University of Virginia
Can learning be measured by phone? Evidence from Kenya
School closures induced by COVID-19 placed heightened emphasis on alternative ways to measure student learning besides in-person exams. We leverage the administration of phone-based assessments (PBAs) measuring numeracy and literacy for primary school children in Kenya, along with in-person… more →
Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree
Recent state policy efforts have focused on increasing attainment among adults with some college but no degree (SCND). Yet little is actually known about the SCND population. Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), we provide the first detailed profile on the academic,… more →
Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials
With rapid technological transformations to the labor market, many working adults return to college after graduation to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we… more →
Finishing the Last Lap: Experimental Evidence on Strategies to Increase College Completion for Students At Risk of Late Withdrawal
Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we… more →
The Bottom Line on College Advising: Large Increases in Degree Attainment
We combine a large multi-site randomized control trial with administrative and survey data to demonstrate that intensive advising during high school and college leads to large increases in bachelor's degree attainment. Novel causal forest methods suggest that these increases are driven primarily… more →
College Advising at a National Scale: Experimental Evidence from the CollegePoint initiative
In-person college advising programs generate large improvements in college persistence and success for low-income students but face numerous barriers to scale. Remote advising models offer a promising strategy to address informational and assistance barriers facing the substantial majority of… more →
Who’s Left Out of Learning? Racial Disparities in Teachers’ Reports of Exclusionary Discipline Strategies Beyond Suspensions and Expulsions
We documented (1) the use of strategies, beyond suspensions and expulsions, that exclude young students from learning opportunities and (2) how teacher-reported use of these strategies varied according to student racial/ethnic composition. In a sample of 2,053 teachers and 40,771 kindergarten… more →
Experimental Evidence on the Robustness of Coaching Supports in Teacher Education
Many novice teachers learn to teach “on-the-job,” leading to burnout and attrition among teachers and negative outcomes for students in the long term. Pre-service teacher education is tasked with optimizing teacher readiness, but there is a lack of causal evidence regarding effective ways for… more →
Teacher Hiring in the United States: A Review of the Empirical Research (2001-2020)
Hiring quality teachers that best meet localized needs to provide students with authentic learning opportunities is crucial to both school and student success. Despite the clear importance of teacher hiring, especially in the current teacher labor market, a review of literature that synthesizes… more →
Teacher Turnover in Early Childhood Education: Longitudinal Evidence from the Universe of Publicly-Funded Programs in Louisiana
This paper provides a longitudinal examination of teacher turnover across all publicly-funded, center-based early childhood sites in Louisiana. We follow 4,465 early educators teaching in fall 2016 up to seven times through the fall of 2019. We provide the first statewide estimates of within… more →
School-based Mentoring Relationships and Human Capital Formation
We document a largely unrecognized pathway through which schools promote human capital development – by fostering informal mentoring relationships between students and school personnel. Using longitudinal data from a large, nationally representative sample of adolescents, we explore the… more →
Bringing Transparency to Predictive Analytics: A Systematic Comparison of Predictive Modeling Methods in Higher Education
Colleges have increasingly turned to predictive analytics to target at-risk students for additional support. Most of the predictive analytic applications in higher education are proprietary, with private companies offering little transparency about their underlying models.
A Cautionary Tale of Tutoring Hard-to-Reach Students in Kenya
Covid-19-induced school closures generated great interest in tutoring as a strategy to make up for lost learning time. Tutoring is backed by a rigorous body of research, but it is unclear whether it can be delivered effectively remotely. We study the effect of teacher-student phone call… more →
Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in the Relationship Between Children’s Early Literacy Skills and Third-Grade Outcomes: Lessons from a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment
Third grade is oftentimes the first year standardized literacy assessments are mandated. In turn many policies aimed at improving literacy have focused on third-grade test scores as a key indicator. Yet literacy struggles begin well before third grade, as do racial and socioeconomic disparities… more →
Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Interactions
In conversation, uptake happens when a speaker builds on the contribution of their interlocutor by, for example, acknowledging, repeating or reformulating what they have said. In education, teachers' uptake of student contributions has been linked to higher student achievement. Yet measuring and… more →
Evaluating Education Governance: Does State Takeover of School Districts Affect Student Achievement?
Local school boards have primary authority for running educational systems in the U.S. but little is known empirically about the merits of this arrangement. State takeovers of struggling districts represent a rare alternative form of educational governance and have become an increasingly common… more →
Design-Based Approaches to Causal Replication Studies
Recent interest to promote and support replication efforts assume that there is well-established methodological guidance for designing and implementing these studies. However, no such consensus exists in the methodology literature. This article addresses these challenges by describing design… more →
Measuring Teaching Practices at Scale: A Novel Application of Text-as-Data Methods
Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures… more →
The Effect of Immigration Enforcement on School Engagement: Evidence from 287(g) Programs in North Carolina
During the past fifteen years, immigration enforcement increased dramatically in the U.S. interior. There is a growing recognition that immigration enforcement in the U.S. interior has spillover effects onto U.S. citizens. I examine the impacts of a type of partnership between Immigration and… more →
A Strengths-Based, Culturally Responsive Family Intervention Improves Latino Kindergarteners’ Vocabulary and Approaches to Learning
Food routines play a special role in Latino families. Using a cluster randomized trial with 248 children (M age = 67 months) from 13 schools, this study investigated the impact of a four-week family program designed to capitalize on food routines in improving Latino kindergarteners’ outcomes in… more →