University of Miami
From the Right to Education to the Distribution of Resources: Testing U.S. School Finance Equity Metrics in Mexico, Brazil and France
Most national constitutions and international treaties guarantee a right to education, and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has warned that sharp geographic disparities in spending may constitute discrimination. Yet rights monitoring rarely tests whether resources within a… more →
Cost Efficiency of U.S. School Districts: Stochastic Frontier Evidence from the National Education Cost Model
I estimate the technical efficiency of U.S. school districts in producing middle-grades achievement with a stochastic frontier model built on the National Education Cost Model (NECM), which measures each district’s spending relative to the predicted cost of national-average outcomes. Because… more →
Unpacking Racial Disparities in School Spending: Why “progressiveness” and “comparability” are not enough
Studies of racial and economic disparities in school funding typically rely on simple spending comparisons or "progressiveness" measures that ignore variation in the cost of achieving common educational outcomes. This article argues that such approaches essentially ignore how much it costs… 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… more →
A Framework for Evaluating and Reforming School Vouchers
Following the 2002 work of economist Henry Levin, who laid out a framework for evaluating school vouchers, we provide an updated framework involving four major goals: equity, effiency, accountability and democratic goals. We review what is known from recent research around these four major areas… more →
Framework for Evaluating & Reforming Education Finance Systems
This paper presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating and reforming education finance systems to ensure equity, adequacy, and equal opportunity in publicly funded education. We summarize decades conceptual work, explaining our evolving understanding of the role and purpose of school… more →
How and Why Racial Isolation Affects Education Costs & the Provision of Equal Educational Opportunity
This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function… more →
Does School Funding Matter In a Pandemic? COVID-19 Instructional Models and School Funding Adequacy
The factors that influenced school districts’ decisions to offer virtual, hybrid, or in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year—the first full school year after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic—have been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Some of this research… more →
The politics of progressivity: Court-ordered reforms, racial difference, and school finance fairness
This paper contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K-12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three explanations for intra-state changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends,… more →
Examining STEM Performance within a Comprehensive College Transition Program
We examine the impact of the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC), a comprehensive college transition program serving students with a variety of majors, on students’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-related outcomes. We use an explanatory mixed-methods design, which… more →