Texas A&M University
Early literacy tutoring and children’s reading trajectories: Evidence from a four-year randomized controlled trial
Most evidence on early literacy tutoring comes from intensive one-year interventions. Much less is known about whether schools can sustain individualized instructional support as students’ reading needs evolve across the early grades. We present findings from a four-year randomized controlled… more →
The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education
Community colleges are more financially, academically, and geographically accessible than four-year colleges. Despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few transfer to a four-year institution and even fewer earn bachelor’s degrees, leading policymakers to… more →
Digital Incentives in Surveys: Response Rates and Sociodemographic Effects in a Large-Scale Parental Nudge Intervention
This study examines how digital incentives influence survey participation and engagement in a large randomized controlled trial of parents across six school districts. We test how incentive amount and information about vendor options affect response behavior and explore differences by language… more →
Community College Bachelor's Degrees: How CCB Graduates' Earnings Compare to AAs and BAs
We provide the first national descriptive analysis of the economic value of Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) degrees by examining graduates’ early-career earnings, the costs of completing these programs, and the alignment between field of study and subsequent employment. Using… more →
Political Views and College Choices in a Polarized America
We examine the role of students’ political views in shaping college enrollment decisions in the United States. We hypothesize that students derive utility from attending institutions aligned with their political identities, which could reinforce demographic and regional disparities in… more →
Who Wants to Be a Teacher in America?
Long-standing compositional disparities and more recent concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the need to increase our understanding of the pipeline into K–12 teaching. Leveraging data from 11.5 million college applicants from 2014–2025, we provide the most detailed… 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… more →
Closing gaps for racial minorities and immigrants through school-to-work linkages and occupational match
This study investigates the role of college major choices in labor market outcomes, with a focus on racial minorities and immigrants. Drawing upon research on school-to-work linkages, we examine two measures, linkage – the connection between college majors and specific occupations in the labor… 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… more →
A Scalable Approach to High-Impact Tutoring for Young Readers: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial
This paper presents the results from a randomized controlled trial of Chapter One, an early elementary reading tutoring program that embeds part-time tutors into the classroom to provide short bursts of 1:1 instruction. Eligible kindergarten students were randomly assigned to receive… more →
Distance to Opportunity: Higher Education Deserts and College Enrollment Choices
We study how geographic access to public postsecondary institutions is associated with students’ college enrollment decisions across race and socioeconomic status. Leveraging rich administrative data, we first document substantial differences in students’ local college options, with White,… more →
Distance to Degrees: How College Proximity Shapes Students’ Enrollment Choices and Attainment Across Race-Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status
Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are… 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 →
Local Licensure and Teacher Shortage: Policy Analysis and Implications
We use frame analysis to analyze the first iteration of the Texas District of Innovation policy, which allows districts to take exemption from state education requirements mandating the hiring of a state certified teacher. We analyzed 451 district policies and find the plans use very similar,… more →
Empowering Educational Leaders: On-Track Indicators for College Enrollment
As states incorporate measures of college readiness into their accountability systems, school and district leaders need effective strategies to identify and support students at risk of not enrolling in college. Although there is an abundant literature on early warning indicators for high school… more →
What matters and for whom? Exploring characteristics of teacher residency programs and their relationship to participant perceptions
This concurrent mixed methods study descriptively explores teacher residency programs (TRPs) across the nation. We examine program and participant survey data from the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) to identify important TRP structures for resident support.
Clinical teaching learning trajectory: Exploring field supervisor written feedback on clinical teacher pedagogy
Field supervisors are central to clinical teaching, but little is known about how their feedback informs preservice teachers (PSTs) development. This sequential mixed methods study examines over 3,000 supervisor observation evaluations. We qualitatively code supervisor written feedback, which… more →
EMERGEing Educational Opportunities: The Effects of Social Capital and Nudging on Selective College Outcomes
There is a growing debate in social science and education policy research on how to improve college access for high-performing students from low-income or first-generation backgrounds. While some studies suggest that providing information to students impacts college access, other studies do not… more →
Why Do You Want to Be a Teacher? A Natural Language Processing Approach
Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive paper examines preservice teachers' (PST) expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career and its relationship with PST… more →
Beginning Teachers & Strategies for Asset-Based Pedagogy
Our study examines roughly 2,000 novice teachers’ responses about how they account for students’ cultural, ethnic/racial, and linguistic diversity. We qualitatively analyze robust open-ended survey responses to explore teachers’ reported strategies for how they integrate asset-based pedagogy… more →