Category: RCT

Grading School Voucher Programs

Posted on by Sophie Laing

Why RCTs?: School Choice

Everyone seems to have an opinion on school choice. Those favoring or trying to forestall the dismantling of residential barriers have fought loud, hard battles in the states. Interestingly, these battles haven’t necessarily pitted political partisans against each other. The “choice” bloc recently witnessed a vocal spokesperson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, rise to prominence. She has advocated passionately for implementing more voucher systems and giving parents and students more perceived opportunity to succeed where the current public school system, some claim, clearly cannot.

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A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part III

Posted on by Chris Griffin

Today we present a final look at key field partners who have helped make the Dane County PSA RCT one of the A2J Lab’s signature series. Check out Part I and Part II as well!

In this installment, we are fortunate to share reflections from three officers of the court: Judge Juan Colás, Commissioner Jason Hanson, and Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne.

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A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part II

Posted on by Chris Griffin

Today we bring you another look at key field partners who have helped make the Dane County PSA RCT one of the A2J Lab’s signature series. Part I covered the work of the County’s two Assessors, who perform the essential work of populating the PSA’s risk factors and generating its recommendations day in and day out.

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A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part I

Posted on by Chris Griffin

Last week, we marked the launch of our PSA RCT in Dane County, Wisconsin. Starting today, I will be pulling back the field experiment curtain, as it were, and introducing some of the A2J Lab’s field partners. These Dane County employees have worked tirelessly for almost two years to make the PSA’s implementation and our concurrent evaluation possible.

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Ready, Set, Launch

Posted on by Sophie Laing

Research Director Chris Griffin blogs from Wisconsin:

The day has finally arrived!

At this afternoon’s initial appearance court in Dane County, WI, the A2J Lab begins its evaluation of the Public Safety Assessment (“PSA”). Criminal process in this jurisdiction now includes additional, scientifically based information in a randomly selected subset of cases to inform pre-disposition release decisions. The judicial official–known here as a Commissioner–receives risk scores and a recommendation for release through the PSA and its static criminal history inputs to consider in reaching those decisions. Check out this video starring Lab affiliate Heidi Liu and yours truly to learn more about the science behind this RCT:

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On Your Mark, Get Set, Triage

Posted on by Sophie Laing

Part 2 of “To Triage of Not to Triage? That is NOT the Question.”

Last week I took another dive into the world of triage- specifically focusing on some common questions and sticking points that were raised in RadioLab podcast entitled “Playing God.” As was mentioned in the previous blog post, we don’t think triage is really about playing god, rather about facing limited resources and making decisions. Last week we talked mostly about the value implications of such discussions of who lives and who dies. This week we’ll touch upon two other points. First, the reaction to not want to make triage decisions, and the second is the multitude of ways to triage and therefore the importance of RCTs in knowing which way is best in a given situation.

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“To Triage or Not to Triage?” That is NOT the Question

Posted on by Sophie Laing

Part 1

The Radiolab podcast from WNYC Studios is as close to appointment listening as we have in 2016. One of the show’s recent episodes, entitled “Playing God,” takes up a topic directly in the A2J Lab’s wheelhouse: triage. In a stark bit of commentary, the host characterizes the practice not as deciding how to allocate scarce resources; rather he described it as an “inhuman act which humans are trying to do.”

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Fear and Loathing over Risk Assessments Part 2

Posted on by Chris Griffin

How Should We Think about Racial Disparities?

In a previous post, I considered some of the less convincing critiques of pretrial and sentencing risk assessments that sound in the ecological fallacy. The fallacy argument mistakenly targets risk scores as applying only group inferences to individual case decision-making. The takeaway was straightforward. A comprehensive understanding of actuarial tools must include rigorous counterfactual thinking about a state of the world in which they aren’t available. In this follow-up, I discuss an even more serious claim: that actuarial tools might lead to unjustifiable racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes.

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