Education Policy Commons^™

Massachusetts School Discipline Policy Change: Exclusion, Alternatives, And Inequality In Public District And Charter Schools, Aster Richardson

School of Public Policy Capstones

School discipline reform is of growing interest to policymakers as ongoing research reveals the negative effects of current school discipline policies. In the U.S., the most popular models of school discipline use exclusionary practice, which includes suspension and expulsion. Studies have shown that exclusionary discipline contributes to undesired social outcomes such as poor academic performance, school drop out, unemployment, and even incarceration. Additionally, exclusionary discipline and its negative consequences disproportionately affect racial minorities and other vulnerable groups of students. Reform of current state policy is a necessary first step toward implementing alternative discipline practice in schools. In 2012 Massachusetts legislature …

Access To Technology And Student Academic Achievement: Empirical Evidence From Nepal, Palista Kharel

School of Public Policy Capstones

My research explores the linkage between access to technology and student academic achievement in Nepal. I measure access to technology using four proxies: availability of electricity, radio, TV and computer at home. I measure academic achievement using student test scores in the Grade 10 national level examinations.

My results indicate that students with access to electricity, radio, TV and computer at home, have higher average test scores overall. Particularly, access to a computer has the largest positive effect on a student’s academic achievement. Simple OLS regression results suggest that those with access to a computer score 64 points higher than …