UCEC–UC San Diego

UCEC–UCSD is located in the Economics Department under the direction of Professor Julian Betts. The goals of the center align closely with Professor Betts’ research interests, including work on educational standards, school choice, teaching effectiveness, and program evaluation, among other topics.  Professor Betts cooperates closely with the San Diego Unified School District, the Public Policy Institute of California (http://www.ppic.org), as well as the U.S. Department of Education.

UCSD hosts a number of groups that perform work on education research. Betts is Executive Director of the San Diego Education Research Alliance at UCSD (SanDERA) which, in a close collaboration with the San Diego Unified School District, undertakes research on schools in San Diego (see  http://sandera.ucsd.edu/). For a short description of research completed to date by the SanDERA team, seehttp://economics.ucsd.edu/economicsinaction/issue-3/introducing-sandera.php.

The Education Studies Program at UCSD is home to undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs as well as a large number of researchers conducting both qualitative and quantitative research (see http://eds.ucsd.edu/).

CREATE is the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence, which undertakes outreach to local schools and also conducts research and evaluation studies in a variety of areas within education (see http://create.ucsd.edu).

A Message from Dr. Julian R. Betts, Site Director, UCEC–UCSD

Educational evaluation is of primary concern not only from a research perspective but predominantly from the policy perspective, especially in times when the federal and the state budgets are under severe pressure. Well-designed policy evaluations can tell us which programs are worth continuing or bringing to scale, and which student groups benefit particularly from a given program. Policy decisions backed up by well designed and conducted evaluation and research aim at making sure that the school system moves towards better standards and better education for all students. We aim to conduct rigorous education evaluations, to disseminate the outcomes of evaluations to a wide audience, and to train graduate students in how to design and conduct rigorous evaluations in a variety of fields, including education.

Prof. Julian R. Betts
Department of Economics
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr., #0508
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Office: ECON 212

Phone number: 858-534-3369
Fax: 858-534-7040
E-mail: jbetts@ucsd.edu