"When I starting my studies to become an economist, I wish someone had told me _____." How would you fill in that blank?
I volunteer at a charter school in a poor neighborhood in Memphis. What are some interesting research questions one might pursue if data/statistics were available? Some questions are obvious ones, like improvement on test scores, but maybe there are ones that are not so obvious?
Having access to a school that would let you run interventions would be a real asset. Things like studying the impact of different instructional methods, tracking (allowing for honors classes or not), or maybe even attendance policies. I have been critical of methods that evaluate school policies using only test scores, so some way to link the students to long-run outcomes would lead to a wealth of exciting questions you could answer (but an enormous undertaking, of course). Maybe college placements would be feasible?