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Christine Mulhern
The Costs and Benefits of North Carolina’s Early College High School Model
Early colleges are high schools that blend the high school and college experiences. They have been shown to increase college enrollment and completion; however less is known about the costs of the early college model relative to traditional high schools. We leverage randomized assignment of… more →
Expanding School Counseling: The Impacts of California Funding Changes
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceCounselors are a common school resource for students navigating complicated and consequential education choices. However, most students have limited access to school counselors. We study one of the largest U.S. policies to increase access to school counselors - California's Supplemental School… more →
Spillover Effects of Specialized High Schools
Topics: School ChoiceTags: High schoolsSpecialized high schools are an increasingly popular way to prepare young adults for postsecondary experiences and expand school choice. While much literature ex- amines charter school spillover effects and the effects of specialized schools on the students who attend them, little is known about… more →
Implementation and Impacts of Career-Focused Advising
Recent policies have expanded the availability of career-focused advising in high schools, including for students pursuing career and technical education (CTE) courses of study who might not have been adequately served by traditional college-focused advising. However, there is limited research… more →
CTE-Focused Dual Enrollment: Participation and Outcomes
Recent policy efforts have attempted to increase the number of dual enrollment courses offered within Career and Technical Education pathways and there is evidence to suggest that this practice is widespread. However, there is very little research on student participation in CTE dual enrollment… more →
Beyond Teachers: Estimating Individual Guidance Counselors’ Effects on Educational Attainment
Topics: Student LearningTags: Counseling, Student supportsCounselors are a common school resource for students navigating complicated and con- sequential education choices. I estimate counselors’ causal effects using quasi-random assignment policies in Massachusetts. Counselors vary substantially in their effectiveness at increasing high school… more →
Measuring and Summarizing the Multiple Dimensions of Teacher Effectiveness
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: AssessmentThere is an emerging consensus that teachers impact multiple student outcomes, but it remains unclear how to measure and summarize the multiple dimensions of teacher effectiveness into simple metrics for research or personnel decisions. We present a multidimensional empirical Bayes framework and… more →
Inequality in Household Adaptation to Schooling Shocks: Covid-Induced Online Learning Engagement in Real Time
We use high frequency internet search data to study in real time how US households sought out online learning resources as schools closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. By April 2020, nationwide search intensity for both school- and parent-centered online learning resources had roughly doubled… more →
O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries
Adam Altmejd, Andres Barrios-Fernandez, Marin Drlje, Joshua Goodman, Michael Hurwitz, Dejan Kovac, Christine Mulhern, Christopher Neilson, Jonathan Smith.Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions but identifying their causal effects is notoriously difficult. Using admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings’ college options, we present evidence from the United States, Chile… more →
O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers in College Enrollment
We study within-family spillovers in college enrollment to show college-going behavior is transmissible between peers. Because siblings’ test scores are weakly correlated, we exploit college-specific admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings’ college options. Older… more →