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Cory Koedel
The Peer Effects of Grade Retention
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe study the peer effects of grade retention in the context of Indiana’s statewide third-grade retention policy. When a retention occurs, it changes the peer group for two cohorts: rising fourth graders who lose a peer and rising third graders who gain a peer. We identify peer effects in both… more →
The Decline in Teacher Working Conditions During and After the COVID Pandemic
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the peak of the… more →
Diversity Trends Among Faculty in STEM and non-STEM Fields at Selective Public Universities in the U.S. from 2016 to 2023
During the 2015-16 academic year, racial protests swept across college campuses in the U.S. These protests were followed by large university investments in initiatives to promote diversity, which combined with existing diversity dynamics, have helped to shape recent faculty diversity trends. We… more →
Institutional heterogeneity in the education and earnings returns to postsecondary technical education: Evidence from Missouri
We estimate the education and earnings returns to enrolling in technical two-year degree programs at community colleges in Missouri. A unique feature of the Missouri context is the presence of a highly regarded, nationally ranked technical college: State Technical College of Missouri (State Tech… more →
Weighting for Progressivity? An Analysis of Implicit Tradeoffs Associated with Weighted Student Funding in Tennessee
Tags:We study the progressivity of state funding of school districts under Tennessee’s weighted student funding formula. We propose a simple definition of progressivity based on the difference in exposure to district per-pupil funding between poor and non-poor students. The realized progressivity of… more →
Does Regulating Entry Requirements Lead to More Effective Principals?
Wes Austin, Bengie Chen, Dan Goldhaber, Eric A. Hanushek, Kris Holden, Cory Koedel, Helen F. Ladd, Jin Luo, Eric Parsons, Gregory Phelan, Steven G. Rivkin, Tim Sass, Mavzuna Tureava.Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Leadership, PrincipalsAnecdotal evidence points to the importance of school principals, but the limited existing research has neither provided consistent results nor indicated any set of essential characteristics of effective principals. This paper exploits extensive student-level panel data across six states to… more →
Could shifting the margin between community college and university enrollment expand and diversify university degree production in STEM fields?
We examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of university STEM degrees by shifting the margin of initial enrollment between community colleges and 4-year universities. Our analysis is based on statewide administrative microdata from the Missouri Department of Higher Education… more →
Holding Back to Move Forward: The Effects of Retention in the Third Grade on Student Outcomes
Topics: Student LearningWe evaluate the effects of grade retention on students’ academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the… more →
Using Predicted Academic Performance to Identify At-Risk Students in Public Schools
Topics: Student LearningTags: Assessment, EquityMeasures of student disadvantage—or risk—are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little… more →
The narrowing gender wage gap among faculty at public universities in the U.S.
Tags: Higher education, EquityWe study the conditional gender wage gap among faculty at public research universities in the U.S. We begin by using a cross-sectional dataset from 2016 to replicate the long-standing finding in research that conditional on rich controls, female faculty earn less than their male colleagues. Next… more →
Free and reduced-price meal eligibility does not measure student poverty: Evidence and policy significance
Topics: Families and CommunitiesFree and reduced-price meal (FRM) enrollment is commonly used in education research and policy applications as an indicator of student poverty. However, using multiple data sources external to the school system, we show that FRM status is a poor proxy for poverty, with enrollment rates far… more →
The Effect of the Community Eligibility Provision on the Ability of Free and Reduced-Price Meal Data to Identify Disadvantaged Students
Topics: MethodsTags: PovertyThe Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a policy change to the federally-administered National School Lunch Program that allows schools serving low-income populations to classify all students as eligible for free meals, regardless of individual circumstances. This has implications for the… more →
The Formalized Processes Districts Use to Evaluate Mathematics Textbooks
Morgan Polikoff, Shauna E. Campbell, Cory Koedel, Quynh Tien Le, Tenice Hardaway, Hovanes Gasparian.Tags: Curriculum, Mathematics educationTextbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. We use a lens of institutional theory and… more →