Abstract
This paper aims to show the current trends and methods in educational policy evaluation using economic methods drawing on the case of charter schools in the United States. The examination of causal inference in the evidence based educational policy making requires the randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RCTs measure an intervention's effect by random assignment of the participants to a treatment group or a control group and compares the results of the two groups. However, evaluations of educational policies are more likely to adopt a quasi-experimental design since conducting the random assignment is difficult in the education field. One of the approaches in quasi-experimental design is an instrumental variable (IV) method for causal inference. After we got the rigorous evidence based on a quasi-experimental design, what should we do? This paper discusses this problem from the view point of trade-off problems: First, the problem of the segregation and the pursuit of equity, second, Pareto criterion in the resource allocation, and third, the problem of affirmative action and tracking.
