Brown University
School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income
Currently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets identified as having a disability, yet limited large-scale evidence examines how disability… more →
Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income
Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. Under 4… more →
Bulwark or Barrier? The Effect of Academic Criteria-Based Reclassification on the High School Outcomes of Multilingual Learners in Texas
English learner (EL) classification can provide multilingual students (MLs) with key supports while simultaneously limiting access to important educational opportunities. To determine when students are ready to exit EL status, some states require students to meet academic criteria in addition to… more →
The Influence of Partisanship in Local School Board Elections: Evidence from Exit Polling in Michigan & Rhode Island
Education in the U.S. has long been shaped by local school boards elected in nonpartisan contests, a structure intended to shield schools from broader political forces. Today, many states are considering reforms to make school board elections partisan, yet the impact on voters remains unclear.… more →
Do Test Scores Misrepresent Test Results? An Item-by-Item Analysis
Much of the data collected in education is effectively thrown away. Students answer individual test questions, but administrators and researchers only see aggregate performance. All the item-level data are lost. Ex ante it is not clear this destroys much useful information, since the aggregate… more →
How do place-based scholarships affect student borrowing and academic outcomes? Lessons from Atlanta
Previous research shows that Achieve Atlanta’s placed-based scholarship and associated services meaningfully improve college persistence and completion. In this follow up study that uses similar methods but additional and more detailed data, we examine whether scholarship recipients exhibit… more →
Behind the Scenes: Faculty-Staff Collaboration in a Student Success Effort
Interventions to improve postsecondary student success often involve supports that are external to the college classroom, although there is growing evidence that faculty involvement in interventions can improve student outcomes. This paper explores the challenges that arise when faculty and… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… more →
Pathways to the Teaching Profession: Teaching Assistants’ and Substitute Teachers’ Transitions into the Teacher Workforce
Teacher shortages and lack of teacher diversity have led to growing efforts nationally to recruit teaching assistants (TAs) to be classroom teachers. Substitute teachers are not typically considered in these efforts. We pair longitudinal administrative data from a mid-sized urban district with… more →
IncreasED: How Court Rulings Impact Special Education Identification
Healthcare services outside of school impact the likelihood of receiving a school-based special education classification and services. Using Massachusetts administrative data on public school students, this paper employs difference-in-differences to examine the impacts of expanded Medicaid… more →
What Impacts Should We Expect from Tutoring at Scale? Exploring Meta-Analytic Generalizability
U.S. public schools are engaged in an unprecedented effort to expand tutoring in the wake of the pandemic. Broad-based support for scaling tutoring emerged, in part, because of the large effects on student achievement found in prior meta-analyses. We conduct an expanded meta-analysis of 282… more →
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… 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… 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… 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… more →