Lucy C. Sorensen
The Effects of School Building HVAC System Conditions on Student Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
There is growing awareness of the importance of school building environments for student health, well-being, and even educational outcomes. We ask in this study what role school building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play in shaping student attendance, behavior, and… more →
On the Margin: Who Receives a Juvenile Referral in School and What Effect Does It Have?
Involvement with the juvenile justice system carries immense consequences both to detained youth and to society more broadly. Extant research on the “school-to-prison pipeline” often focuses on school disciplinary practices such as suspension with less attention on understanding the impact of… more →
The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing Across the U.S.
U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet, little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national… more →
Strictly Speaking: Examining Teacher Use of Punishment and Student Outcomes
While a growing body of literature has documented the negative impacts of exclusionary punishments, such as suspensions, on academic outcomes, less is known about how teachers vary in disciplinary behaviors and the attendant impacts on students. We use administrative data from North Carolina… more →
Getting Tough? The Effects of Discretionary Principal Discipline on Student Outcomes
Tags: Juvenile justice, PrincipalsNationwide, school principals are given wide discretion to use disciplinary tools like suspension and expulsion to create a safe learning environment. There is legitimate concern that this power can have negative consequences, particularly for the students who are excluded. This study uses… more →
Charter School Growth and the Evolution of Local Teacher Labor Markets
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsSince their introduction in the 1990s, charter schools have grown from a small-scale experiment to a ubiquitous feature of the public education landscape. The current study uses the legislative removal of a cap on the maximum number of charters, and the weakening of regulations on these new… more →
The Hidden Costs of Teacher Turnover
High teacher turnover imposes numerous burdens on the schools and districts from which teachers depart. Some of these burdens are explicit and take the form of recruiting, hiring and training costs. Others are more hidden and take the form of changes to the composition and quality of the… more →