Susan M. Gates

Meeting Family and Military Needs through Military Child Care

This article summarizes results from a child care survey of military families conducted by the RAND Corporation in 2004 and draws policy implications for the military child care system. The article describes the military child care system, discusses the policy objectives of the system, and summarizes survey results that clarify the degree to which the Department of Defense is meeting its child care goals. The authors find evidence that despite its high quality, the military child care system fails to optimize readiness and retention of military members because these goals do not drive system policies or operations. The article offers suggestions for improving system outcomes.

Consumer-Directed Health Plans and Health Savings Accounts: Have They Worked for Small Business?

Cost has deterred many small businesses from providing health insurance to their workers. Consumer-directed health plans, which are potentially less costly than traditional health plans, may be well suited to workers in small businesses. We study the factors that are associated with CDHP offering, determine the variation in CDHP offering among large and small firms, and develop models of persistence in CDHP offering. Our analysis of the Kaiser-HRET survey shows that small firms have been no quicker in their uptake of CDHPs than larger firms, and appear to display somewhat more churning in CDHP offering than large firms. Small firms that employ between three and 49 workers are less likely to offer HRA/HSA plans conditional on offering HD plans than large firms. Furthermore, conditional on offering some health insurance, firms that employ 200 to 499 workers appear to be less likely to offer both HRA/HSA plans and HD plans compared to larger firms. Our results suggest a limited role for the current incarnation of consumer-directed health plans in encouraging small business to provide insurance.

Do Small‐Group Health Insurance Regulations Influence Small Business Size?

The cost of health insurance has been the primary concern of small business owners for several decades. State small group health insurance reforms, implemented in the 1990s, aimed to control the variability of health insurance premiums and to improve access to health insurance. Small group reforms only affected firms within a specific size range, and the definition of the upper size threshold for small firms varied by state and over time. As a result, small group reforms may have affected the size of small firms around the legislative threshold and may also have affected the propensity of small firms to offer health insurance. Previous research has examined the second issue, finding little to no effect of health insurance reforms on the propensity of small firms to offer health insurance. In this paper, we examine the relationship between small group reform and firm size. We use data from a nationally representative repeated cross-section survey of employers and data on state small group health insurance reform. Contrary to the intent of the reform, we find evidence that small firms just below the regulatory threshold that were offering health insurance grew in order to bypass reforms.

School Leadership Interventions Under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Evidence Review: Updated and Expanded

(ESSA)1 acknowledges the importance of school principals to school improvement and effective instruction. The act allows states and districts to use federal funds for activities targeting school principals and other school leaders. ESSA repeatedly calls for the use of evidence-based activities, strategies, and interventions.2 The rationale is clear: Investments in education must produce results. Students’ efforts, teachers’ time, and scarce financial resources are more likely to be well spent when education-improvement activities are selected because there is evidence that they are effective. To select educationimprovement activities without considering their prior, proven impact may be seen as an irresponsible use of limited resources. In many areas, such as English-language learning or literacy, there is a strong existing research base (such as the Institute of Science Education’s What Works Clearinghouse [WWC] review) to inform which interventions might qualify as evidence-based. However, the language used in ESSA to define the term evidencebased differs in important ways from prior legislation, leaving open questions about which school-leadership practices, activities, strategies, and interventions might qualify as evidence-based. In the face of such ambiguity, states and districts might hesitate to take advantage of the opportunities that ESSA provides to support activities and interventions targeting school leaders. Additional guidance or clarification about what is allowable under the law could facilitate school-improvement activities that are consistent with the intent of the law. The RAND Corporation conducted a synthesis of the evidence base on school-leadership interventions to better inform the rollout of school-leadership interventions under ESSA. This report is intended to help federal, state, and district education policymakers understand and implement school-leadership-improvement efforts that are consistent with ESSA. C O R P O R A T I O N

Job lock: evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Employer-provided health insurance may restrict job mobility, resulting in “job lock.” Previous research on job lock finds mixed results using several methodologies. We take a new approach to examine job-lock by exploiting the discontinuity created at age 65 through the qualification for Medicare. Using a novel procedure for identifying age in months from matched monthly CPS data and a relatively unexplored administration measure of job mobility, we compare job mobility among male workers in the months just prior to turning age 65 to job mobility in the months just after turning age 65. We find no evidence that job mobility increases at the age 65 threshold when Medicare eligibility starts. We also do not find evidence that other factors such as retirement, reduction in hours worked, social security eligibility, pension eligibility, and sample changes confound the results on job mobility in the month individuals turn 65.

Civilian Workforce Planning in the Department of Defense. Different Levels, Different Roles

Abstract : In response to more than a decade of downsizing and restructuring, the Department of Defense (DoD) is engaged in a human-resources strategic planning effort to address resulting imbalances in both skills and experience levels in many parts of DoD. The current human-resources strategic plan addresses the need to provide management systems and tools to support total workforce planning and informed decisionmaking (U.S. Department of Defense, 2003b). Attention to Department-wide civilian workforce planning stems in part from the Presidents Management Agenda of 2001 and the continuing assessments of Department-level progress on workforce planning. DoD civilian workforce-planning efforts are complicated and, at the same time, made more important by the implementation of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), slated to begin in 2006. The NSPS will replace the traditional federal civil service personnel management system within DoD, providing DoD managers with more management flexibility.

Health Savings Accounts for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Shopping, Take-Up and Implementation Challenges~!2009-11-12~!2010-01-28~!2010-03-19~!

A combination of high deductible health plans (HDHPs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) holds promise for expanding health insurance for small firms. We provide information on HSA take-up and shopping behavior from a 2008 survey of female small business owners, revealing that the HSA marketplace can be confusing for small firms. HSAs may have expanded access to health insurance for the smallest firms (under three employees), but not for small firms more generally. A sizable number of firms offering HSA-eligible insurance did not offer attached HSAs. Firms offering HSAs were satisfied with their experiences, but faced challenges in implementing them.

State Health Insurance Mandates, Consumer Directed Health Plans and Health Savings Accounts: Are They a Panacea for Small Businesses?

Small firms in the United States that seek to offer health insurance to their employees have historically reported problems with the availability and affordability of their options. The cost of health insurance has been the primary concern of small business owners for several decades. This paper examines the effect to date of two types of policy initiatives that could have substantial benefits for small business: state health insurance mandates and key components of CDHPs-HSAs, HRAs and high deductible health plans. It summarizes the key policy issues, reviews existing research evidence on the effect of these initiatives on small business and offer some conclusions for policymakers.

Principal Pipelines: What Are They and What Do They Cost?

Effective school leadership has tremendous potential to improve outcomes for students and promote excellence in schools. Indeed, a high-quality leader in just one school can potentially improve the performance of dozens of teachers and hundreds (even thousands) of students. However, despite their demonstrated potential, efforts to improve the quality of school leadership can be a tough sell for districts and states. In an era of serious resource constraints, states and districts often feel pressure to spend money directly on students or teachers. Limited information about the costs of initiatives targeting school leadership compounds these pressures and precludes districts from embarking on this work. But poor school leadership could also have a high cost. Often overlooked are the costs that districts bear when they have to repeatedly replace principals. Furthermore, the ongoing costs of poor leadership—for example, higher teacher turnover, worsening school climate conditions, and declines in student achievement—are less visible but arguably more significant than the cost of replacing school leaders.