Brian A. Jacob

This paper reports findings from a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers in May 2023 that examines the potential long-term impacts of COVID-19 on public schooling. The findings suggest fundamental ways in which school operations, instructional practice and parent-teacher interaction have changed since the pandemic. Some changes seem promising; others suggest caution. While policymakers may not be able to directly influence some of the reported changes in the short run, monitoring the evolution of school practices (and their consequences for children) will position educational leaders to help teachers and students address the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic going forward.

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The immediate impacts of COVID-19 on K12 schooling are well known. Over nearly 18 months, students’ academic performance and mental health deteriorated dramatically. This study aims to identify if and how the pandemic led to longer-term changes in core aspects of schooling. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 31 teachers and administrators across 12 districts in two states, we find that schools today look quite different in several areas including the availability and use of instructional technology, instructional practice, parent-teacher communication, and the balance between academics and social-emotional well-being. We interpret these findings through the lens of institutional theory, and discuss implications of the changes for practitioners and policymakers.

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Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively recent entrant into the U.S. early education landscape, combining features of public pre-K and regular kindergarten. We provide the first estimates of the impact of Michigan’s TK program on 3rd grade test scores. Using an augmented regression discontinuity design, we find that TK improves 3rd grade math scores by 0.29 standard deviations relative to a counterfactual that includes other formal and informal learning options. This impact is notably large relative to the prior pre-K literature. Estimates for English Language Arts (ELA) are imprecise but suggestive of a positive effect as well.

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In recent years, several states have expanded a new publicly funded learning option: Transitional Kindergarten (TK). TK programs bridge prekindergarten and kindergarten in their eligibility, requirements, and design. We use Michigan’s TK program as a case study on the fit of this new entrant in the early learning landscape. Michigan’s program is well suited for this purpose because it contains most of the research-aligned program design elements of other large-scale TK programs across the country. Using statewide administrative data, we describe which districts offer TK when doing so is optional, the characteristics of children who enroll in TK at four and five years old, and substitution patterns between TK and alternative learning options. Broadly, we find TK in Michigan closes some socioeconomic gaps in early program enrollment while exacerbating others. Specifically, districts with larger proportions of White students and smaller proportions of economically disadvantaged students are more likely to offer TK than other districts. Within districts that do not offer TK in every school, TK is targeted to schools with more economically disadvantaged students. Among preschool-age children, those from non-economically disadvantaged families are more likely to enroll in TK than their peers; among kindergarten-age children, there is little difference in take-up by family income. Finally, we find evidence of substitution, with some children enrolling in TK instead of state-funded prekindergarten or instead of enrolling in kindergarten early, though with no evidence that public slots decline overall. Our findings have implications for addressing the fragmented early education landscape when expanding programs.

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Media reports suggest that parent frustration with COVID school policies and the growing politicization of education have increased community engagement with local public schools. However, there is no evidence to date on whether these factors have translated into greater engagement at the ballot box. This paper uses a novel data set to explore how school board elections changed following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I find that school board elections post-COVID were more likely to be contested, and that voter turnout in contested elections increased. These changes were large in magnitude and varied with several district characteristics.

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Detroit students who obtain a college degree overcome many obstacles to do so. This paper reports the results of a randomized evaluation of a program meant to provide support to low-income community college students. The Detroit Promise Path (DPP) program was designed to complement an existing College Promise scholarship, providing students with coaching, summer engagement, and financial incentives. The evaluation found that students offered the program enrolled in more semesters and earned more credits compared with those offered the scholarship alone. However, at the three-year mark, there were no discernable impacts on degrees earned. This paper examines systemic barriers to degree completion and offers lessons for the design of interventions to increase equity in postsecondary attainment.

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Lottery-based identification strategies offer potential for generating the next generation of evidence on U.S. early education programs.  Our collaborative network of five research teams applying this design in early education and methods experts has identified six challenges that need to be carefully considered in this next context: 1) available baseline covariates may not be very rich; 2) limited data on the counterfactual; 3) limited and inconsistent outcome data; 4) weakened internal validity due to attrition; 5) constrained external validity due to who competes for oversubscribed programs; and 6) difficulties answering site-level questions with child-level randomization.  We offer potential solutions to these six challenges and concrete recommendations for the design of future lottery-based early education studies.

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The COVID-19 pandemic drew new attention to the role of school boards in the U.S. In this paper, we examine school districts' choices of learning modality -- whether and when to offer in-person, virtual, or hybrid instruction -- over the course of the 2020-21 pandemic school year. The analysis takes advantage of granular weekly data on learning mode and COVID-19 cases for Ohio school districts. We show that districts respond on the margin to health risks: all else equal, a marginal increase in new cases reduces the probability that a district offers in-person instruction the next week. Moreover, this negative response is magnified when the district was in-person the prior week and attenuates in magnitude over the school year. These findings are consistent with districts learning from experience about the effect of in-person learning on disease transmission in schools. We also find evidence that districts are influenced by the decisions of their peers.

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A common rationale for offering online courses in K-12 schools is that they allow students to take courses not offered at their schools; however, there has been little research on how online courses are used to expand curricular options when operating at scale. We assess the extent to which students and schools use online courses for this purpose by analyzing statewide, student-course level data from high school students in Florida, which has the largest virtual sector in the nation. We introduce a “novel course” framework to address this question. We define a virtual course as “novel” if it is only available to a student virtually, not face-to-face through their own home high school. We find that 7% of high school students in 2013-14 enroll in novel online courses. Novel courses were more commonly used by higher-achieving students, in rural schools, and in schools with relatively few Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate offerings.

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