EdWorkingPapers
Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in the Relationship Between Children’s Early Literacy Skills and Third-Grade Outcomes: Lessons from a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment
Third grade is oftentimes the first year standardized literacy assessments are mandated. In turn many policies aimed at improving literacy have focused on third-grade test scores as a key indicator. Yet literacy struggles begin well before third grade, as do racial and socioeconomic disparities in children’s literacy skills. Kindergarten readiness assessments provide a unique opportunity to… more →
Increasing success in higher education: The relationships of online course taking with college completion and time-to-degree
Online courses provide flexible learning opportunities, but research suggests that students may learn less and persist at lower rates compared to face-to-face settings. However, few research studies have investigated more distal effects of online education. In this study we analyzed six years of institutional data for three cohorts of students in thirteen large majors (N=10,572) at a public… more →
College Enrollment and Mandatory FAFSA Applications: Evidence from Louisiana
Barriers to accessing financial aid may keep students from matriculating to college. To test whether FAFSA completion is one of these barriers, I utilize a natural experiment brought about by a Louisiana mandate for seniors to file the FAFSA upon graduation from high school. Exploiting pre-treatment FAFSA completion rates as a treatment intensity in a dosage differences-in-differences… more →
Distribution of Education Savings Accounts Usage Among Families: Evidence from the Florida Gardiner Program
Education savings accounts (ESAs) are education funding mechanisms that allow for families to receive a deposit of public funds to a government-authorized savings account. Using student-level longitudinal data, this paper examines how families participating in the Florida Gardiner Scholarship Program use education savings account funds. Results indicate that families use an increasing… more →
Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Interactions
In conversation, uptake happens when a speaker builds on the contribution of their interlocutor by, for example, acknowledging, repeating or reformulating what they have said. In education, teachers' uptake of student contributions has been linked to higher student achievement. Yet measuring and improving teachers' uptake at scale is challenging, as existing methods require expensive… more →
Labor Market Signaling and the Value of College: Evidence from Resumes and the Truth
How do college non-completers list schooling on their resumes? The negative signal of not completing might outweigh the positive signal of attending but not persisting. If so, job-seekers might hide non-completed schooling on their resumes. To test this we match resumes from an online jobs board to administrative educational records. We find that fully one in three job-seekers who attended… more →
Characterizing Cross-Site Variation in Local Average Treatment Effects in Multisite Regression Discontinuity Design Contexts with an Application to Massachusetts High School Exit Exam
In multisite experiments, we can quantify treatment effect variation with the cross-site treatment effect variance. However, there is no standard method for estimating cross-site treatment effect variance in multisite regression discontinuity designs (RDD). This research rectifies this gap in the literature by systematically exploring and evaluating methods for estimating the cross-site… more →
Resource for Self-Determination or Perpetuation of Linguistic Imposition: Examining the Impact of English Learner Classification among Alaska Native Students
Federal law defines eligibility for English learner (EL) classification differently for Indigenous students compared to non-Indigenous students. Indigenous students, unlike non-Indigenous students, are not required to have a non-English home or primary language. A critical question, therefore, is how EL classification impacts Indigenous students’ educational outcomes. This study explores this… more →
Can Teacher Evaluation Systems Produce High-Quality Feedback? An Administrator Training Field Experiment
A core motivation for the widespread teacher evaluation reforms of the last decade was the belief that these new systems would promote teacher development through high-quality feedback. We examine this theory by studying teachers’ perceptions of evaluation feedback in Boston Public Schools and evaluating the district’s efforts to improve feedback through an administrator training program.… more →
The Unintended Effects of the Common Core State Standards on Non-Targeted Subjects
From 2010 onwards, most US states have aligned their education standards by adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for math and English Language Arts. The CCSS did not target other subjects such as science and social studies. We estimate spillovers of the CCSS on student achievement in non-targeted subjects in models with state and year fixed effects. Using student achievement data… more →
Reforming Teacher Pension Plans: The Case of Kansas, the 1st Teacher Cash Balance Plan
The ongoing crisis in teacher pension funding has led states to consider various reforms in plan design, to replace the traditional benefit formulas, based on years of service and final average salary (FAS). One such design is a cash balance (CB) plan, long deployed in the private sector, and increasingly considered, but rarely yet adopted for teachers. Such plans are structured… more →
The Impact of International Students on US Colleges: Higher Education as a Service Export
Between 2005 and 2016, international enrollment in US higher education nearly doubled. I examine how trade shocks in education affect public universities' decision-making. I construct a shift-share instrument to exploit institutions' historical networks with different origins of international students, income growth, and exchange-rate fluctuations. Contrary to claims that US-born students are… more →
Understanding Differential Growth During School Years and Summers for Students in Special Education
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, schools are required to provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities and show that the students are making academic progress. This study compares within- and across-years academic growth from kindergarten to 4th grade for students who were ever in special education (ever-SPED) to students who were never in… more →
Teacher Policy and Racial/Ethnic Gaps in Access to Advanced Coursework: Evidence from Across the United States
Advanced course-taking in high school sends an important signal to college admissions officers, helps reduce the cost and time to complete a post-secondary degree, and increases educational attainment and future earnings. However, Black and Hispanic students in the U.S. are underrepresented in Advanced Placement coursework and dual enrollment (i.e. early college). In this paper, we… more →
Using Implementation Fidelity to Aid in Interpreting Program Impacts: A Brief Review
Poor program implementation constitutes one explanation for null results in trials of educational interventions. For this reason, researchers often collect data about implementation fidelity when conducting such trials. In this article, we document whether and how researchers report and measure program fidelity in recent cluster-randomized trials. We then create two measures—one describing the… more →
Free and reduced-price meal eligibility does not measure student poverty: Evidence and policy significance
Free 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 exceeding what would be expected based on stated income thresholds for program participation. This is… more →
A Promise Unfulfilled? How Modern Federal Civil Rights Enforcement is Used to Address Racial Discrimination in School Discipline
Using newly available data on all civil rights complaints submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights related to racial discrimination in discipline between 1999 and 2018, I provide the first systematic evidence on how modern federal civil rights enforcement is used to address racial discrimination in discipline. I find that less than 50 percent of complaints… more →
Evaluating Education Governance: Does State Takeover of School Districts Affect Student Achievement?
Local school boards have primary authority for running educational systems in the U.S. but little is known empirically about the merits of this arrangement. State takeovers of struggling districts represent a rare alternative form of educational governance and have become an increasingly common response to low performance. However, limited research explores whether this effectively improves… more →
The Kids on the Bus: The Academic Consequences of Diversity-Driven School Reassignments
Many 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 contemporary policy contexts. Using an event study design, we leverage data from an innovative… more →
The effect of smaller classes on infection-related school absence: Evidence from the Project STAR randomized controlled trial
In an effort to reduce viral transmission, many schools are planning to reduce class size if they have not reduced it already. Yet the effect of class size on transmission is unknown. To determine whether smaller classes reduce school absence, especially when community disease prevalence is high, we merge data from the Project STAR randomized class size trial with influenza and pneumonia data… more →
Operator versus Partner: A Case Study of Blueprint School Network’s Model for School Turnaround
Numerous high-profile efforts have sought to “turn around” low-performing schools. Evidence on the effectiveness of school turnarounds, however, is mixed, and research offers little guidance on which models are more likely to succeed. We present a mixed-methods case study of turnaround efforts led by the Blueprint Schools Network in three schools in Boston. Using a difference-in-differences… more →
Predictors of Access to Advanced Learning: What Makes for a Successful School?
A wide research base has documented the unequal access to and enrollment in K-12 gifted and talented services and other forms of advanced learning opportunities. This study extends that knowledge base by integrating multiple population-level datasets to better understand correlates of access to and enrollment in gifted and talented services, seventh-grade Algebra 1, and eighth-grade Geometry.… more →
Effects of Perceived Productivity on Study Effort: Evidence from a Field Experiment
How does the perceived relationship between effort and achievement affect effort? To answer this question, I conduct a field experiment with a popular online learning platform. I exogenously manipulate students’ beliefs about returns to effort by assigning them to different information treatments, each of which provides factual information. Students update their beliefs towards the information… more →
Resegregated Schools, Racial Attitudes, and Long-Run Partisanship: Evidence for White Backlash
Brown v. Board (1954) catalyzed a nationwide effort by the federal judiciary to desegregate public schools by court order, representing a major achievement for the U.S. civil rights movement. Four decades later, courts began dismissing schools from desegregation decrees in a staggered fashion, causing their racial homogeneity to rise. I leverage this exogenous source of variation in the racial… more →
Do students improve their academic achievement when assigned to a growth mindset teacher? Evidence from Census Data in Chile using a Student Fixed Effect Design
Growing evidence shows that a student's growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable) can benefit their academic achievement. However, due to limited information, little is known about how a teachers’ growth mindset affects their students’ academic achievement. In this paper, we study the impact of teacher growth mindset on academic achievement for a nationwide sample of 8th and… more →
High-Impact Tutoring: State of the Research and Priorities for Future Learning
Research consistently demonstrates that tutoring interventions have substantial positive effects on student learning. As a result, tutoring has emerged as a promising strategy for addressing COVID-related learning loss and affording greater educational opportunities for students living in poverty. The effectiveness of tutoring programs, however, varies greatly, and these variations may drive… more →
For‐Profit Colleges in the United States: Insights from Two Decades of Research
In this paper, I review the economics literature on for-profit college education in the United States, assessing what we know about institutional behavior and student outcomes after two decades of research. The many studies reviewed here reveal some consistent patterns. It is clear that for-profits compete with institutions in other sectors, yet they behave differently than their public and… more →
The Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Secondary School Absences
We provide novel evidence on the causal impacts of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that tracks the date and class period of each absence. We use two similar but distinct identification strategies that address potential endogeneity due to time-varying student-level shocks by exploiting… more →
Health Equity, Schooling Hesitancy, and the Social Determinants of Learning
At least 25 million K-12 students in the U.S.—disproportionately children of color from low-income families—have been physically out of school for a full year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These children are at risk of significant academic, social, mental, and physical harm now and in the long-term. We must determine how to help all students gain access to safe, in-person schooling. In this… more →
Heterogeneous Major Preference for Extrinsic Incentives: The Effects of Wage Information on the Gender Gap in STEM Major Choice
Despite the growing evidence of informational interventions on college and major choices, we know little about how such light-touch interventions affect the gender gap in STEM majors. Linking survey data to administrative records of Chinese college applicants, we conducted a large-scale randomized experiment to examine the STEM gender gap in the major preference beliefs, application behaviors… more →
Understanding Performance in Test Taking: The Role of Question Difficulty Order
Standardized assessments are widely used to determine access to educational resources with important consequences for later economic outcomes in life. However, many design features of the tests themselves may lead to psychological reactions influencing performance. In particular, the level of difficulty of the earlier questions in a test may affect performance in later questions. How should we… more →
Changing Patterns of Growth in Oral Reading Fluency During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Education has faced unprecedented disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic; evidence about the subsequent effect on children is of crucial importance. We use data from an oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment—a rapid assessment taking only a few minutes that measures a fundamental reading skill—to examine COVID’s effects on children’s reading ability during the pandemic in more than 100 U.S.… more →
The Populist-Burkean Dimension in U.S. Public Opinion
Scholars differ as to whether populist beliefs are a discourse or an ideology resembling conservatism or liberalism. Research has shown that a belief in popular sovereignty and a distrust of public officials are core components of populism. Its antithesis is defined as Burke’s claim that officials should exercise their own judgment rather than pander to the public. A national probability… more →
Minority Student and Teaching Assistant Interactions in STEM
Graduate student teaching assistants from underrepresented groups may provide salient role models and enhanced instruction to minority students in STEM fields. We explore minority student-TA interactions in an important course in the sciences and STEM – introductory chemistry labs – at a large public university. The uncommon assignment method of students to TA instructors in these chemistry… more →
The Impact of COVID-19 on Community College Enrollment and Student Success: Evidence from California Administrative Data
Enrollment increased slightly at both the California State University and University of California systems in fall 2020, but the effects of the pandemic on enrollment in the California Community College system are mostly unknown and might differ substantially from the effects on 4-year colleges. This paper provides the first analysis of how the pandemic impacted enrollment patterns and the… more →
The Returns to Public Library Investment
Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 15,000 public libraries in the United States. This funding supports widespread library use: more than 50% of Americans visit public libraries each year. But despite extensive public investment in libraries, surprisingly little research quantifies the effects of public libraries on communities and children. We use… more →
Making College Affordable? The Impacts of Tuition Freezes and Caps
Many state governments impose tuition regulations on universities in pursuit of college affordability. How effective are these regulations? We study how universities' "sticker price'' and institutional financial aid change during and after tuition caps and freezes by leveraging temporal and geographic variation in the United States from 1990 to 2013. We find that listed tuition is lower than… more →
Inequality in Public School Spending Across Space and Time
This paper takes a novel time series perspective on K-12 school spending. About half of school spending is financed by state government aid to local districts. Because state aid is generally income conditioned, with low-income districts receiving more aid, state aid acts as a mechanism for risk sharing between school districts. We show that temporal inequality, due to state and local business… more →
Equal Time for Equal Crime? Racial Bias in School Discipline
Well-documented racial disparities in rates of exclusionary discipline may arise from differences in hard-to-observe student behavior or bias, in which treatment for the same behavior varies by student race or ethnicity. We provide evidence for the presence of bias using statewide administrative data that contain rich details on individual disciplinary infractions. Two complementary empirical… more →
Higher education decisions and macroeconomic conditions at age eighteen
Using individual data from PIAAC and aggregate data on GDP and unemployment for the US, Europe, and Spain, we test how macroeconomic conditions experienced at age eighteen affect the following decisions in post-secondary and tertiary education: i) enrollment ii) dropping-out, iii) type of degree completed, iv) area of specialization, and v) time-to-degree. We also analyze how the effects… more →
Beyond Traditional Academic Degrees: The Labor Market Returns to Occupational Credentials in the United States
Occupational credentials provide an additional—and, at times, alternative—path other than traditional academic degrees for individuals to increase productivity and demonstrate their abilities and qualifications to employers. These credentials take the form of licenses and certifications. Although a critical part of the workforce landscape, the literature on the returns to credentials is… more →
The effects of default choice on student loan borrowing: Experimental evidence from a public research university
We explore the role of defaults and choice architecture on student loan decision-making, experimentally testing the impact pre-populating either decline or accept decisions compared to an active choice, no pre-population, decision. We demonstrate that the default choice presented does influence student loan borrowing decisions. Specifically, compared to active choice, students presented within… more →
Charter Schools and the Segregation of Students by Income
The segregation of students by socioeconomic status has been on the rise in American public education between schools during the past several decades. Recent work has demonstrated that segregation is also increasing within schools at the classroom level. In this paper, we contribute to our understanding of the determinants of this increase in socioeconomic segregation within schools. We assess… more →
Unequal Opportunity Spreaders: Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the U.S.
Mixed evidence on the relationship between school closure and COVID-19 prevalence could reflect focus on large-scale levels of geography, limited ability to address endogeneity, and demographic variation. Using county-level CDC COVID-19 data through June 15, 2020, two matching strategies address potential heterogeneity: nearest geographic neighbor and propensity scores. Within nearest… more →
School Segregation in the Era of Color-blind Jurisprudence and School Choice
The decades-long resistance to federally imposed school desegregation entered a new phase at the turn of the new century, when federal courts stopped pushing racial balance as a remedy for past segregation, adopting in its place a color-blind approach in judging local school districts’ assignment plans. Using data that span 1998 to 2016 from North Carolina, one of the first states to come… more →
The Value of College Athletics in the Labor Market: Results from a Resume Audit Field Experiment
Employers may favor applicants who played college sports if athletics participation contributes to leadership, conscientiousness, discipline, and other traits that are desirable for labor-market productivity. We conduct a resume audit to estimate the causal effect of listing collegiate athletics on employer callbacks and test for subgroup effects by ethnicity, gender, and sport type. We… more →
Determinants of Ethnic Differences in School Modality Choices during the COVID-19 Crisis
A growing body of research and popular reporting shows racial differences in school modality choices during the COVID-19 crisis, with white students more likely to attend school in person. This in-person learning gap raises serious equity concerns. We use unique panel survey data to explore possible explanations. We find that a combination of factors may explain these differences. School… more →
Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes
This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student’s ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third-grade academic rank, conditional on achievement and classroom fixed effects, have higher subsequent test scores, are more… more →
Impacts of COVID-19 on the Child Care Sector: Evidence from North Carolina
COVID-19 has created acute challenges for the child care sector, potentially leading to a shortage of supply and a shrinking sector as the economy recovers. This study provides the first comprehensive, census-level evaluation of the medium-term impacts of COVID-19 on the county child care market in a large and diverse state, North Carolina. We also document the disproportionate impacts of… more →
Intersecting Inequalities: Racial/Ethnic and Socioeconomic Differences in Math Achievement and School Contexts in California
Past research extensively documents inequalities in educational opportunity and achievement by students’ race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status (SES). Less scholarship focuses on how race/ethnicity and SES interact and jointly contribute to educational inequalities. We advance this burgeoning line of scholarship by charting math achievement trajectories and school socioeconomic composition by… more →