EdWorkingPapers
Are Community College Students Increasingly Choosing High-Paying Fields of Study? Evidence from Massachusetts
The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by using multinomial logit analysis to compare trends across 12 cohorts of MACC entrants in the proportion… more →
The Long-Term Effect of North Carolina’s Pre-Kindergarten Program is Larger in School Districts with Lower Rates of Growth in Academic Achievement
Prior research has found that public investments in North Carolina’s pre-kindergarten program—NC Pre-K—generated positive effects on student reading and math achievement through eighth grade (Bai et al., 2020). This study examined whether the effect of NC Pre-K funding exposure is moderated by the educational environments children subsequently experience during elementary and middle school.… more →
The Returns to Education over time and the Effect of COVID-19
This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the returns to education in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey 2011-2022, the analysis reveals that, after a period of decline, returns to education increased significantly because of COVID, particularly for men and those with university education. The returns to university for men increased by 1… more →
Same Idea, Shifting Standards: An Experimental Study of Racial-Ethnic Biases in Ambitious Math Teaching
Teacher expectations and judgments about student capabilities are predictive of student achievement, yet such judgments may be influenced by salient dimensions of student identity and invite biases. Moreover, ambitious math teaching may also invite teacher biases due to the emphasis on student-generated inputs and ideas. In this pre-registered audit experiment, we investigate teacher biases in… more →
What’s the Goal Here? Educator’s Perspectives of Iowa’s Senate File 496 on School Mental Health Systems
Iowa's Senate File 496 requires parent permission to formally survey students about their mental health, bans the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools before 7th grade, mandates schools obtain parental permission to use a nick name, and bans any books that depict or describe sex acts in schools. This exploratory case study explores educators’ (n = 20) perceptions of… more →
Overpoliced? A Descriptive Portrait of School-Based Targeted Police Interventions in New York City
This study provides a descriptive analysis of police intervention as a response to student behavior in New York City public schools. We find that between the 2016/17 and 2021/22 academic years, arrests and juvenile referrals decreased while non-detainment-based and psychiatric police interventions increased. However, Black students, especially those enrolled in schools located in predominantly… more →
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise
Generative AI, particularly Language Models (LMs), has the potential to transform real-world domains with societal impact, particularly where access to experts is limited. For example, in education, training novice educators with expert guidance is important for effectiveness but expensive, creating significant barriers to improving education quality at scale. This challenge disproportionately… more →
Accelerating Opportunity: The Effects of Instructionally Supported Detracking
The pivotal role of Algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate controversial, high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their classroom peers, and how the course is taught. This random-assignment partnership study examines an innovative district-level reform—the Algebra I Initiative—that placed 9th-grade students with prior math… more →
The Reform Logics of Teaching: How Institutionalized Conceptions of Teaching Shape Teacher Professional Identity
Teachers’ professional identities are the foundation of their practice. Previous scholarship has largely overlooked the extent to which the broader institutional environment shapes teachers’ professional identities. In this study, I bridge institutional logics with theory on teacher professional identity to empirically examine the deeply institutionalized, taken-for-granted ways American… more →
Distance to Degrees: How College Proximity Shapes Students’ Enrollment Choices and Attainment Across Race-Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status
Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are sensitive to the distance they must travel to access public colleges and universities, but there are… more →
The Politics of Teachers' Union Endorsements
School board candidates supported by local teachers' unions overwhelmingly win and we examine the causes and consequences of the "teachers' union premium" in these elections. First, we show that union endorsement information increases voter support. Although the magnitude of this effect varies across ideological and partisan subgroups, an endorsement never hurts a candidate's prospects among… more →
Unpacking the Impacts of a Youth Behavioral Health Intervention: Experimental Evidence from Chicago
Racial disparities in violence exposure and criminal justice contact are a subject of growing policy and public concern. We conduct a large-scale, randomized controlled trial of a six-month behavioral health intervention combining intensive mentoring and group therapy designed to reduce criminal justice and violence involvement among Black and Latinx youth in Chicago. Over 24 months, youth… more →
Toward a Comprehensive Model Predicting Credit Loss in Vertical Transfer
A growing body of research has documented extensive credit loss among transfer students. However, the field lacks theoretically driven and empirically supported frameworks that can guide credit loss research and reforms. We develop and then test a comprehensive framework designed to address this gap using novel administrative credit loss data from Texas. Our results demonstrate how the… more →
Credit Loss, Institutional Retention, and Postsecondary Persistence Among Vertical Transfer Students
Although community colleges have served as a gateway to universities for millions of students—disproportionately so for students from populations historically underrepresented in higher education—prior research has demonstrated that the majority of vertical transfer students lose at least some of their pretransfer credits. However, researchers examining how credit loss relates to subsequent… more →
Falling Behind as Peers Age Up: The Effects of Peer Age on Student Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes
Understanding the factors that influence student outcomes is crucial for both parents and schools when designing effective educational strategies. This paper explores the impact of peer age on both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes using a randomized sample of middle school students. By analyzing how exogenous variations in peer age affect students' academic performance, self-expectations… more →
Applying to Lead: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Prospective Principals’ Job Application Strategies in Two Urban Districts
Purpose: Urban school districts often face challenges in filling principal vacancies with effective leaders, especially in high-needs schools. Prospective principals’ engagement with the job application process may contribute to these challenges. The goal of this study is to better understand the job search strategies and behaviors of prospective principals and how their… more →
Does Charter School Autonomy Improve Matching of Teacher Attributes with Student Needs?
We examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education, and English learner students and the presence of Black, Hispanic, Special Education, and ESL… more →
Local Labor Market Alignment of Short-Term Certificate Programs
Short-term certificate (STC) programs at community colleges represent a longstanding policy priority to align accelerated postsecondary credentials with job opportunities in local labor markets. Despite large investments in developing STCs, little evidence exists about where and when STCs are opened and whether community colleges open new programs of study in coordination with labor market… more →
Human Capital at Home: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in the Philippines
Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human capital accumulation among their children between ages 3 and 5, with a focus on math and phonics skills.… more →
Understanding the Association Between Educational Experiences and Economic and Social Mobility: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, we examine differences in educational experiences and in social and economic mobility for youths experiencing poverty relative to their more affluent peers. We also explore the extent to which different educational experiences are associated with greater mobility for students experiencing poverty. We find that youths from poverty… more →
How and Why Racial Isolation Affects Education Costs & the Provision of Equal Educational Opportunity
This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function modeling, on several specific states and in an earlier version of our national education cost model.… more →
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 multifaceted problem. Nearly all applications addressed four problems: (1) public health, (2) academics and… more →
School and Crime
Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding school start dates and an excess crime calculation to show that the school… more →
Classifying Courses at Scale: a Text as Data Approach to Characterizing Student Course-Taking Trends with Administrative Transcripts
Students’ postsecondary course-taking is of interest to researchers, yet has been difficult to study at large scale because administrative transcript data are rarely standardized across institutions or state systems. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing to standardize college transcripts at scale. We demonstrate the approach’s utility by showing how the disciplinary… more →
Career Sequences and Unequal Sorting of Subject Area Teachers along the Path to the Principalship
The path to becoming a school principal is characterized by a variety of trajectories that reflect the diverse experiences and backgrounds of aspiring leaders. While ideally the road to the principalship would result in a proportional and representative body of principals, research has shown this is rarely the case. To gain a better understanding of where sorting mechanisms may occur along the… more →
Using Gaussian Process Regression in Two-Dimensional Regression Discontinuity Designs
Sometimes a treatment, such as receiving a high school diploma, is assigned to students if their scores on two inputs (e.g., math and English test scores) are above established cutoffs. This forms a multidimensional regression discontinuity design (RDD) to analyze the effect of the educational treatment where there are two running variables instead of one. Present methods for estimating such… more →
Foreign Student Share and Supply of STEM-Designated Economics Programs
Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. institutions offering STEM-eligible degree programs in economics. This paper documents the trends in STEM-degree offerings across degree levels and examines the share of foreign students and other characteristics of institutions that offer STEM-eligible programs. Using a difference-in-differences design, this… more →
Do the Effects Persist? An Examination of Long-term Effects After Students Leave Turnaround Schools
Whole-school reforms have received widespread attention, but a critical limitation of the current literature is the lack of evidence around whether these extensive and costly interventions improve students’ long-term outcomes after they leave reform schools. Leveraging Tennessee’s statewide turnaround reforms, we use difference-in-differences models to estimate the effect of attending a… 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 redshirting declined by 40% in fall 2020, then increased by 44% (relative to pre-pandemic baseline) in fall… more →
Teaching Teachers to Use Computer Assisted Learning Effectively: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence
Mastery learning – the process by which students must demonstrate proficiency with a single topic before moving on – is well recognized as one of the best ways to learn, yet many teachers struggle or remain unsure about how to implement it into a classroom setting. This study leverages two field experiments to test the efficacy of a program designed to encourage greater mastery learning… more →
Disability as Discipline? Effects of the New York City Suspension Ban on Identification of Students with Disabilities
Across the United States, suspension bans have become a popular policy response to address excessive and inequitable use of suspension in schools. However, there is little research that examines what strategies school staff employ when suspension is no longer permitted. I examine the effect of New York City’s suspension ban on the use of a potential unintended substitute for suspension: special… more →
Diversity Trends Among Faculty in STEM and non-STEM Fields at Selective Public Universities in the U.S. from 2016 to 2023
During the 2015-16 academic year, racial protests swept across college campuses in the U.S. These protests were followed by large university investments in initiatives to promote diversity, which combined with existing diversity dynamics, have helped to shape recent faculty diversity trends. We document diversity trends among faculty in STEM and non-STEM fields since the protests in 2015-16.… more →
Computational Language Analysis Reveals that Process-Oriented Thinking About Belonging Aids the College Transition
Inequality in college has both structural and psychological causes; these include the presence of self-defeating beliefs about the potential for growth and belonging. Such beliefs can be addressed through large-scale interventions in the college transition (Walton & Cohen, 2011; Walton et al., 2023) but are hard to measure. In our pre-registered study, we provide the strongest evidence to… more →
Less is More: The Causal Effect of Four-Day School Weeks on Employee Turnover
The use of four-day school weeks (4dsw) in the United States has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Previous work examines the impact of 4dsw on student outcomes, but little research to date examines the effect on school employees even though schools in some locales have adopted 4dsw to recruit and retain staff. This paper examines the effect of 4dsw adoption in Oregon, a state with… more →
The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Teacher Strikes
The U.S. has witnessed a resurgence of labor activism, with teachers at the forefront. We examine how teacher strikes affect compensation, working conditions, and productivity with an original dataset of 772 teacher strikes generating 48 million student days idle between 2007 and 2023. Using an event study framework, we find that, on average, strikes increase compensation by 8% and lower pupil… more →
Suspended from Work and School? Impacts of Layoff Events and Unemployment Insurance on Student Disciplinary Incidence
We examine the impact of local labor market shocks and state unemployment insurance (UI) policies on student discipline in U.S. public schools. Analyzing school-level discipline data and firm-level layoffs in 23 states, we find that layoffs have little effect on discipline rates on average. However, effects differ across the UI benefit distribution. At the lowest benefit level ($265/week), a mass… more →
Untapped Potential? Understanding the Paraeducator-to-Teacher Pipeline and its Potential for Diversifying the Teacher Workforce
Paraeducators are among the largest categories of public education employees and are increasingly seen as a pool of potential teachers. However, little is known about paraeducator-to-teacher transitions. Using statewide administrative data, we show that while paraeducators may be more racially/ethnically diverse than the teacher workforce, Black and Hispanic paraeducators are less likely than… more →
The Scaling Dynamics and Causal Effects of a District-Operated Tutoring Program
Public school systems across the U.S. have made major investments in tutoring to support students’ academic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluate a large urban district’s efforts to design, implement, and scale a district-operated, standards-based tutoring program across three years. We draw on extensive interviews and survey data to document the dynamic changes in the… more →
The Effects of a Statewide Ban on School Suspensions
This research analyzes the implementation of a school suspension ban in Maryland to investigate whether a top-down state-initiated ban on suspensions in early primary grades can influence school behavior regarding school discipline. Beginning in the fall of 2017, the State of Maryland banned the use of out-of-school suspensions for grades PK-2, unless a student posed an “imminent threat” to… more →
A Quantitative Study of Mathematical Language in Upper Elementary Classrooms
This study provides the first large-scale quantitative exploration of mathematical language use in upper elementary U.S. classrooms. Our approach employs natural language processing techniques to describe variation in teachers’ and students’ use of mathematical language in 1,657 fourth and fifth grade lessons in 317 classrooms in four districts over three years. Students’ exposure to… more →
Charter School Expansion, Catholic School Enrollment, & the Equity Implications of School Choice
Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect of the opening of charter schools in proximity… more →
Scaffolding Middle-School Mathematics Curricula With Large Language Models
Despite well-designed curriculum materials, teachers often face challenges in their implementation due to diverse classroom needs. This paper investigates whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can support middle-school math teachers by helping create high-quality curriculum scaffolds, which we define as the adaptations and supplements teachers employ to ensure all students can access and engage… more →
Early Life Health Conditions and Racial Gaps in Education
Racial disparities in infant health conditions have persisted for decades. However, there is surprisingly limited evidence regarding the long-term consequences of these disparities. Using novel linked administrative data from Texas and the shift to Medicaid Managed Care (MMC), I show that MMC-driven declines in infant health worsened cognitive and noncognitive outcomes for Black children,… more →
Fadeout and Persistence of Intervention Impacts on Social-Emotional and Cognitive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analytic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
Researchers and policymakers aspire for educational interventions to change children’s long-run developmental trajectories. However, intervention impacts on cognitive and achievement measures commonly fade over time. Less is known, although much is theorized, about socialemotional skill persistence. The current meta-analysis investigated whether intervention impacts on social-emotional skills… more →
The Racial Gap in Friendships Among High-Achieving Students
High-achieving minority students have fewer friends than their majority counterparts. Exploring patterns of friendship formation in the Add Health data, we find strong racial homophily in friendship formations as well as strong achievement homophily within race. However, we find that achievement matters less in cross-racial friendships. As a result, high-achieving Black students lose Black… more →
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking Mathematics and Science Professional Development Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Despite evidence that teacher professional development interventions in mathematics and science can increase student achievement, our understanding of the mechanisms by which this occurs – particularly how these interventions affect teachers themselves, and whether teacher-level changes predict student learning – remains limited. The current meta-analysis synthesizes 46 experimental studies of… more →
STEM teacher workforce in high-need schools resilient despite shrinking supply and increasing demand
The teacher workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) has been a perpetual weak spot in public schools’ teaching rosters. Prior reports show the pipeline of new STEM teachers into the profession is weak while demand for instruction in STEM fields continues to grow. This paper seeks to document whether and how the STEM teacher workforce in high-need settings has been… more →
The Lasting Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on K-12 Schooling: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Teacher Survey
This paper reports findings from a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers in May 2023 that examines the potential long-term impacts of COVID-19 on public schooling. The findings suggest fundamental ways in which school operations, instructional practice and parent-teacher interaction have changed since the pandemic. Some changes seem promising; others suggest caution. While… more →
Structured Reporting Guidelines for Classroom Intervention Research
Inconsistent reporting of critical facets of classroom interventions and their related impact evaluations hinders the field’s ability to describe and synthesize the existing evidence base. In this essay, we present a set of reporting guidelines intended to steer authors of classroom intervention studies toward providing more systematic reporting of key intervention features and setting-level… more →
Did COVID-19 Shift the “Grammar of Schooling”?
The immediate impacts of COVID-19 on K12 schooling are well known. Over nearly 18 months, students’ academic performance and mental health deteriorated dramatically. This study aims to identify if and how the pandemic led to longer-term changes in core aspects of schooling. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 31 teachers and administrators across 12 districts in two states, we find that… more →