Chair of Economics Named Bren Fellow at Public Policy Institute of California

Inga Kiderra | November 16, 2009

Julian Betts

UC San Diego economist Julian Betts, chair of the department of economics, is an inaugural Bren Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Betts, who is an expert on K-12 education and is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, has been an adjunct fellow at PPIC since 1998. Over the summer, the PPIC announced a $1 million grant from the Donald Bren Foundation funding a fellows program in support of its research and engagement in economic development, education, governance and public finance. Betts was named an inaugural holder along with a UC Irvine professor.

While serving as a Bren Fellow, Betts said, he will prepare two books for the PPIC. The first, with co-authors Andrew Zau of UCSD and Cory Koedel of the University of Missouri, “provides the only quantitative long-term study of the effect of literacy reforms implemented in the San Diego Unified School District earlier this decade.”

In the second study, with Zau and Youjin Hahn, also of UCSD, Betts is studying the effect of the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project on student learning. The MDTP provides free diagnostic testing to the students of math teachers statewide. “Math teachers benefit from fast turnaround time and specific information on each student's strengths and weaknesses in given topics,” Betts said. “We are providing the first quantitative evaluation of whether this diagnostic testing actually leads to better outcomes for students.”

Betts said he will also be working with one or more PPIC research fellows to identify topics for future research relevant to California education policy, possibly focusing on ways of improving school accountability systems.

In other research, Betts is principal investigator of a study of career and technical education in the San Diego Unified School District. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Career and Technical Education, Betts and colleagues Zau, John McAdams and Dallas Dotter are studying which high school students take these vocational and technical courses, and the association between these courses and high school and postsecondary educational outcomes.

Betts is also acting as PI of the National Evaluation of Magnet Schools, a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Betts is working with the American Institutes for Research and Berkeley Policy Associates to examine the effect of federally supported magnet schools on the academic achievement of resident and non-resident students. The study will also examine magnet schools and their effect on school integration along racial/ethnic lines.

In January 2010 Betts will become the UCSD campus director of a new multicampus research unit to be known as the University of California Educational Evaluation Center (UCEC). UCEC will provide a mechanism through which education researchers on different UC campuses can join forces to bid on evaluations of state and federal education reforms and interventions.