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NEW EdWorkingPapers
Performance Pay and Teacher Mobility: Statewide Evidence from Texas
Texas's Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) provides performance-based funding to school districts, with larger awards at rural campuses and campuses serving more disadvantaged students. I study whether district adoption keeps teachers in their districts and at their schools.
Empty Desks: Schools and Staffing after the Pandemic
Sustained enrollment losses and other post-pandemic factors have placed budgetary pressures on many school districts and motivated difficult discussions about both closing under enrolled schools and staffing reductions. Using the most currently available national data, this brief provides descriptive evidence on trends in the number of operating schools and their teacher staffing and discusses… more →
Navigating Conflicting Pressures: How Districts Spend Federal COVID-19 Relief Funds
Federal COVID-19 relief funds provided a large increase in school district revenue, with fewer requirements than usual. Districts received widespread criticism, based on little systematic evidence, for spending federal funds slowly or ineffectively. Institutional theories predict a common response to funds across districts, while other theories predict variation in use of these funds. How have… more →
Interpreting Null Effects in Education: Insights from a Tutoring Experiment
We learn not only from when interventions work—but also from why they do not. Policymakers embraced high impact tutoring to address pandemic learning loss, but scaling promising practices is difficult, and not all implementations prove effective. Using random assignment, we find null (math and a low-stakes reading test) and negative (-0.09 SD on state reading scores) impacts from assignment to… more →
Cultivating STEM Interest in Middle School Students: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of an Out-of-School Time Experiential Learning Program
A sustainable science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is central to U.S. national interests and policy debates. Researchers and practitioners often overlook non-academic levers such as early interest and career aspirations. One way to foster these dispositions is through out-of-school time (OST) programs that provide learning experiences not typically offered in school… more →
When Advanced Learning Programs Expand: Evidence on Access and Achievement
This paper examines how a district-wide expansion of an advanced learning program reshaped access and short-run academic outcomes. The reform replaced an opt-in identification process with universal screening based on district assessments and expanded program capacity, resulting in larger entering cohorts and a participant pool that more closely reflected the district’s student population.
Policy and Practice Series
EdTalks
Centering Teachers in the AI Era
What happens when teachers are treated as professional decision-makers, not just end users of AI tools?
Watch the conversation about the future of the teaching profession in an AI-enabled education system, grounded in two recent EdWorkingPapers.