby argues that teacher pay remains tied to seniority and credentials even though teachers differ substantially in the value they add to student outcomes. She says value-added measures, supplemented by school-level judgment, can identify those differences well enough to support differentiated compensation—and points to Wisconsin districts that adopted more flexible pay as evidence of gains in achievement and recruitment of effective teachers.