Professor Horn’s Work Covered by Education Week

A recent study coauthored by Assistant Professor of Economics Keren Mertens Horn was featured in Education Week on November 16.  

In the study, Professor Horn and her coauthor Ingrid Gould Ellen, professor of public policy and urban planning at New York University, use data from the 2008-2009 period to examine whether households that receive housing assistance through the four largest federal programs (Public Housing, Project-based Section 8, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and Housing Choice Vouchers) have access to better public schools, as measured by test scores in math and English.   What they find is that the federal assistance programs do not do enough to help low-income parents get their children into high performing schools, especially if they are black or Hispanic.  As the authors explain in their study, this result questions whether housing assistance is enough to "break the cycle of poverty through breaking the link between poor households and low performing schools."

The Education Week story can be found here.  You can read the full report here.

Professor Horn joined the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Fall 2012.  She holds a PhD in Public Policy from New York University.