Thomas Kane

About

Thomas Kane is an economist and the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He serves as the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, a university-wide research center that collaborates with school districts and state agencies. His work spans both K–12 and higher education, focusing on topics such as the design of school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions, and the earnings impacts of community colleges. Kane has held significant roles including serving as the senior economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1996, and has been a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government. He has also been a professor of public policy at UCLA and held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His research and contributions are profiled in Harvard Magazine, and he is recognized for his expertise in education policy, reform, and evidence-based interventions.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Economics
• Political science
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• An experimental evaluation of three teacher quality measures: Value-added, classroom observations, and student surveys

  Economics of Education Review · 2019-08-14 · 71 citations

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• The Educational Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction during the Pandemic

  American Economic Review Insights · 2023-08-31 · 43 citations

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  Using testing data from over two million students in nearly 10,000 schools in 49 states (plus the District of Columbia), we investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty. We find that remote instruction was a primary driver of the widening gaps. Math gaps did not widen in areas that remained in person (although reading gaps did). We estimate that high-poverty districts that went remote in 2020–2021 will need to spend nearly all o…

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• Curriculum Reform in The Common Core Era: Evaluating Elementary Math Textbooks Across Six U.S. States

  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2020-09-01 · 23 citations

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  Abstract Can a school or district improve student achievement simply by switching to a higher‐quality textbook or curriculum? We conducted the first multi‐textbook, multi‐state effort to estimate textbook efficacy following widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated changes in the textbook market. Pooling textbook adoption and student test score data across six geographically and demographically diverse U.S. states, we found little evidence of differences in ave…

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• Have Income-Based Achievement Gaps Widened or Narrowed?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-08-01 · 21 citations

  reportOpen access

  Over the past 30 years, rising income inequality and income-based residential segregation have threatened to widen income-based achievement gaps. Yet, there are no national data which combine a consistent measure of parental income and achievement for individual students to measure those gaps over time. We take two alternative approaches to inferring income-based achievement gaps: First, we reconstruct the student-level relationship using school-level estimates of means and variances of achievem…

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• Is College Remediation a Barrier or a Boost? Evidence from the Tennessee SAILS Program

  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2021-04-21 · 13 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Many states are redesigning their college remediation policies to increase postsecondary degree completion. In 2012, Tennessee began waiving college math remediation for high school students who completed a computer‐based remedial math course (SAILS) during their senior year. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the high school remedial course did not improve students' math achievement any more than the typical senior year math course (although it did allow students to…

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Frequent coauthors

• Douglas O. Staiger

  Dartmouth College

  234 shared

• Justine Hastings

  Coventry University

  84 shared

• David Deming

  Harvard University

  71 shared

• Brian Jacob

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  55 shared

• Jonah Rockoff

  Columbia University

  50 shared

• John A. Mack

  National Park Service

  36 shared

• Martha Sandweiss

  Princeton University

  36 shared

• Robert V. Hine

  36 shared

Education

• Phd Public Policy, GSAS

  Harvard University

  1991

• MA, Economics

  University of Michigan

  1986

• Bachelors, Economics

  University of Notre Dame

  1983

Awards & honors

• Professor of the Year, UCLA School of Public Affairs, Public…

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