EdWorkingPapers
"Send Them Home?" Rethinking What Public Education Owes to Flourishing Children
This essay asks what justice requires for children who are already thriving in school and argues that the dominant frameworks in educational philosophy do not answer the question. Priority, equality of opportunity, adequacy, and capabilities treat public education chiefly as redistribution to the disadvantaged and therefore offer no affirmative reason to continue educating students once… more →
Toward More Equitable Learning Environments: Insights from Digital Trace Data on Inclusive Instructional Design Features
Seminal teaching and learning theories converge on the critical role of instructional design in promoting equity and inclusivity in higher education. However, large-scale evidence remains limited as to which specific design features promote more equitable outcomes across diverse student populations in semester-long college courses. This study proposes a comprehensive and scalable framework to… more →
Financial Aid For Future Educators: Assessing A Federal Grant's Impact On Students' Postsecondary Decisions
Created in 2007, the federal TEACH grant program is a large federal financial aid program that seeks to attract postsecondary students to the teaching profession by providing financial assistance to help pay for a teaching degree. This paper describes the uptake and usage of the federal TEACH grant program across a large four-year public university system. Initial findings suggest that there is… more →
Education and the Gender Gap in U.S. Presidential Elections
Women in the United States have outpaced men in both voter participation and educational attainment in recent decades. Since education is closely tied to political participation, we consider these trends in tandem and assess how much of the gender gap in voting is attributable to educational attainment as opposed to cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, college preparation behaviors, and… more →
Comparing Machine Learning Methods for Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Randomized Trials: A Comprehensive Simulation Study
This study compares 18 machine learning methods for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects in randomized controlled trials, using simulations calibrated to two large-scale educational experiments. We evaluate performance across continuous and binary outcomes with diverse and realistic treatment effect heterogeneity patterns, varying sample sizes, covariate complexities, and effect magnitudes… more →
Democracy For What and For Whom?: The Possibilities and Challenges of K-12 School Boards
Local school boards have historically played a major role in the functioning and character of US schools, providing fiscal oversight, shaping policy, and creating avenues for community voice, representation, and accountability. As such, school boards have regularly served as critical sites for political struggle and public discourse on a range of issues. Yet growing demands on schools, political… more →
The Sensitivity of Value-Added Estimates to Test Scoring Decisions
Value-Added Models (VAMs) are both common and controversial in education policy and accountability research. While the sensitivity of VAMs to model specification and covariate selection is well documented, the extent to which test scoring methods (e.g., mean scores vs. IRT-based scores) may affect VA estimates is less studied. We examine the sensitivity of VA estimates to scoring method using… more →
Staff and Faculty Unionizations in Higher Education, 2007-2023
Labor organizing efforts grew following the Covid-19 pandemic in American higher education institutions. This research brief examines unionization trends at private colleges and universities from 2007 through 2023, revealing staff as the main force behind unionization attempts, followed by contingent faculty. SEIU plays a significant role in representing college and university employees. A… more →
Efficiency or Burnout? The Effects of Condensed Course Formats on Student Achievement in Community Colleges
Condensed courses—those that compress instructional content into a shorter time frame—are increasingly popular in higher education. While they offer greater flexibility, concerns remain that the accelerated pace may compromise learning. Using administrative data from a state community college system, we provide the first large-scale evidence of their effects on students’ immediate and downstream… more →
Causal Returns to Education
Using 182 estimates from 140 studies in 55 countries, this paper compares ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variables (IV) estimates of the private returns to schooling. IV returns average 9.7 percent—38 percent higher than OLS—and exceed OLS in nearly 80 percent of cases, with the largest gaps in developing countries. These patterns align with theories of diminishing marginal returns… more →
Reclaiming Educational Fraud and Waste: A Conceptual Framework to Locate the True Sources of Resource Leakage and Harm in The U.S. K-12 System
The recent dismantling of federal educational institutions has been legitimated under the banner of “eliminating fraud and waste.” In this paper, we reclaim these terms to locate the sources of potential fraud and waste in the U.S. K-12 education system through a novel conceptual framework that centers both structural components and the actions of educational actors. We posit that overdiagnosing… more →
The Many Paths to College Enrollment: Re-Conceptualizing the Transition to College
Traditional college choice models often fall short in capturing the complex paths that today’s student population takes to postsecondary enrollment. This paper identifies the limitations of the predominant frameworks, such as Hossler and Gallagher’s (1987) three-phase model, arguing that they reflect an outdated enrollment-management perspective, which fails to capture the experiences of many… more →
The Fiscal and Resource Effects of Enrollment Increases and Decreases on American Public School Districts
Public school enrollment has decreased over the past few years and is forecast to continue decreasing for the foreseeable future. Experts and educators are concerned about the fiscal and resource effects of these enrollment declines. Using data on all public school districts from 1998 to 2019, we estimate the effects of enrollment changes on revenues and expenditures per pupil and a variety of… more →
Item-Level Heterogeneity in Value Added Models: Implications for Reliability, Cross-Study Comparability, and Effect Sizes
Value added models (VAMs) attempt to estimate the causal effects of teachers and schools on student test scores. We apply Generalizability Theory to show how estimated VA effects depend upon the selection of test items. Standard VAMs estimate causal effects on the items that are included on the test. Generalizability demands consideration of how estimates would differ had the test included… more →
Measuring Elementary School Teachers' Knowledge of Teaching Vocabulary
Teacher Knowledge in the field of literacy has become a priority across the United States, with many states passing legislation requiring that all teachers receive adequate training on the Science of Reading. One essential component of literacy development and text comprehension is vocabulary acquisition. This study examines the psychometric properties of items from the Teacher Knowledge of… more →
Leveraging Modern Machine Learning to Improve Early Warning Systems and Reduce Chronic Absenteeism in Early Childhood
This study focuses on improving the predictive power of early warning systems (EWSs) to decrease chronic absenteeism in early childhood. Using a demographically diverse sample of students followed from PreK to third grade in Boston Public Schools (N=6,698), we demonstrate how and why two modern machine learning algorithms—the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) and Extreme Gradient… more →
Parent Perspectives on School Choice: Experimental Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample
Parental attitudes and perspectives of student “success” will likely drive their educational choices, whether residentially assigned district public schools, alternative public schools, private schools, or homeschooling. However, little research has examined the importance of these attitudes on choice or how these attitudes may vary across parent characteristics. In this study, we conducted an… more →
To The Mountaintop: Transforming Educational Equity as a School Leader
School leaders, particularly principals, can be true difference makers. Having a strong school leader can shape productive learning environments, give high-quality teachers the support they need, and influence student outcomes. This literature review synthesizes research on the role that school leaders, specifically principals, play in addressing inequities and promoting student success in… more →
From Funds to Frameworks: How States Operationalize Title II Education Funding
This study employs a document analysis of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans from 2017 to 2022 to examine Title II, Part A, implementation across all states. We analyzed state-level fund allocation, leadership development activities, and discrepancies between planned and actual spending. Results reveal substantial heterogeneity in state approaches: 23.5% made Title II-A-specific plan… more →
Asset-Based Implementation of Structured Adaptations in an Online Third-Grade Content Literacy Intervention
Scaling up evidence-based educational interventions presents challenges, particularly in adapting to new contexts while maintaining fidelity. Structured adaptations that integrate the strengths of experimental science (high fidelity) and improvement science (high adaptation) represent a novel design framework for supporting the equitable implementation of research-based practices and programs.… more →
Leveraging IEPs to Understand Special Education Services at Scale
7.5 million (15%) U.S. public school students have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) that guide $14 billion in special education services. However, the content of IEPs remains unexplored, primarily because they have been historically inaccessible to researchers at scale. In this study, we develop a coding taxonomy to categorize IEP services from digital IEP records for an entire state. We… more →
From Rural Schools to City Factories: Assessing the Quality of Chinese Rural Schools
The changing pattern of quality in China’s rural schools across time and province is extracted from the differential labor market earnings of rural migrant workers. Variations in rates of return to years of schooling across migrant workers working in the same urban labor market but having different sites of basic education provide for direct estimation of provincial school quality. Corroborating… more →
Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills
The development of English-language skills, a near necessity in today’s global economy, is heavily influenced by historical national decisions about whether to subtitle or dub TV content. While prior studies of language acquisition have focused on schools, we show the overwhelming influence of out-of-school learning. We identify the causal effect of subtitling in a difference-in-differences… more →
Exploring Claims of Critical Race Theory, Divisive Topics, and Indoctrination in the Classroom
Critical race theory (CRT) and claims of political indoctrination in K-12 classrooms are at the forefront of the ongoing culture wars surrounding public education. Despite a wave of legislative action targeting CRT-related instruction, little systematic evidence documents the extent to which critics’ claims have merit. Using a nationally representative survey of American high school students, we… more →
Who Scars the Easiest? College Quality and the Effects of Graduating into a Recession
Graduating from college into a recession is associated with earnings losses, but less is known about how these effects vary across colleges. Using restricted-use data from the National Survey of College Graduates, we study how the effects of graduating into worse economic conditions vary over college quality in the context of the Great Recession. We find that earnings losses are concentrated… more →
Measuring “Noncognitive” Skills at Scale: Building Longitudinal Student Behavior Composites Using Administrative Data
“Noncognitive” skills, especially student behavior, are critical predictors of academic and life outcomes. However, measuring student behavior at scale remains challenging, particularly for longitudinal research. This study uses a demographically diverse sample of students followed from kindergarten to eighth grade in the Boston Public Schools (N=12,232) to examine trade-offs between two… more →
The Effects of Early Childhood Science Educational Interventions on Children’s Science Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Classroom-Based Studies
The importance of providing children with more robust opportunities to access high-quality science instruction is a widely recognized challenge. Unfortunately, science instruction is often neglected in the earliest school grades, meaning that many young children face opportunity gaps to learning science. We present the results of a meta-analysis of experimental and quasiexperimental research of… more →
Education and Climate Change: Synthesizing the Evidence to Guide Future Research
The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly visible across all aspects of the U.S. PreK-12 education system. Schools are both vulnerable to climate change and uniquely positioned to be part of the solution. We synthesize interdisciplinary research and data to illustrate the bi-directional relationship between schools and our changing climate. Drawing on this evidence, we map out a… more →
The effects of third-grade retention on multilingual students: A gateway or a gatekeeper?
This paper estimates the effect of test-based grade retention on multilingual students classified as English Learners (ML-ELs). This policy could provide an opportunity for ML-ELs to develop English language proficiency and master academic content or put them at increased risk of worse academic and labor market outcomes. I use a regression discontinuity design leveraging Texas’s test-based grade… more →
Tabling Debate: How Local Officials Use Agenda Control to Stifle Conflict
Public officials influence policymaking by deciding which items receive attention and action — and which do not. Accounts from national legislatures typically explain agenda control in terms of party leadership and discipline. But, do politicians exert agenda control outside highly professionalized legislatures? We bring the agenda control discussion to U.S. school boards, which lack strong party… more →
Social Emotional Learning, Student Attendance, and Chronic Absenteeism in Pre- and Post-Pandemic Periods
We develop and implement a quasi-experimental panel data model to address the relationships between social emotional learning competencies (SEL) and annual student attendance in the pre- and post-pandemic periods. Although panel data models tend to focus on changes over time in outcomes and predictors, we develop a model that decomposes the effects of SEL into stable and transitory components.… more →
The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions
In this paper, I investigate how publicizing school social climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different economic backgrounds. I first provide descriptive evidence on the novelty of school climate relative to other school characteristics. Next, using a plausibly exogenous shock of school climate information in Chicago, I… more →
Empirical Analysis of STEM Faculty Productivity: Using NbClust and Logistic Regression to Explore Interactions Among Faculty Teaching and Research Productivity Metrics, Demographic, and Disciplinary Characteristics
This study investigates the nexus between research and teaching productivity among STEM faculty at a public research-intensive university, analyzing data from 553 faculty members across four STEM disciplines: Biological Sciences, Engineering, Information and Computer Sciences, and Physical Sciences. Through the combined application of cluster analysis using the NbClust package and logistic… more →
Identifying Indicators to Support Educational Attainment for Different Groups of English Learners in High School
This study examines a broad array of potential indicators for early warning and college readiness indicator systems for different subgroups of English Learners in high school. Using data from 2008 through 2021 from the Chicago Public Schools, the study follows cohorts of students from eighth grade through college graduation, using logistic regression models to run exploratory analyses, and… more →
High School Equivalency Credentialing and Post-Secondary Success: Pre-Registered Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the GED® Test
For the over 24 million American adults who do not hold a traditional high school diploma, high school equivalency (HSE) credentials represent the primary “second-chance” pathway to many careers or educational opportunities. This project uses current, representative data to assess whether, how, and for whom HSE credentials promote post-secondary success. Examining post-secondary outcomes in a… more →
Introducing a High-School Exit Exam in Science: Consequences in Massachusetts
Preparing students for science, technology, and engineering careers is an urgent state policy challenge. We examine the design and roll-out of a science testing requirement for high-school graduation in Massachusetts. While science test performance has improved over time for all demographic subgroups, we observe rising inequality in failure rates and retest success. English learners, almost 8% of… more →
Politics of the professoriate: Longitudinal evidence from a state public university system’s universe of faculty
Over the past decade, Democrats and Republicans have grown increasingly polarized in their views of American higher education. Republicans in particular have become far more critical of the political and social views of faculty. In this paper, we thus investigate whether the commonly held belief of a politically liberal professoriate is true for the universe of faculty employed by an entire state… more →
School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
The pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state- and district-level data to explore enrollment patterns five years after the pandemic’s onset. Relative to pre-pandemic trends, fall 2024 enrollment is down 2% in local public schools, up 14% in… more →
The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor’s Degree Completion through the City University of New York ACE Program
In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program— Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)—aimed at improving college graduation rates. A randomized-control evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry. Using this impact estimate and national data on earnings by gender, age, and degree status; we estimate… more →
Reclassifying English Learners
Most English learners (ELs) eventually gain sufficient English proficiency to be reclassified and receive instruction without linguistic supports. Though well-identified, prior regression discontinuity estimates for the effect of reclassification are estimated too imprecisely to detect policy-relevant effects. Applying a student fixed-effect design to data from Indiana, we show that ELs… more →
Implicit Gender-STEM Stereotypes and College Major Choice
Implicit stereotypes about gender and STEM may unconsciously shape students' academic choices and contribute to gender gaps in major choice, but there is limited economic evidence on this channel. To study this relationship, we administer a gender-science Implicit Association Test (IAT) to a sample of primarily first-semester undergraduates, and link results to original survey data and… more →
Measuring Conflict in Local Politics
Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in Americans’ lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this paper, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and use them to create a new measure of local political conflict. We validate this new approach using… more →
Revisiting The Rural Teacher Workforce: Insights from a Novel Rurality Measure
How we define rurality fundamentally shapes our place-based understanding of the teacher workforce. This study uses the Community Assets and Relative Rurality (CARR) Index—a novel, multidimensional measure of rurality—alongside longitudinal administrative data to examine K–12 teachers in Kansas and Missouri. We find substantial variation in teacher demographic and professional characteristics… more →
Teaching Practices and the Persistence of School-Entry Age Effects
We consider the effect of teaching practices on the persistence of school-entry age effects caused by rigid cutoff dates for school eligibility in Spain. We document significant school-entry age effects for the same cohort of students when they were in elementary and secondary school. Then, we test whether school-entry age effects at age 15 are lower for those students who were more frequently… more →
The Effect of Raising School Quality on Earnings
The evidence underscores the need to shift attention from school attainment to actual learning. While the average global return to an additional year of schooling is about 10 percent, a one standard deviation increase in test scores raises earnings by 15 percent. Studies show that including direct measures of skills reduces the estimated return to schooling, revealing the stronger role of quality… more →
A Critical Appraisal of the Evidence on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education
This essay provides a two-pronged critical assessment of a subset of the literature on racial disproportionality in special education: that which aims to estimate racial disparities among otherwise similar children. This body of research has shown that Black students are less likely than comparable White students to receive special education, and has been interpreted by many to mean that current… more →
Supportive Teacher Working Conditions as a Tool to Retain Non-Local Teachers in Rural Schools
Rural school administrators prefer hiring homegrown teachers because they are more likely to stay than non-local teachers; however, administrators need to hire non-local candidates to meet their staffing needs. Our examination of rural teachers’ preferences for local was guided by person-organization fit theory. Specifically, we investigated the role of teacher working conditions (TWC) in the… more →
Choosing Schools in Choice Neighborhoods: Impacts of Student Mobility, School Composition, and Case Management on Academic Outcomes
This study examines the academic impacts of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a federal public housing revitalization program, focusing on how case management, student mobility, and school compositional change intersect to shape outcomes. Using an eight-year student-level panel (2015–2023), we estimate three-way fixed effects models that account for school year, grade, and individual… more →
Teaching Computational Thinking to Children in Head Start Classrooms: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial
Despite efforts to broaden participation in computer science and its related fields, there exist stark disparities in participation in computer related fields by gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status. One approach to combat these disparities is to expose children to computing concepts early, to provide them with the foundational skills needed to be successful in later computing… more →
From Disruption to Recovery: Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
In recent decades, an increasing number of students have pursued alternative educational options, including charter schools, as school choice has continued to expand. This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is well established that students experienced widespread learning loss during the pandemic, it remains unclear whether the extent of that loss or the pace of recovery has… more →