Early childhood education research often compares a group of children who receive the intervention of interest to a group of children who receive care in a range of different care settings. In this paper, we estimate differential impacts of an early childhood intervention by alternative care setting, using data from the Head Start Impact Study, a large-scale randomized evaluation. To do so, we utilize a Bayesian principal stratification framework to estimate separate impacts for two types of Compliers: those children who would otherwise be in other center-based care when assigned to control and those who would otherwise be in home-based care. We find strong, positive short-term effects of Head Start on receptive vocabulary for those Compliers who would otherwise be in home-based care. By contrast, we find no meaningful impact of Head Start on vocabulary for those Compliers who would otherwise be in other center-based care. Our findings suggest that alternative care type is a potentially important source of variation in early childhood education interventions.

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In this article, Todd Grindal, Laura Schifter, Gabriel Schwartz, and Thomas Hehir examine race/ethnicity differences in students' special education identification and subsequent placement in segregated educational settings. Using individual-level data on the full population of K–12 public school students in three states, the authors find that racial and ethnic disparities in identification persist within income categories and are stronger for those disabilities that are typically identified in a school setting, such as learning disabilities or emotional disabilities, than those more often identified by a health-care provider, such as blindness or deafness. Also, Black and Hispanic students with disabilities were more likely to be placed in a substantially separate setting, compared to white students, regardless of income status. These results suggest that low-income status is insufficient to explain observed inequalities in the rate at which students of color are identified for special education and placed in substantially separate settings. A better understanding of the ways income status and race contribute to students' interactions with the special education system are critical for building a more equitable and just K–12 education system.

Estimating treatment effects for subgroups defined by post-treatment behavior (i.e., estimating causal effects in a principal stratification framework) can be technically challenging and heavily reliant on strong assumptions. We investigate an alternative path: using bounds to identify ranges of possible effects that are consistent with the data. This simple approach relies on fewer assumptions and yet can result in policy-relevant findings. As we show, covariates can be used to substantially tighten bounds in a straightforward manner. Via simulation, we demonstrate which types of covariates are maximally beneficial. We conclude with an analysis of a multi-site experimental study of Early College High Schools. When examining the program's impact on students completing the ninth grade "on-track" for college, we find little impact for ECHS students who would otherwise attend a high quality high school, but substantial effects for those who would not. This suggests potential benefit in expanding these programs in areas primarily served by lower quality schools.

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Public health agencies have sought to identify and respond to constraints that limit consumption of fruits and vegetables. Two possible factors that contribute to this shortfall are (i) the high cost of fruits and vegetables; and (ii) the limited availability of these foods in some neighborhoods (Wilde et al., 2013). However, it remains unclear whether high prices for fruits and vegetables or lack of access to food retailers-or both-present substantive barriers to the acquisition of healthy food by lowincome Americans. The Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) provided SNAP participants in Hampden County, MA, with a large (30 percent) incentive (i.e., rebate) for purchasing targeted fruits and vegetables. Using a random-assignment research design, the HIP evaluation found modest effects on targeted fruit and vegetable purchases with SNAP benefits in participating supermarkets (Bartlett et al., 2014; Wilde et al., 2016). The evaluation also collected detailed geographic information on where SNAP households lived and the location of SNAP retailers. This study uses the HIP evaluation's detailed geographic information to explore how spending patterns and the impact of the HIP intervention varied with local food retail access. Specifically, we address two empirical research questions. First, did SNAP households with better access to HIP-participating supermarkets purchase a larger amount of targeted fruits and vegetables (TFVs)? Second, was the impact of HIP on TFV spending-i.e., the difference in outcomes between those eligible for and not eligible for the rebate-larger for households that lived closer to a participating supermarket? The first analysis is based on cross-sectional associations across households in different neighborhoods and is therefore best viewed as associational rather than causal. The second analysis is supported by the evaluation's random assignment research design.

Evidence suggests that participating in career and technical education (CTE) in high school, on average, positively affects general education students when transitioning from education to the workforce. Yet, almost no large-scale causal research has explored whether academic benefits also accrue to students with disabilities in CTE. This omission is glaring given that students with disabilities participate in high school CTE programs at high rates. We use multiple years of administrative data from Massachusetts to estimate the effect of participating in CTE on the academic outcomes of students with disabilities. Compared with peers with similar disabilities who do not participate in CTE, students with disabilities in CTE programs perform comparably on standardized measures of student achievement but have higher probabilities of graduating from high school on time or earning industry-recognized certificates. Implications for policy and practice, particularly with regard to scaling access to similar programs, are discussed.

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