Kenneth A. Shores
Making the Grade: Accounting for Course Selection in High School Transcripts with Item Response Theory
Topics: MethodsWe use student-level administrative data from Delaware for 43,767 high school students across five 12th grade cohorts from 2017 to 2021. We apply Item Response Theory (IRT) to high school transcript data, treating courses as items and grades as ordered responses, to estimate both student… more →
The Architecture of Expected Wage Gaps: Between- and Within-School Sources of Career Education Inequality
Using administrative data from Delaware and aggregate occupational wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this paper examines expected wage inequality in Career and Technical Education (CTE) by analyzing how student demographics relate to selection into programs of study (POS) with… more →
Changes in Kindergarten Redshirting During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on academic "redshirting" in kindergarten, the practice of holding a child back for a year and enrolling them in kindergarten at age 6, using student-level data on all Delaware kindergarten students from fall 2014 through fall 2022. The rate of… more →
Misclassification of Career and Technical Education Concentrators: Analysis and Policy Recommendations
Career and Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for life beyond high school by providing practical labor skills, workforce credentials, and early post-secondary credits. States are required to report the number of CTE concentrators to receive federal Perkins funding, but systems of… 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 →
The Distribution of School Resources in The United States: A Comparative Analysis Across Levels of Governance, Student Sub-groups, And Educational Resources
Levels of governance (the nation, states, and districts), student subgroups (racially and ethnically minoritized and economically disadvantaged students), and types of resources (expenditures, class sizes, and teacher quality) intersect to represent a complex and comprehensive picture of K-12… more →
What is a School Finance Reform? Uncovering the ubiquity and diversity of school finance reforms using a Bayesian changepoint estimator
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformSchool finance reforms are not well defined and are likely more prevalent than the current literature has documented. Using a Bayesian changepoint estimator, we quantitatively identify the years when state education revenues abruptly increased for each state between 1960 and 2008 and then… more →
Fiscal Federalism and K-12 Education Funding: Policy Lessons from Two Educational Crises
Tags: School reform, Covid-19 recoveryWe synthesize and critique federal fiscal policy during the Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic. First, the amount of aid during both crises was inadequate to meet policy goals. Second, the mechanisms used to distribute funds was disconnected from policy goals and provided different levels of… more →
Federal Stimulus Aid and School Finance: Lessons from the Great Recession
Tags:In 2009, the federal government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to combat the effects of the Great Recession and state revenue shortfalls, directing over $97 billion to school districts. In this chapter, we draw lessons from this distribution of fiscal stimulus funding… more →
Spending More on the Poor? A Comprehensive Summary of State-Specific Responses to School Finance Reforms from 1990–2014
Tags: School reform, PovertySixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs), a combination of court-ordered and legislative reforms, have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. In this study, we estimate the effects of SFRs on revenues and expenditures between… more →
Identifying Preferences for Equal College Access, Income, and Income Equality
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceRevealed preferences for equal college access may be due to beliefs that equal access increases societal income or income equality. To isolate preferences for those goods, we implement an online discrete choice experiment using social statistics generated from true variation among commuting… more →
Categorical Inequality in Black and White: Linking Disproportionality across Multiple Educational Outcomes
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe characterize the extent to which Black-White gaps for multiple educational outcomes are linked across school districts in the United States. Gaps in disciplinary action, grade-level retention, classification into special education and Gifted and Talented, and Advanced Placement course-taking… more →
Get Real! Inflation Adjustments of Education Finance Data
Tags: AssessmentUse of education finance data is ubiquitous. Yet, because the academic calendar circumscribes two calendar years, researchers have linked the Consumer Price Index to three different dates: the Fall, Spring and academic fiscal years. We demonstrate that linking the CPI to these different academic… more →