EdWorkingPapers
The Long-Run Educational Benefits of High-Achieving Classrooms
Despite the prevalence of school tracking, evidence on whether it improves student success is mixed. This paper studies how tracking within high school impacts high-achieving students’ short- and longer-term academic outcomes. Our setting is a large and selective Chinese high school, where first-year students are separated into high-achieving and regular classrooms based on their performance on a… more →
Is a Name Change a Game Change? The Impact of College-to-University Conversions
In the competitive U.S. higher education market, institutions differentiate themselves to attract both students and tuition dollars. One understudied example of this differentiation is the increasing trend of "colleges" becoming "universities" by changing their names. Leveraging variation in the timing of such conversions in an event study framework, I show that becoming a university increases… more →
Local Supply, Temporal Dynamics, and Unrealized Potential in Teacher Hiring
We explore the dynamics of competitive search in the K-12 public education sector. Using data from Boston Public Schools, we document how teacher labor supply varies substantially by position types, schools, and the timing of job postings. We find that early-posted positions are more likely to be filled and end up securing new hires that are better-qualified, more-effective, and more likely to… more →
The Effects of Growth Mindset on College Persistence and Completion
We study the long-term effects of a psychological intervention on longitudinal academic outcomes and degree completion of college students. All freshmen at a large public university were randomized to an online growth mindset, belonging, or control group. We tracked students’ academic outcomes including GPA, number of credits attempted and earned, major choices, and degree completion. We found no… more →
Can learning be measured by phone? Evidence from Kenya
School closures induced by COVID-19 placed heightened emphasis on alternative ways to measure student learning besides in-person exams. We leverage the administration of phone-based assessments (PBAs) measuring numeracy and literacy for primary school children in Kenya, along with in-person standardized tests administered to the same students prior to school shutdowns, to assess the validity of… more →
Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree
Recent state policy efforts have focused on increasing attainment among adults with some college but no degree (SCND). Yet little is actually known about the SCND population. Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), we provide the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population, and how these compare to VCCS graduates. We… more →
The Academic Origins of Economics Faculty
We use roster data of 96 top U.S. economics departments to document the academic origins of their tenure-track faculty. Academic origins may have implications for how undergraduate (B.A.) and doctoral (Ph.D.) students are trained and placed, as well as the type of research produced. We find that faculty educated at top-ranked Ph.D. universities are overrepresented; e.g., over half of our sample… more →
Public Investments and Class Gaps in Parents’ Developmental Expenditures
Families and governments are the primary sources of investment in children, proving access to basic resources and other developmental opportunities. Recent research identifies significant class gaps in parental investments that contribute to high levels of inequality by family income and education and, potentially, to inequality in children’s development. State-level public… more →
Social Spending and Educational Gaps in Infant Health in the United States, 1998-2017
Recent expansions of child tax, food assistance and health insurance programs have made American families’ need for a robust social safety net highly evident, while researchers and policymakers continue to debate the best way to support families via the welfare state. How much do children – and which children – benefit from social spending? Using the State-by-State Spending on Kids Dataset,… more →
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking STEM Classroom Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Despite growing evidence that classroom interventions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) can increase student achievement, there is little evidence regarding how these interventions affect teachers themselves and whether these changes predict student learning. We present results from a meta-analysis of 37 experimental studies of preK-12 STEM professional learning and… more →
Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials
With rapid technological transformations to the labor market, many working adults return to college after graduation to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” – earning two or more community college… more →
From Referrals to Suspensions: New Evidence on Racial Disparities in Exclusionary Discipline
We use novel data on disciplinary referrals, including those that do not lead to suspensions, to better understand the origins of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline. We find significant differences between Black and white students in both referral rates and the rate at which referrals convert to suspensions. An infraction fixed-effects research design that compares the disciplinary… more →
Effects of Four-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School
Four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching over 650 public school districts in 24 states as of 2019, but little is known about their implementation and there is no consensus on their effects on students. This study uses district level panel data from Oklahoma and a difference-in-differences research design to provide estimates of the causal effect… more →
Pension Reform and Labor Supply
As unfunded pension liabilities grow, governments experiment with ways to curb costs. We examine the effect of a representative cost-cutting reform on the retention and productivity of workers. The reform reduced pension annuities and increased penalties for early retirement, projected to save 8 percent of revenues. We leverage administrative records and a discontinuity in the reform to estimate… more →
Students' Grade Satisfaction Influences Evaluations of Teaching: Evidence from Individual-level Data and an Experimental Intervention
Student surveys are widely used to evaluate university teaching and increasingly adopted at the K-12 level, although there remains considerable debate about what they measure. Much disagreement focuses on the well-documented correlation between student grades and their evaluations of instructors. Using individual-level data from 19,000 evaluations of 700 course sections at a flagship public… more →
Tightening the Leaky Pipeline(s): The Role of Beliefs About Ability in STEM Major Choice
To study beliefs about ability and STEM major choice, I conduct a field experiment where I provide students with information that they are above average in their top fields of study. I find that STEM students are more likely to switch out of their major and that non-STEM students fail to switch into STEM at the same rates as other fields. I also find that learning you are above average in your… more →
Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching in the Earliest Grades: Benefits for Executive Function Skills
The benefits of student-teacher ethnoracial matching on student outcomes—ranging from academic achievement to postsecondary attainment—are well documented. Yet, we know far less about the role of student-teacher ethnoracial matching in the earliest grades school and on less about effects on non-academic outcomes. The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of student-teacher… more →
Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education
We study whether compulsory religious education in schools affects students' religiosity as adults. We exploit the staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states in models with state and cohort fixed effects. Using three different datasets, we find that abolishing compulsory religious education significantly reduced religiosity of affected students in adulthood. It… more →
Typologizing Teacher Practice: How Teachers Integrate Culturally Responsive, Ambitious, and Traditional Teaching Approaches
As states and districts expand their goals for equitable mathematics instruction to focus on cultural responsiveness and rigor, it is critical to understand how teachers integrate multiple teaching approaches. Drawing on survey data from a larger study of professional learning, we use mixture modeling to identify seven unique ways that middle school mathematics teachers integrate ambitious,… more →
Effective teacher professional development: new theory and a meta-analytic test
Multiple meta-analyses have now documented small positive effects of teacher professional development (PD) on pupil test scores. However, the field lacks any validated explanatory account of what differentiates more from less effective in-service training. As a result, researchers have little in the way of advice for those tasked with designing or commissioning better PD. We set out to remedy… more →
Student Misconduct and Learning Outcomes Evidence from Pennsylvania’s K-12 Building Records: 1999-2018
This paper compares and contrasts two required building level school violence measures under NCLB, arrests and incidents of well-defined school misconduct acts, across 20 years of Pennsylvania’s approximately 3,000 public school buildings. Generally, both arrests for school violence and incidents of school violence are rare events. Over 20 years, the third quartile arrest rate was zero and, the… more →
Do Long Bus Rides Drive Down Academic Outcomes?
School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York City to explore the morning commutes of over 120,… more →
Is kindergarten ability group placement biased? New data, new methods, new answers
Half of kindergarten teachers split children into higher and lower ability groups for reading or math. In national data, we predicted kindergarten ability group placement using linear and ordinal logistic regression with classroom fixed effects. In fall, test scores were the best predictors of group placement, but there was bias favoring girls, high-SES (socioeconomic status) children, and Asian… more →
Whose Turn Now? The Enactment & Expansion of Private School Choice Programs across the US
Private school choice policies have been enacted and expanded across the United States since the 1990s. By January 2021, 30 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico hosted 67 distinct private school choice policies. Why have some states adopted and expanded this education reform while others have demurred? Which states are more likely to adopt specific types of private school choice… more →
College Major Restrictions and Student Stratification
Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that prohibit students with poor introductory grades from… more →
A Half Century of Progress in U. S. Student Achievement: Agency and Flynn Effects; Ethnic and SES Differences
Principals (policymakers) disagree as to whether U. S. student performance has changed over the past half century. To inform conversations, agents administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math (m) and reading (rd) in 160 survey waves to national probability samples of cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. Estimated change in standard deviations (sd) per decade varies by agent (m… more →
Federal Stimulus Aid and School Finance: Lessons from the Great Recession
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 to inform future federal intervention in school finance during periods of economic downturn. We find… more →
Do Refugee Students Affect the Academic Achievement of Peers? Evidence from a Large Urban School District
Policy debate on refugee resettlement focuses on perceived adverse effects on local communities, with sparse credible evidence to ascertain its impact. This paper examines whether attending school with refugees affects the academic outcomes of non-refugee students. Leveraging variation in the share of refugees within schools and across grades, I find that increasing the share of grade-level… more →
Optimal Allocation of Seats in the Presence of Peer Effects: Evidence from a Job Training Program
We consider the case in which the number of seats in a program is limited, such as a job training program or a supplemental tutoring program, and explore the implications that peer effects have for which individuals should be assigned to the limited seats. In the frequently-studied case in which all applicants are assigned to a group, the average outcome is not changed by shuffling the group… more →
Bridging human and machine scoring in experimental assessments of writing: tools, tips, and lessons learned from a field trial in education
In a randomized trial that collects text as an outcome, traditional approaches for assessing treatment impact require that each document first be manually coded for constructs of interest by human raters. An impact analysis can then be conducted to compare treatment and control groups, using the hand-coded scores as a measured outcome. This process is both time and labor-intensive, which creates… more →
Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes
High school Career and Technical Education (CTE) has received an increase in attention from both policymakers and researchers in recent years. This study fills a needed gap in the growing research base by examining heterogeneity within the wide range of programs falling under the broader CTE umbrella, and highlights the need for greater nuance in research and policy conversations that often… more →
The ‘Good’ Schools: Academic Performance Data, School Choice, and Segregation
We examine the effects of disseminating academic performance data—either status, growth, or both—on parents’ school choices and their implications for racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. We conduct an online survey experiment featuring a nationally representative sample of parents and caretakers of children age 0-12. Participants choose between three randomly sampled elementary schools… more →
Paraeducators: Growth, Diversity and a Dearth of Professional Supports
Paraeducators perform multiple roles in U.S. classrooms, including among others preparing classroom activities, working with students individually and in small groups, supporting individualized programming for students with disabilities, managing classroom behavior, and engaging with parents and communities. Yet, little research provides insights into this key group of educators. This study… more →
Teachers’ Knowledge about and Preparedness for Retirement: Results from a Nationally Representative Teacher Survey
Adequately saving for retirement requires both planning and knowledge about available retirement savings options. Teachers participate in a complex set of different plan designs and benefit tiers, and many do not participate in Social Security. While teachers represent a large part of the public workforce, relatively little is known regarding their knowledge about and preparation for retirement.… more →
Finishing the Last Lap: Experimental Evidence on Strategies to Increase College Completion for Students At Risk of Late Withdrawal
Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale experimental intervention conducted across five states and 20… more →
The Lingering Legacy of Redlining on School Funding, Diversity, and Performance
Between 1935-1940 the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) assigned A (minimal risk) to D (hazardous) grades to neighborhoods that reflected their lending risk from previously issued loans and visualized these grades on color-coded maps, which arguably influenced banks and other mortgage lenders to provide or deny home loans within residential neighborhoods. In this study, we leverage a spatial… more →
Preferences, Selection, and the Structure of Teacher Pay
Human-capital formation in school depends largely on the selection and retention of teachers. I conduct a discrete-choice experiment with responses linked to administrative teacher and student records to examine teacher preferences for compensation structure and working conditions. I calculate willingness-to-pay for a rich set of work attributes. High-performing teachers have similar preferences… more →
Can Personnel Policy Improve Teacher Quality? The Role of Evaluation and the Impact of Exiting Low-Performing Teachers
Personnel evaluation systems have historically failed to identify and remediate low-performing teachers. In 2012, Chicago Public Schools implemented an evaluation system that incorporated remediation and dismissal plans for low-rated teachers. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that the evaluation reform increased the exit of low-rated tenured teachers by 50 percent. The teacher labor… more →
A Simple Nudge Increases Socioeconomic Diversity in Undergraduate Economics
We assess whether a light-touch intervention can increase socioeconomic and racial diversity in undergraduate Economics. We randomly assigned over 2,200 students a message with basic information about the Economics major; the basic message combined with an emphasis on the rewarding careers or financial returns associated with the major; or no message. Messages increased the proportion of first… more →
Does Principal Professional Development Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership Induction Program
Principals shape the academic setting of schools. Yet, there is limited evidence on whether principal professional development improves schooling outcomes. Beginning in 2008-09, Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program required that newly hired principals complete targeted in-service professional development tied to newly established state leadership standards within five years… more →
Elevating Education in Politics: How Teacher Strikes Shape Congressional Election Campaigns
Teacher strikes have gained national attention with the “#RedforEd” movement. Such strikes are polarizing events that could serve to elevate education as a political priority or cast education politics in a negative light. We investigate this empirically by collecting original panel data on U.S. teacher strikes, which we link to congressional election campaign advertisements. Election ads provide… more →
The Bottom Line on College Advising: Large Increases in Degree Attainment
We combine a large multi-site randomized control trial with administrative and survey data to demonstrate that intensive advising during high school and college leads to large increases in bachelor's degree attainment. Novel causal forest methods suggest that these increases are driven primarily by improvements in the quality of initial enrollment. Program effects are consistent across sites,… more →
Gender Peer Effects in Post-Secondary Vocational Education
This paper presents evidence that women and men benefit from having a higher percentage of female peers in post-secondary vocational STEM programs. I use idiosyncratic variation in gender composition across cohorts within majors within branches (campuses) for identification. Having a higher percentage of female peers positively affects students in STEM majors, decreasing women's dropout rates and… more →
The Role of State Education Regulation: Evidence from the Texas Districts of Innovation Statute
Traditional public schools in the United States must comply with a variety of regulations on educational inputs like teacher certification, maximum class sizes, and restrictions on staff contracts. Absent regulations, policymakers fear that troubled districts would make inappropriate decisions that would harm students. However, it is also possible that strict regulations hinder schools from… more →
The Legacy of Covid-19 in Education
If school closures and social-distancing experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic impeded children’s skill development, they may leave a lasting legacy in human capital. To understand the pandemic’s effects on school children, this paper combines a review of the emerging international literature with new evidence from German longitudinal time-use surveys. Based on the conceptual framework of an… more →
The Big Problem with Little Interruptions to Classroom Learning
Narrative accounts of classroom instruction suggest that external interruptions, such as intercom announcements and visits from staff, are a regular occurrence in U.S. public schools. We study the frequency, nature, and duration of external interruptions in the Providence Public School District (PPSD) using original data from a district-wide survey and classroom observations. We estimate that a… more →
Using a Factorial Design to Maximize the Effectiveness of a Parental Text Messaging Intervention
Parental text messaging interventions are growing in popularity to encourage at-home reading, school-attendance, and other educational behaviors. These interventions, which often combine multiple components, frequently demonstrate varying amounts of effectiveness, and researchers often cannot determine how individual components work alone or in combination with one another. Using a 2x2x3… more →
College Advising at a National Scale: Experimental Evidence from the CollegePoint initiative
In-person college advising programs generate large improvements in college persistence and success for low-income students but face numerous barriers to scale. Remote advising models offer a promising strategy to address informational and assistance barriers facing the substantial majority of low-income students who do not have access to community-based advising, yet the existing evidence base on… more →
Spread Too Thin: The Effects of Teacher Specialization on Student Achievement
Although the majority of elementary school teachers are in self-contained classrooms and teach all major subjects, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher specialization on teacher and school effectiveness in elementary schools. We find that teacher specialization… more →
The Effects of Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching on Exclusionary Discipline for Asian American, Black, and Latinx Students: Evidence From New York City
Although Black and Latinx students disproportionately face exclusionary school discipline, prior research finds that the likelihood of suspension for Black students decreases when they are taught by greater proportions of Black teachers. Little prior work, however, has examined whether these effects generalize to large, diverse, urban school districts or to Asian American or Latinx students and… more →