Teachers College, Columbia
Post-pandemic achievement recovery based on student characteristics and district-level policies
It is well-established that student achievement has declined dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less is known how these patterns may vary by developmental timing of exposure to the pandemic and how district-level policies may have influenced student recovery.
Shine a Light: The U.S. Federal Government Should Increase Access to Educational Administrative Data
The Institute of Educational Sciences invested substantial resources into the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant program. These grants helped states convert their educational records to longitudinal datasets for research and evaluation. However, external researchers still have unreliable… more →
Does Fadeout Preclude Long-Run Adult Effects? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Educational Intervention Randomized Controlled Trials
A perplexing pattern has been observed in the intervention literature: although impacts on children’s skills often fade, some interventions still produce long-run impacts on adult outcomes. Existing developmental theory does not provide a straightforward explanation. This “fadeoutemergence… more →
The Maternal Labor Market Effects of State Pre-K Funding
Public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) is primarily designed as an educational policy for young children but has attracted attention as a potential lever to support maternal employment. This study provides national evidence on the maternal labor market effects of state pre-K funding, exploiting… more →
Predicting Persistence and Fadeout Across Multi-Site RCTs of an Early Childhood Mathematics Curriculum Intervention
This study examined predictors of persistence and fadeout across multiple cluster RCTs that evaluated a preschool mathematics curriculum. We used meta-analytic methods to explore how impacts on student mathematics achievement faded between post-test (i.e., endline) and one-year follow-up. We… more →
How General is Educational Intervention Fadeout? A Meta-Analysis of Educational RCTs with Follow-Up
Researchers and policymakers pursue educational interventions with the goal of altering children’s long-term trajectories. However, many effects fade quickly after interventions end. Researchers have sought to address the fadeout problem by identifying characteristics of interventions that lead… more →
Using Meta-Analytic Data to Examine Fadeout and Persistence of Intervention Impacts on Constrained and Unconstrained Skills
Recent reviews of the educational intervention literature have noted patterns of intervention impact fadeout on cognitive skills, whereby skill trajectories between children in the intervention and control group converge in the years following the end of the intervention. Some early childhood… more →
STEM Summer Programs for Underrepresented Youth Increase STEM Degrees
The federal government and many individual organizations have invested in programs to support diversity in the STEM pipeline, including STEM summer programs for high school students, but there is little rigorous evidence of their efficacy. We fielded a randomized controlled trial to study a… more →
Design Philanthropy: Challenges and Opportunities in the Evolution of Philanthropic Giving
Philanthropic investment in education has evolved considerably over the past several decades. This paper provides early evidence of another distinct adaptation, which we dub design philanthropy. In contrast to the macro-level structural reforms recently supported by large foundations,… more →