EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State University has received a $5 million grant to train education researchers in economics, according to a press release from the university and Education Week magazine.
The doctoral program will focus on methods of studying longitudinal data to show whether and how school funding, class size, teachers' educational training and other factors relate to student performance, the release said.
"There is a need to improve these methods so the educational community can get better estimates of the associations between policy variables and student outcomes," Robert Floden, a professor in the College of Education, said in the release. The program will bring together faculty with expertise in the areas of education, economics, labor, quantitative measurement and teacher education.
Faculty in the College of Education and the Department of Economics received the five-year grant from the federal Institute of Education Sciences. The money will pay approximately $30,000 a year, plus tuition and health care, to up to 25 selected students beginning this fall.
SOURCES:
Michigan State University, "MSU trains scholars to tackle educational issues – with economics," June 16, 2009
Education Week, "Michigan State to train ed researchers in economics," June 19, 2009
FURTHER READING:
Mackinac Center for Public Policy, "A Teacher Quality Primer," June 30, 2008
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