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NEW EdWorkingPapers
Talent at the Top: Effects of Taxation on University Presidents’ Compensation and Priorities
I examine how private universities and their presidents respond to the financial incentives arising from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which introduced a 21% excise tax on nonprofit executive compensation above a $1 million threshold. Using an event study design, I find that total presidential compensation decreased by 13%, a reduction driven by declines in non-taxable and other forms… more →
Career ready or not? The relationship of WorkKeys scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs with college and early-career outcomes
Growing efforts to ensure that students graduate high school both college- and career-ready raise a need for better understanding and measures of “career readiness.” We leverage data from one state (North Carolina) where nearly half of students take a college entrance exam (the ACT) in 11th grade and a career readiness exam (the WorkKeys) in 12th grade to examine how these different measures… more →
Improvements in Using Distance to Predict College Enrollment
Geographic proximity to college is a widely used instrument for estimating returns to postsecondary education. Most applications rely on geodesic ("crow-flies") distance, which is easy to calculate but a poor proxy for actual travel costs when terrain, water, or congestion intervene. We show that replacing geodesic distance with driving distance or driving time substantially strengthens… more →
The Impact of Exam Schools on Disadvantaged Students: Evidence from NYC’s Discovery Program
This paper studies the New York City Department of Education's Discovery Program, an affirmative action policy implemented to increase access to some of New York City’s most elite public high schools. The Discovery Program allocates reserve seats at New York City’s exam schools to disadvantaged students who successfully complete the course requirements of a summer program. Using a regression… more →
Defaults, Discretion, and Local Capacity: District Leaders’ Accounts of Automatic English Learner Reclassification
Automatic policies, which produce a preferred outcome unless implementers act otherwise, are rare in K-12 education and have been studied almost entirely using quantitative methods. In 2019, Michigan replaced its district-led procedure for reclassifying students out of English learner (EL) status with an automatic, state-led one. Drawing on interviews with 17 district EL leaders across 14… more →
Beyond the Special Education Gap: Differences in Special Education Expenditures Between Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools
Researchers and policymakers have long noted differences in disability enrollment and placement between charter schools and traditional public schools (TPSs), yet little is known about whether these differences correspond to special education expenditures. Using Texas administrative and financial data from 2019-20 to 2024-25, we compare special education expenditures, disability composition,… more →
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.