The Annenberg Institute at Brown University, in partnership with the SCALE Initiative at Stanford University, offers this national working paper series to provide open access to high-quality papers from multiple disciplines and from multiple universities and research organizations on a wide variety of topics related to education. EdWorkingPapers focuses particularly on research with strong implications for education policy. EdWorkingPapers circulates papers prior to publication for comment and discussion; these papers have not gone through a peer review processes.
NEW EdWorkingPapers
Lifting Up Attendance in Rural Districts: A Multi-Site Trial of a Personalized Messaging Campaign
Student absenteeism has remained high following the COVID-19 pandemic and districts need low-cost strategies to improve attendance. In 2020-21, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks piloted a promising personalized messaging intervention in 8 rural districts in New York and Ohio. We worked with a student information system provider to replicate the intervention in a… more →
The Impacts of Grade Retention Policy With Minimal Retention
State laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan’s third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 third-grade cohorts. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design, we find that being… more →
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking Mathematics and Science Professional Development Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Despite evidence that teacher professional development interventions in mathematics and science can increase student achievement, our understanding of the mechanisms by which this occurs – particularly how these interventions affect teachers themselves, and the extent to which teacherlevel changes predict student learning – remains limited.
School Choice and Household Participation in School District Politics
We examine whether policies that enable families to opt out of locally provided public services are associated with reduced political participation. Our study is focused on two types of school choice policy in Michigan: inter-district choice and charter schools. Do parents who send their children to schools of choice or charter schools vote at lower or higher rates than those who use their… more →
From Population Growth to Demographic Scarcity: Emerging Challenges to Global Primary Education Provision in the Twenty-first Century
Demographic pressures are reshaping the challenges faced by primary education systems around the world in ways that carry significant implications for the landscape of global educational inequality. We first demonstrate highly disequalizing demographic pressures on the world's educational systems today: persistent expansionary pressures burden some of the world's least-resourced educational… more →
Going the Distance or Growing More Remote? The Academic Impacts of Course Modality following Pandemic-Era Investments
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education has rapidly expanded, transforming the landscape of community colleges. This paper explores how different online learning modalities impact student success in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), one of the largest and most diverse systems in the United States.