FC / NETWORK
Registry 01 · Domain
Education
Seventy-five years of patient work, and a door held open for you.
Measurement, equity, and the institutional forms that make learning legible.
Classification
Research domain
Cross-disciplinary index
Brief / 01
Context record
Education research at RAND treats schooling and lifelong learning as institutional systems, the central question is which structures of measurement, accountability, and workforce design actually move learner outcomes at scale.
RAND Education and Labor combines rigorous quantitative methods with deep engagement in school systems and state policy. The institution's work spans early childhood through workforce, with particular depth in teacher labor markets, school leadership, out-of-school learning, and the measurement infrastructure that makes educational outcomes legible.
RAND's Signature Themes in Education
Teacher and school-leader workforce
Recruitment, retention, compensation, and the institutional conditions that determine whether strong educators stay in the schools that need them.
Early childhood investment
The long-horizon economic and developmental returns of early-childhood programs, and the implementation conditions that produce them.
Out-of-school learning
Summer programs, afterschool, and the supplementary learning environments that compound or attenuate in-school gaps.
Assessment and accountability design
How measurement systems shape what is taught, and the unintended consequences when accountability outruns measurement validity.
Representative Work
The American Teacher Panel & American School Leader Panel
RAND · ongoing
Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education
RAND · with Society for Research in Child Development
Getting to Work on Summer Learning
RAND · RR-366
Methodological Emphasis
Quasi-experimental impact evaluation, longitudinal panel surveys, and mixed-methods implementation research.
Methodological Lineage →Affiliated Researchers