EdWorkingPapers

We study the effect of educational attainment on family formation using regression discontinuity designs generated by centralized admissions processes to both secondary and tertiary education in Finland. Admission to further education at either margin does not increase the likelihood that men form families. In contrast, women admitted to further education are more likely to both live with a partner and have children. We then pre-register and test two hypotheses which could explain each set of results using survey data. These suggest that the positive association between men's education and family formation observed in the data is driven by selection. For women, our estimates are consistent with the idea that, as increased returns to social skills shift the burden of child development from schools to parents and particularly mothers, education can make women more attractive as potential partners.

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Dual enrollment (DE) is one of the fastest growing programs that support the high school-to-college transition. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence about its impact on either students’ college application choices or admission outcomes. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach on data from two cohorts of ninth-grade students in one anonymous state, we found that taking DE credits increased the likelihood of applying to highly selective in-state four-year institutions. Attempting DE credits also increased the probability of gaining admission to a highly selective in-state four-year college. Heterogeneous analysis further indicates that the gains were extended across Black, Latinx, and white student populations.

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Specialized high schools are an increasingly popular way to prepare young adults for postsecondary experiences and expand school choice. While much literature ex- amines charter school spillover effects and the effects of specialized schools on the students who attend them, little is known about the spillover effects of specialized high schools on traditional public schools (TPS). Using an event study design, we show that one type of specialized high school, North Carolina’s Cooperative Innovative High Schools, initially attracted students who were higher achieving and more likely to be white than TPS students, but these specialized schools became more representative of the district population over time. On average, the opening of specialized schools had a mix of null and positive spillover effects on TPS student achievement. While there is some evidence of negative spillovers from the first schools that opened, the effects become more positive over time.

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Targeted school funding is a potentially valuable policy lever to increase educational equality by race, ethnicity, and income, but it remains unclear how to target funds most effectively. We use a regression discontinuity approach to compare districts that narrowly passed or failed a school funding election. We use close tax elections in 9 states to identify effects of operating funds and close bond elections in 8 states to identify effects of capital funds. Results indicate positive achievement returns to spending, especially for math achievement and for operating funds. We find similar returns to spending by race, ethnicity, and income (not statistically different), but we find significantly larger returns for students in low-resource districts than in high-resource districts, including larger returns for Black, Latinx, and low-income students. Mediation analyses suggest spending on teacher salaries and counselors may be particularly effective mechanisms to increase achievement among Black and low-income students.

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The United States is facing growing teacher shortages that may disproportionately affecting schools serving high proportions of students of color, low-income students, and those in rural or urban areas. Special education teachers (SETs) are particularly in demand. Each year, nearly half of all vacancies are filled with teachers switching from one school to another, yet little research has addressed the nuances of within-career sorting, especially by subject. Utilizing longitudinal data covering 27 years and over 1.2 million teachers in Texas, this study examines SET switching patterns relative to core subject teachers, utilizing discrete time hazard modeling, fixed-effect regressions, and geographic information system mapping. Results show SETs switch schools at much higher rates, associated with experience, salary, and student demographics, yet generally transfer shorter distances than their peers. These findings highlight differential subject-specific labor market dynamics, suggesting targeted recruitment and retention strategies to address widespread shortages.

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This study uses a concurrent embedded mixed-methods design to assess the impact of additional funding on student outcomes in a large, urban school district in the Southeastern United States. The district implemented student-based budgeting (SBB), which allocates dollars to schools based on student characteristics using a weighted student funding (WSF) formula and provides flexibility to principals to allocate those dollars under site-based budgeting. Using simulated instruments in a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate the impact of additional funding on student outcomes provided by WSF. Student test scores in math and ELA increased by 0.14 and 0.12 standard deviations, respectively. Our qualitative analysis suggests that the flexibility given to principals was a key mechanism that improved student outcomes.

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In the context of an ongoing national conversation about teacher shortages, we build on prior literature on the efficacy of teacher certification pathways by comparing entry and exit patterns based on age at the time of certification. All trainees who complete a state certification process have invested substantial time and resources into entering teaching. Competing employment opportunities and expectations might vary with age. We use both linear regression and discrete-time hazard models to examine employment and subsequent exit of newly certified teacher trainees in Michigan from 2011 to 2023. We find that while mid-career entrants in their 30s and 40s compose a small share of new certificates, they are more likely to enter a teaching position and no more likely to subsequently exit than counterparts who were certified in their early 20s. Mid-career pathways also contribute to teacher diversity by attracting more Black and male teachers who enter and persist.

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This study uses administrative data from Oregon to estimate the extent to which base salary increases reduce teacher turnover and to investigate whether these effects are heterogeneous by teacher characteristics. Using multiple sets of fixed effects to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in salaries across experience bands within a district, we find that increases in salary are associated with decreases in teacher turnover. In our fully specified model, we estimate that a 1 percent increase in current and future base salary is associated with a 0.15 percentage point decline in turnover. This relationship appears to attenuate for mid-career teachers. While increasing salary reduces turnover among BA and MA degree teachers, these effects are not statistically different from each other. We also find that teachers in special education positions are more responsive to salary increases than those only assigned general education classes. Together, our results indicate the varied impact salaries may have in ameliorating teacher staffing challenges across different teacher characteristics.

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Currently 15 percent of U.S. students receive special education services, a widespread intensive intervention with variable effects on students. Spurred by changes in federal policy, many states and districts have begun adopting the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach to identifying students to receive special education services. RTI seeks to provide a system for targeting interventions to children facing early academic challenges and identifying children with specific learning disabilities (SLD). This paper uses a difference-in-differences design to examine the effects of RTI adoption across Oregon on elementary students’ disability identification and state-standardized achievement test scores. RTI adoption reduced special education identification by 1.4 percentage points (11%) and SLD identification by 0.5 percentage points (15%). RTI also caused moderately large reading test score gains for Black students (0.15 SD) and did not reduce other students’ achievement. These findings suggest RTI is a promising approach to supporting struggling students.

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In theory, monitoring can improve employee motivation and effort, particularly in settings lacking measurable outputs, but research assessing monitoring as a motivator is limited to laboratory settings. To address this gap, I leverage exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher monitoring, in the form of unannounced in-class observations as part of D.C. Public Schools’ IMPACT program. As monitoring intensifies, teachers use more individualized teaching and emphasize higher-level learning. When teachers are unmonitored, their students have lower test scores and increased suspensions. This novel evidence validates monitoring as a potential tool for enhancing teacher pedagogy and employee performance more broadly.

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This paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Despite conventional wisdom that most graduate students complete their programs, only 58 percent of who started their program in 2004 graduated within 6 years. Between the 2004 and 2013 entering cohorts, graduate student completion rates grew by 10 percentage points. Graduation rates vary widely by field of study--ranging from an average of 81 percent for law programs to 53 percent for education programs. We also find large differences in graduation rates across institutions. On average, 72 percent of students who entered programs in flagship public universities graduated in 6 years compared to only 57 percent of those who entered programs in non-research intensive (non-R1) institutions. Graduate students who do not complete may face negative consequences due to lower average earnings and substantial levels of student debt.

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A digital information explosion has transformed cities’ residential and educational markets in ways that are still being uncovered. Although urban stratification scholars have increasingly scrutinized whether emerging digital platforms disrupt or reproduce longstanding segregation patterns, direct links between one theoretically important form of digital information– school quality data– and neighborhood and school segregation are rarely drawn. To clarify these dynamics, we leverage an exogenous digital information shock, in which the Los Angeles Times’ website revealed measures of a particularly important school quality proxy– schools’ value-added effectiveness– for nearly all elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Results suggest that although the information shock had no detectable effects on residential sorting or neighborhood racial segregation, it did exert modest effects on school sorting—particularly for Latino and Asian students— albeit not in ways that materially diminished school racial segregation because the racial compositions of high- and low value-added schools were broadly similar both before and after the information shock. We conclude that the urban stratification implications of digital information may be more nuanced than often appreciated, with effects shaped by racial heterogeneity in both constraints and preferences vis-à-vis specific types of information and operating through mechanisms beyond residential segregation.

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Recent policies have expanded the availability of career-focused advising in high schools, including for students pursuing career and technical education (CTE) courses of study who might not have been adequately served by traditional college-focused advising. However, there is limited research on the effects of these policies. This study examines the implementation and impacts of career-focused advising in the context of North Carolina’s career coaching program, which places community college staff on select high school campuses to provide guidance around career pathways and high school coursetaking that can prepare students for those pathways. Using descriptive analysis and interviews, we found that the program connected students with information about career opportunities as well as about the state’s dual enrollment program, which can help students to get a jumpstart on earning a credential while still in high school. We used two quasiexperimental methods to analyze the impacts of the program. Our school-level event study analysis found that a school receiving a career coach increased the rate of participation in the dual enrollment program, on average, and may result in an increase in students intending to directly enter the workforce after high school and a decrease in four-year college enrollment. Our student-level propensity score-weighting analysis found that students who met with the career coaches took slightly more CTE dual enrollment courses in high school and were more likely to enroll at two-year colleges after high school than similar students who did not meet with a coach.

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Limited scholarship examines districtwide turnaround reforms beyond the first few years of implementation or efforts to replicate successes in new contexts. We study Massachusetts, home to a state takeover of the Lawrence school district that led to academic gains in early reform years, and where state leaders attempted to replicate this success in three additional communities. We use statewide student-level administrative data (2006-07 to 2018- 19) and event study methods to estimate medium-term impacts on student outcomes across four districts. We find the initial improvements were largely sustained in Lawrence. We observe evidence of successful replication in Springfield but not Holyoke or Southbridge. The two turnarounds with positive outcomes both struck a unique balance between state and local input into decision-making.

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The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments could reduce child deaths. We use close school district tax elections and negative binomial regression models to estimate effects of a quasi-random increase in school spending on county child mortality. We find consistent evidence that increased school spending from passing a tax election reduces child mortality. Districts that narrowly passed a proposed tax increase spent an additional $243 per pupil, mostly on instruction and salaries, and had 4% lower child mortality after spending increased (6-10 years after the election). This increased spending also reduced child deaths of despair (due to drugs, alcohol, or suicide) by 5% and child deaths due to accidents or motor vehicle accidents by 7%. Estimates predicting potential mechanisms suggest that lower child mortality could partly reflect increases in the number of teachers and counselors, higher teacher salaries, and improved student engagement.

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