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	Propensity Score Matching in Education	What Works Clearinghouse Standards
Field	Education	Education
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1983	2022
Originator	Rosenbaum & Rubin (method); educational application widespread (Stuart and others)	Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Education
Type	Observational causal inference by matching treated and untreated units on treatment probability	Standards and procedures for assessing the causal credibility of education studies
Seminal source	Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70(1), 41–55.	What Works Clearinghouse. (2022). What Works Clearinghouse Procedures and Standards Handbook, Version 5.0. Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
Aliases	Educational Propensity Score Matching, PSM in Education, Propensity Matching for School Effects, Observational Causal Matching	WWC Standards, WWC Evidence Standards, What Works Clearinghouse Review, WWC Study Rating
Related	4	3
Summary	Propensity score matching estimates the causal effect of an educational treatment from observational data by pairing treated students, schools, or teachers with comparison units that had the same probability of receiving the treatment given their observed characteristics. Introduced by Rosenbaum and Rubin, it collapses many confounding variables into a single score and matches on it, approximating the balance a randomized experiment would create. In education — where randomizing program participation, retention, or school choice is often impossible — it is a widely used quasi-experimental tool.	The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards are the protocol the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences uses to judge how much confidence an education study's findings deserve as causal evidence. They specify which designs can support causal claims, how to screen for threats such as attrition and confounding, and how to rate each study — Meets Standards Without Reservations, With Reservations, or Does Not Meet Standards — before synthesizing the body of evidence. The standards are a cornerstone of evidence-based education policy in the United States.