EdWorkingPapers
High Turnover with Low Accountability: Local School Board Elections in 16 States
We analyze the most comprehensive dataset on U.S. school board elections. We find that nearly half of races go uncontested and that incumbents are reelected more than 80 percent of the time when they run. Because many incumbents retire instead of running for another term, however, turnover is high (with 53 percent of incumbents replaced in a typical election cycle). School board turnover is also… more →
Portraying Governance: Demographic Misalignment in University Board Representation
Higher education governing boards are important bodies with far-reaching powers over the institutions they oversee. Yet little is known about individual board members, how the composition of boards varies across institutions, or whether boards are at all representative of their institutional populations. In this paper, I introduce a novel dataset that includes individual-level details about… more →
Efficacy of Zearn Math over two years in grades 3 to 5: An experiment in Texas
Zearn Math is a popular software platform for K-8 mathematics learning, designed to enable all students to successfully access grade-level content. RAND researchers collaborated with Zearn, the product’s developer, to design this evaluation. Then RAND conducted the study independently, randomly assigning 64 schools in an urban Texas district to either supplement classroom instruction with Zearn… more →
The Unintended Cost of Distance Learning: An Analysis of Child Maltreatment
Education personnel play a crucial role in identifying and reporting child maltreatment. However, school closures amid COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this vital reporting system. I causally investigate how remote learning influenced trends in child maltreatment reports and risks, leveraging county-level variations in remote learning instructional weeks in the United States during the 2020-21 school… more →
Using Large Language Models to Analyze Preservice Teacher Feedback and Reflections During Clinical Teaching
Clinical teaching is vital for preservice teacher (PST) development, yet field supervisors’ roles are understudied. This study analyzes over 11,000 supervisor evaluations and PST reflections from a Texas teacher preparation program using large language models to extract measures of feedback quality and content. Supervisor feedback often lacks key quality indicators: less than half of evaluations… more →
The Effects of High School Remediation on Long-Run Educational Attainment
This study examines the effects of remedial courses in high school on postsecondary outcomes using a regression discontinuity design and explores the mechanisms behind these effects. I find that being placed in the remedial schedule and taking an additional remedial course in high school reduces the likelihood of attaining a 2- or 4-year college degree by 20 percent. The findings also suggest… more →
Deeper Roots Before the Storm: Utilizing Machine Learning to Alert School Districts of Permanent School Closures
The increasing rate of permanent school closures in U.S. public school districts presents unprecedented challenges for administrators and communities alike. This study develops an early-warning indicator model to predict mass closure events - defined as a district closing at least 10% of its schools - five years in advance. Leveraging administrative data from the National Center for Education… more →
What can we learn from the research on public school reopening decisions in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Background: After the near-universal school closures in the United States at the start of the pandemic, lawmakers and educational leaders made plans for when and how to reopen schools for the 2020-21 school year. As school reopening plans and data sets aggregating reopening statuses became available, researchers moved quickly to assess how a range of public health, political, and demographic… more →
Peer Effects of International Students in U.S. Higher Education
This study addresses an underexplored aspect of diversity at four-year research universities: the impact of international students on their domestic peers. I explore the peer effects of international students, assessing how their presence influences domestic students' academic outcomes. Using the classroom setting as a natural experimental framework, I estimate the impact of exposure to… more →
The Politics of Commencement Speakers: Organizational Contexts of Speech on College Campuses, 1989–2024
Conflicts over the politics of speech have been a persistent challenge in U.S. higher education. Public narratives portray universities as antagonistic toward conservative speakers, yet empirical evidence remains limited. To address this gap, we analyze the political orientations of 1,875 commencement speakers at 52 universities between 1989 and 2024. Findings indicate a rise in liberal speakers… more →
Bridging Literacy Gaps: The Impact of AI-Driven Personalised Learning on Reading Skills and Educational Equity
Persistent literacy skills deficits hinder educational attainment, limit labour market opportunities, and exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities. This paper evaluates the causal effect of an AI-driven Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) program implemented by the Government of Madrid, which features personalised, adaptive content and real-time feedback on students’ literacy proficiency. We leverage… more →
The Four Day Gamble: The Quasi-Experimental Effects of Four-Day School Week Adoption on Teacher, Principal, and Paraprofessional Staff Turnover and District Financial Outcomes
Four-day school week (4DSW) adoption is an increasingly popular policy, particularly for rural districts that are seeking to reduce educator turnover and district expenditures. Using a staggered treatment event study design, I am among the first to estimate the quasi-experimental effects of 4DSW adoption on teacher, principal, and paraprofessional staff turnover. Further, I provide a valuable… more →
Puzzling Over Declining Academic Achievement
Many are concerned about the large decline in K-12 student achievement since 2019. And rightly so, given what it signals about student learning and later life outcomes. Less noted is the pre-pandemic sustained decline in student achievement growth that followed 30 years of increases. We examine the nature of achievement decline as measured by national and state NAEP scores to better understand… more →
The Impact of School District Turnaround on Postsecondary Outcomes: Evidence from Lawrence, Massachusetts
Limited research examines the impact of accountability interventions on outcomes beyond test-based measures of short-term academic achievement. We examine the effects of the 2012 state takeover and districtwide turnaround of Massachusetts’ Lawrence Public Schools—a district serving a majority-low-income, majority-Hispanic student population—on high school and postsecondary outcomes using… more →
College as a Marriage Market
College graduates tend to marry each other. We use detailed Norwegian data to show that strong assortativity further arises by institution and field of study, especially among high earners from elite programs. Admission discontinuities reveal that enrollment itself, rather than selection, primarily drives matching by institution and field among the college-educated, and that these matches can be… more →
McCleary at Twelve: Examining Policy Designs Following Court-Mandated School Finance Reform in Washington State
All fifty U.S. state constitutions include language that guarantees residents’ access to a free public education. Plaintiffs in all but two states have brought litigation challenging state school finance systems, and in over half the cases, judges ruled the systems unconstitutional and mandated state legislators to provide more equitable and adequate funding. In 2012, state supreme court judges… more →
The Prevalence of LGBTQ+ Teachers in the U.S.
Due to limited data, we know little about the prevalence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) educators. Using the American Community Survey and Census Pulse, we examine the representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in PK-12 teaching. We find that 3.3-3.5 percent of LGBTQ+ individuals are teachers; in contrast, 4.4-4.9 percent of non-LGBTQ+ individuals are teachers. This new… more →
New Places, New Players, a New Politics of Education
In the last decade, many political conflicts over K-12 education in the United States have increasingly divided along party lines. While it may seem like this development represents a sudden and surprising departure from a long-standing tradition of bipartisanship, I argue that the politics of education has been gradually growing more exposed to partisan conflict over a much longer period of time… more →
Impacts of Oversubscribed Boston Pre-K Programs through Middle School
In this pre-registered study, we explored the impacts of Boston Pre-K on children’s educational trajectories, school progress/engagement, and academic achievement in late elementary and middle school using lotteries for oversubscribed schools in 2007-2011 (N=3,092 students; 24% of all applicants). Importantly, the program was unique nationally in its strong supports for teachers and in its use of… more →
From Sentence-Corrections to Deeper Dialogue: Qualitative Insights from LLM and Teacher Feedback on Student Writing
Effective writing feedback is a powerful tool for enhancing student learning, encouraging revision, and increasing motivation and agency. Yet, teachers face many challenges that prevent them from consistently providing effective writing feedback. Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have led educators and researchers to experiment with AI tools powered by large language… more →
Disentangle the Curriculum and Structural Effects of Math Pathway Reforms: Evidence from Maryland Community College System
This study evaluates the impact of Maryland's Mathematics Reform Initiative (MMRI), which sought to improve student success in developmental and college-level math through comprehensive curriculum and structural reforms. Launched in 2015, the MMRI developed and implemented non-algebra math pathways tailored to students’ chosen program of study. Using administrative data of Maryland community… 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 the extent to which teacherlevel changes predict student learning – remains limited. The current meta-analysis synthesizes 46 experimental… more →
The Impacts of Grade Retention Policy With Minimal Retention
State laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan’s third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 third-grade cohorts. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design, we find that being… more →
Lifting Up Attendance in Rural Districts: A Multi-Site Trial of a Personalized Messaging Campaign
Student absenteeism has remained high following the COVID-19 pandemic and districts need low-cost strategies to improve attendance. In 2020-21, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks piloted a promising personalized messaging intervention in 8 rural districts in New York and Ohio. We worked with a student information system provider to replicate the intervention in a randomized… more →
School Choice and Household Participation in School District Politics
We examine whether policies that enable families to opt out of locally provided public services are associated with reduced political participation. Our study is focused on two types of school choice policy in Michigan: inter-district choice and charter schools. Do parents who send their children to schools of choice or charter schools vote at lower or higher rates than those who use their… more →
From Population Growth to Demographic Scarcity: Emerging Challenges to Global Primary Education Provision in the Twenty-first Century
Demographic pressures are reshaping the challenges faced by primary education systems around the world in ways that carry significant implications for the landscape of global educational inequality. We first demonstrate highly disequalizing demographic pressures on the world's educational systems today: persistent expansionary pressures burden some of the world's least-resourced educational… more →
Going the Distance or Growing More Remote? The Academic Impacts of Course Modality following Pandemic-Era Investments
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education has rapidly expanded, transforming the landscape of community colleges. This paper explores how different online learning modalities impact student success in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), one of the largest and most diverse systems in the United States. With the purpose of providing actionable insights to community college… more →
Searching for the Queen’s Gambit: An Exploratory Analysis of Male-Female Ratings Gaps in U.S. Chess
We examine the origin and evolution of male-female rating gaps for young chess players using two decades of data from the U.S. Chess Federation, the national chess association that tracks competitive tournament play and provides ratings for U.S. chess players. An important feature of our research is that we examine male-female gaps across a broad range of chess ratings, from novice to expert. We… more →
Costly Withdrawals Reduce Future College-Going for Low-Income Students: Evidence from Return of Title IV Funds
Governments must strike a balance between promoting access to financial aid while at the same time remaining good stewards of taxpayer funds by preventing fraudulent access. This paper focuses on one of the largest-scale and most consequential policies determining whether students maintain access to Title IV aid, the “Return of Title IV” funds policy, referred to as R2T4. Students receiving Title… more →
Bring in the Subs: A Mixed-Method Investigation of the Substitute Teacher Labor Market in Michigan
Substitute teachers play a crucial role in how schools can function, yet little research has focused on understanding the contours of the substitute labor market. This paper uses a mixed method approach, including a survey of a random sample of the population of substitute teachers, state administrative data, and interviews with district administrators and substitute teachers in Michigan to… more →
Understanding and Meeting the Needs of Part-time Community College Students: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Community College Administrator Perspectives and State-Wide Administrative Data
While most community college students enroll part-time, there is little evidence on how to effectively improve college attainment of part-time students. This mixed methods study, situated in Texas, addresses this research gap by developing a more complete understanding of the part-time student population, their challenges and needs, as well as the types of interventions and programs that might… more →
Expanding Access to Highly Effective Educators for All Students: A Review of Recent Evidence
We have long known that some teachers are much more effective than others. Highly effective teachers and their students thrive in ways that have been hard to replicate on a large and consistent scale. In this paper, we read across studies to identify actionable lessons about what it will take to staff all schools with highly effective educators and to surface directions that are particularly… more →
Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Tutoring Format and Tutors: Findings from an Early Literacy Tutoring Program
This study presents the first within-program, within-tutor experimental evidence comparing the impact of in-person versus remote tutoring. Based on results from an early literacy tutoring initiative delivered by university students over Summer 2023, we find no statistically significant differences in students’ literacy outcomes by instructional modality. However, students receiving in-person… more →
Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During the Pandemic
In this paper, we show how positionality shapes caregivers’ decisions about children’s schooling, by expanding on research on Black families’ educational decision-making (Cooper, 2025; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021) to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply-marginalized children make educational choices. The families of disabled children in our sample made holistic,… more →
Disparate Teacher Effects, Comparative Advantage, and Match Quality
Does student-teacher match quality exist? While prior research documents disparities in teachers' impacts across student types, it has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I develop a flexible disparate value-added model (DVA) and introduce a novel measure of teacher quality–revealed comparative advantage (CA)–that captures the degree to which… more →
What are Promises Made of? The Design of Local College Affordability Programs
U.S. postsecondary education is populated by hundreds of state and local affordability initiatives sometimes referred to as “Promise programs”, many of which claim to make college free or tuition-free. These programs vary tremendously in terms of what they provide, where they can be used, and who is eligible for them. But we know little about the details of their structuring, or about the… more →
Unveiling Racism: A Systematic Review of Survey Measures of Racism in Education
Education policy research aimed at eliminating racism necessitates methodological innovation that fosters both equity-centered approaches and robust empirical analysis of the systemic nature of racism. Most quantitative research in educational psychology omits the racist environment that students in K-12 education exist in (DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2014; Strunk & Andrzejewski, 2023).… more →
Buying time: Financial aid allows college students to work less while enrolled
Many empirical studies have found that financial aid improves college attainment. Few have been able to test why. This study used administrative records of employment and earnings to get a more complete picture of students’ finances during college and test one potential mechanism: financial aid buys students time by allowing them to work less in off-campus jobs. We studied recipients of New… more →
Scaffolding Middle-School Mathematics Curricula With Large Language Models
Despite well-designed curriculum materials, teachers often face challenges implementing them due to diverse classroom needs. This paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can support middle school math teachers by helping create highquality curriculum scaffolds, which we define as the adaptations and supplements teachers employ to ensure all students can access and engage with the… more →
Closing the Gender Gap in STEM: Role of Performance Feedback and Advice
The gender gap in STEM careers is shaped in part by educational choices. This study investigates two interventions—absolute performance feedback and personalized advice— aiming at narrowing the gender disparities in investments in math skills. Using an online lab experiment, participants chose between a math or verbal task after receiving one of three treatments: performance feedback on prior… more →
The inequity of opt-in educational resources and an intervention to increase equitable access
Billions of dollars are invested in opt-in educational resources to support struggling students. Yet, there is no guarantee these students will use these resources. We report results from a school system’s implementation of on-demand tutoring. The take up was low. At baseline, only 19% of students ever accessed the platform and low-performing students were even less likely to log in. We conducted… more →
SEEDS of Early Learning: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Early Literacy Teacher Professional Development Program
NORC at the University of Chicago designed and implemented an impact evaluation of the SEEDS of Learning (SEEDS) professional development (PD) program on behalf of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, in collaboration with Kidango. SEEDS of Learning is an evidence-based PD program that prepares early childhood educators to help children develop the social-emotional, language, and emergent literacy… more →
Who may enter? Qualification and ranking in centralized admission systems to higher education
Admission systems play a critical role in shaping educational opportunities by determining what choices are available to whom. Policy makers and institutions must balance multiple, often conflicting, goals which requires trade-offs between competing values. In this paper, we present core values for admission to higher education alongside a novel framework for centralized admission systems,… more →
Does Increased Agency Improve the Effectiveness of Self-Directed Professional Learning for Educators?
The role of teacher agency in professional learning has been the subject of several qualitative studies but has not yet been tested in an experimental setting. To provide causal evidence of the impact of teacher agency on the effectiveness of professional learning, we conducted a preregistered randomized controlled trial in an online computer science course with volunteer instructors who teach… more →
Who Leads During and After a Crisis? The Pandemic’s Role in Diversifying School Leadership
Organizational crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, influence the appointment of leaders from underrepresented groups, including women and people of color. This study examines the relationship between the pandemic, school organizational characteristics, and the appointment of women and people of color to school leadership (e.g., Head of School, HoS) roles. Using administrative data from the… more →
The Effects of Losing Pell Grant Eligibility on Student Outcomes
While initial Pell Grant eligibility is solely determined by financial need, students must achieve Satisfactory Academic Progress to retain it. Students eligible for higher aid are less likely to complete college when they lose eligibility compared to those with lower aid. This non-random attrition introduces bias in the Local Average Treatment Effects. I construct nonparametric bounds on LATE… more →
The “Work” of Mobilizing, Advocating, and Organizing for Care in The School District Central Office
This paper presents a case study of a caring school district located in a farmworker community composed largely of Latinx families. I examine how central office leaders create or maintain care supports under crisis conditions. Findings suggest that district-level care was multidimensional and distributed, involving mobilization of community leadership, improvisational structures, and novel… more →
Investing in College Readiness: Societal Benefits and Costs of the El Dorado College Promise Program
A growing volume of research shows college promise programs increase the likelihood that students enroll in and complete college. Place-based promise programs provide a guaranteed college scholarship for students who attend a specified school district. We examine the societal benefits and costs of a place-based scholarship program in rural Arkansas, the El Dorado Promise. Our cost framework… more →
From Passive Promises to Proactive Guarantees: The Efficacy of Financial Certainty Interventions Among Automatically (In-)Admissible Students
Low-income high-achieving students are less likely than high-income peers to enroll in selective colleges. Financial certainty interventions can address administrative burdens that stifle their enrollment, even when colleges are tuition-free for them. However, we do not know whether these interventions are effective when students enjoy admissions certainty (e.g., with percent plans) or how… more →
The Effects of Daily Air Pollution on Students and Teachers
Recent empirical research shows that air pollution harms student test scores and attendance and increases office discipline referrals. However, the mechanism by which air pollution operates within schools to negatively affect student and teacher outcomes remains largely opaque. The existing literature has primarily focused on the effects of prolonged exposure to pollution on end-of-year test… more →