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News

Local leaders worry about retiree health care benefits, says latest CLOSUP MPPS report

Oct 29, 2015

ANN ARBOR—Health care benefits for retirees of Michigan's local governmental units are presenting significant fiscal challenges, and more than half of local officials surveyed indicate they are concerned they won't be able to fulfill their...

'Ford School feed' - run for the Alumni Board, Dynarski receives NASPAA award, school launches Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion strategic planning initiative

Oct 22, 2015

The latest edition of the Ford School feed, an email news source for alumni and friends of the school, arrived in inboxes this week.This spring edition of the feed calls for Alumni Board nominations; celebrates Susan Dynarski's accomplishment as a...

In government, let hard data judge what works, says Wolfers in NYT Upshot column

Oct 1, 2015

In his most recent column for The New York Times’ Upshot, Justin Wolfers explains how behavioral economics is used to promote government efficiency and effective service delivery.He presents findings from the White House Social and Behavioral...

News

CLOSUP wins Third Century Initiative grant to bring data to the classroom in a big way

Sep 8, 2015

CLOSUP, the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, is ready to bring real-world data to the classroom in a big way. Through a recently awarded Quick Wins/Discovery grant, part of the University of Michigan's Third Century Initiative,...

News

Local leaders' confidence in state's direction erodes, CLOSUP MPPS reveals

Aug 26, 2015

ANN ARBOR—For the first time since 2012, fewer than half of Michigan's local leaders believe the state is headed in the right direction—chief culprits include road funding fumbles, state tax policies and general dysfunction in Lansing, according to...

News

EPI, Excellent Schools Detroit release K-12 scorecard

Jun 29, 2015

The 2015 Excellent Schools Detroit (ESD) K-12 Scorecard — which the Ford School’s Education Policy Initiative (EPI) helped develop — was released last week. More than 200 schools, including private and charter schools, were evaluated and assigned...

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'Complete Streets' policies more popular in Michigan's urban areas

Jun 18, 2015

Complete Streets, policies that encourage local governments to take all users—pedestrians, cyclists, public transit users and drivers—into account when designing and constructing roads, have a good deal of support among Michigan local officials, but...

Local leaders give high marks to road commissions

May 29, 2015

By Greta Guest, Michigan NewsMost local government leaders have good things to say about their road commissions that maintain county primary and township local roads upon which so many Michigan residents rely.The Michigan Public Policy Survey at the...

New York Review of Books features Sheldon Danziger’s Legacies of the War on Poverty

Apr 7, 2015

This April, Christopher Jencks reviews Sheldon Danziger’s Legacies of the War on Poverty (Russell Sage, 2013) in a two-part series for The New York Review of Books. Jencks says Legacies’ chapters are “packed with evidence, make judicious judgments,...

Ford School students host annual US-Canada conference

Mar 31, 2015

The 6th annual Ford+SPPG Conference took place earlier this month at Joan and Sanford Weill Hall in Ann Arbor. The event brings together MPP candidates from the Ford School and the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance...

CLOSUP’s Ivacko talks MPPS and ethics with Michigan Radio’s Stateside

Mar 23, 2015

The latest Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) reveals how local leaders feel about the need for ethics reform in the Great Lakes State. Tom Ivacko (MPA '93), program manager of the Ford School’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP),...

Dynarski argues for better educational attainment data in Brookings report

Mar 13, 2015

Susan Dynarski recently co-authored “How can we track trends in educational attainment by parental income? Hint: not with the Current Population Study,” posted March 12 by the Brookings Institution.With Matthew M. Chingos of Brookings, Dynarski...

Ford Case Competition winners present to East Lansing City Council

Feb 20, 2015

At the East Lansing City Council’s February 17 meeting, five first year Ford School masters students, winners of the inaugural Ford Case Competition, presented to the council their proposal to resolve the city’s downtown parking concerns. The city,...

Elisabeth Gerber’s Community Ventures analysis featured in Detroit Free Press

Feb 17, 2015

Could Detroit’s renaissance begin to extend past the downtown and Midtown areas? Community Ventures, a new worker retraining program, is trying to make that happen, and Elisabeth Gerber, who analyzed the program with a group of four Ford...

Jacob testifies in Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, cites figure ‘288 septillion’

Feb 10, 2015

Brian Jacob was called to testify last week as a witness for the prosecution in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial, in which prosecutors allege a dozen educators engaged in a “widespread, cleverly disguised” conspiracy to improve their...

State & Hill

Measuring poverty, a more accurate picture

Dec 9, 2014

By Miriam Wasserman Jordan Matsudaira, PhD alum, stays second year to work as chief staff economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Only a very small number of economists get to work for the Council of Economic Advisers....

Measuring poverty, a more accurate picture

News

Education Policy Initiative studies Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction

Sep 26, 2014

A current Education Policy Initiative study is the topic of the September 26 MLive article by Roberto Acosta, “University of Michigan studies reading system that Flushing woman created; state officials interested in results.” The system is...

Mapping Ebola to combat its spread

Sep 3, 2014

On August 18, Dr. Dan Kelly published an op-ed in the San Francisco Gate. His friend and colleague, a medical doctor, had died in Sierra Leone after serving an Ebola patient without protective gear. It wasn’t negligence, wrote Kelly, an infectious...

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Correlation still does not imply causation

Sep 1, 2014

In an August 6 article in “The Upshot,” The New York Times' curated blog on politics, policy, and economics, Susan Dynarski describes the perils of mistaking correlation for causation.In the article, Dynarski critiques a recent paper by Esther M....

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"Ned was right" conference at the Fed

Jun 10, 2014

Over three decades of service, Founding Dean Ned Gramlich helped shape the Ford School's mission and vision, and served as an exemplar of what it means to be a world-class policy professor. He conducted extensive and widely-respected research, both...

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State & Hill

Fighting poverty like an IPPSter

May 2, 2014

Peter Borish applies analytics and creativity to for-profit and not-for-profit endeavors alike "I was like every other kid," says Peter Borish (AB '81, MPP '82). "When I was growing up, I wanted to become a professional baseball player." Like...

State & Hill

Skin in the game, Applied Policy Seminar puts students to work for local governments, NGOs

May 1, 2014

When Susan Pollay, executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA), wanted to document the economic impact of her organization and others like it around the state of Michigan last fall, she sought help from the Ford...

Jacob part of expert line-up on State of Opportunity special on high stakes testing

Jan 16, 2014

In a State of Opportunity broadcast, Brian Jacob discusses the impact of high stakes testing, particularly for low-income students and school districts. High stakes testing refers to standardized tests with results that have important consequences...

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State & Hill

Rare and powerful analysis

Dec 16, 2013

Latesha Love (MPP '02) was two weeks into her second year of graduate school in Ann Arbor, getting dressed for class and watching the news with an absent-minded interest, when she realized that "something was really, really, really wrong." It was...

Jacob receives Walton Family Foundation grant to study online learning

Nov 27, 2013

Brian Jacob, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and co-director of the Education Policy Initiative, has received a $200,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation to study the effectiveness of online learning in the K-12...

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Education Policy Initiative dialogues with community college partners about how their students fare in the labor market

May 13, 2013

As part of "Educational Pathways and Employment Outcomes of Community College Students," a major research project led by Peter Bahr, Susan M. Dynarski and Brian A. Jacob, the Education Policy Initiative (EPI) held a dialogue on Wednesday, May 7, at...

State & Hill

John Chamberlin retires, talks making a living, and making a life

Apr 22, 2013

This Saturday, John Chamberlin will board a plane for Paris. He's gearing up for new adventures in retirement. Over the past four decades, he's taught more core courses than any other faculty member at the school, served as interim and associate...

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State & Hill

Brian A. Jacob helps city schools become data driven

Apr 22, 2013

In an era of shrinking public education budgets, school districts cannot afford to make the wrong decision when they hire a teacher or cut a program. To make sure they reach the right answers, administrators are turning to Annenberg Professor Brian...

New paper from Jacob, McCall, and Stange analyses the "College as Country Club"

Jan 29, 2013

A new paper by Brian A. Jacob, Brian P. McCall, and Kevin M. Stange, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is receiving attention from The Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications for its analysis of the pressure facing...

State & Hill

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

Dec 18, 2012

International development interns put ideas to work One block down Hill Street, just west of State, is Ali Baba's, a small Middle Eastern restaurant with habit-forming grape leaves and baklava. Any day of the week, you're sure to find a table, or...