Thurston Domina
Framing the pandemic: Tracking educational problem formulation, Spring 2020-Fall 2021
We use data from the applications North Carolina public school districts and charter schools submitted for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) to investigate the sense that educational leaders made of the pandemic as it unfolded. LEAs understood the pandemic as a… more →
Early Algebra Affects Peer Composition
Topics: Student LearningAlthough existing research suggests that students benefit on a range of outcomes when they enroll in early algebra classes, policy efforts that accelerate algebra enrollment for large numbers of students often have negative effects. Explanations for this apparent contradiction often emphasize… more →
Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults
Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the US Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter… more →
Structured Choice: School Segregation at the Intersection of Policy and Preferences
Deven Carlson, Thurston Domina, James S. Carter III, Rachel M. Perera, Andrew McEachin, Vitaly Radsky.Topics: School ChoiceThis paper conceptualizes segregation as a phenomenon that emerges from the intersection of public policy and individual decision-making. Contemporary scholarship on complex decision-making describes a two-step process—1) Editing and 2) Selection— and has emphasized the individual decision-maker… more →
The Kids on the Bus: The Academic Consequences of Diversity-Driven School Reassignments
Thurston Domina, Deven Carlson, James S. Carter III, Matthew A. Lenard, Andrew McEachin, Rachel Perera.Topics: School ChoiceTags: School reform, EquityMany public school diversity efforts rely on reassigning students from one school to another. While opponents of such efforts articulate concerns about the consequences of reassignments for students’ educational experiences, little evidence exists regarding these effects, particularly in… more →
Heterogeneous Effects of Early Algebra across California Middle Schools
Topics: Student LearningHow should schools assign students to more rigorous math courses so as best to help their academic outcomes? We identify several hundred California middle schools that used 7th grade test scores to place students into 8th grade Algebra courses, and use a regression discontinuity design to… more →
Teacher Effects on Student Achievement and Height: A Cautionary Tale
Topics: MethodsTags: AssessmentEstimates of teacher “value-added” suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the… more →
Beyond tracking and detracking: The dimensions of organizational differentiation in schools
Tags: Ability grouping, EquitySchools utilize an array of strategies to match curricula and instruction to students’ heterogeneous skills. While generations of scholars have debated “tracking” and its consequences, the literature fails to account for diversity of school-level sorting practices.