Equity

The Impact of Additional Funding on Student Outcomes: Evidence from an Urban District Using Weighted Student Funding and Site-based Budgeting

Accelerating Opportunity: The Effects of Instructionally Supported Detracking

The pivotal role of Algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate controversial, high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their classroom peers, and how the course is taught. This random-assignment partnership study examines an innovative… more →

Experimental Evidence of the Impact of Re-Enrollment Campaigns on Long-Term Academic Outcomes

Most students who begin at a community college do not complete their desired credential. Many former students fail to graduate due to various barriers rather than their academic performance. To encourage previously successful non-completers to re-enroll and eventually graduate, a growing number… more →

Integrating Minorities in the Classroom: The Role of Students, Parents, and Teachers

We develop a multi-agent model of the education production function where investments of students, parents, and teachers are linked to the presence of minorities in the classroom. We then test the key implications of this model using rich survey data and a mandate to randomly assign students to… more →

Inequity and College Applications: Assessing Differences and Disparities in Letters of Recommendation from School Counselors with Natural Language Processing

Letters of recommendation from school counselors are required to apply to many selective colleges and universities. Still, relatively little is known about how this non-standardized component may affect equity in admissions. We use cutting-edge natural language processing techniques to… more →

Constrained Agency and the Architecture of Educational Choice: Evidence from New York City

Many school districts consider family preferences in allocating students to schools. In theory, this approach provides traditionally disadvantaged families greater access to high-quality schools by weakening the link between residential location and school assignment. We leverage data on the… more →

Transitional Kindergarten: The New Kid on the Early Learning Block

In recent years, several states have expanded a new publicly funded learning option: Transitional Kindergarten (TK). TK programs bridge prekindergarten and kindergarten in their eligibility, requirements, and design. We use Michigan’s TK program as a case study on the fit of this new entrant in… more →

ESSER-ting Preferences: Examining School District Preferences for Using Federal Pandemic Relief Fundings

We analyzed the proposed spending data for the American Recovery Plan’s Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief III (ESSER III) fund from the spring of 2021 of nearly 3,000 traditional public-school districts in the United States to (1) identify trends in the strategies adopted and (2) to test… more →

Racialized Reactivity: How Metrics-Formation Contributed to a Racialized Organizational Order in Medical Education

A common point of contention across education policy debates is whether and how facially race-neutral metrics of quality produce or maintain racialized inequities. Medical education is a useful site for interrogating this relationship, as many scholars point to the 1910, Carnegie-funded Flexner… more →

On the Margin: Who Receives a Juvenile Referral in School and What Effect Does It Have?

Involvement with the juvenile justice system carries immense consequences both to detained youth and to society more broadly. Extant research on the “school-to-prison pipeline” often focuses on school disciplinary practices such as suspension with less attention on understanding the impact of… more →

Making Moves: The Role of Demotion in School Leadership

This study examines the experience of demotion from a principalship to an assistant principalship and how race and gender can differentially impact career trajectories. Using administrative state dataset of 10,946 observations at the principal level, we used probit regression to determine the… more →

Paying for School Finance Reforms: How States Raise Revenues to Fund Increases in Elementary-Secondary Education Expenditures

This study investigates how individual states raise revenue to pay for elementary-secondary education spending following school finance reforms (SFRs). We identify states that increased and sustained education expenditures after reform, search for legislative statutes that appropriated more… more →

Assessing the Benefits of Education in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Pre-K Lottery in Georgia

Numerous studies have demonstrated a strong link between participation in pre-K programs and both short-term student achievement and positive later-life outcomes.  Existing evidence primarily stems from experimental studies of small-scale, high-quality programs conducted in the 1960s and… more →

Financial Deregulation, School Finance, and Student Achievement

This paper studies how school spending impacts student achievement by exploiting the US interstate branching deregulation as state tax revenue shocks. Leveraging school finance data from universal school districts, our difference-in-differences estimation reveals that deregulation leads to an… more →

(Pay)Walled Gardens: Status and Racialized Discourse Among Authors of Student Loan News Articles

News media plays a crucial role in the student loan policy ecosystem by influencing how policymakers and the public understand the “problem” of student loans. Prior research emphasizes the causal impact of the media on the social construction of policy issues and the lack of knowledge about the… more →

Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of Public School Funding Policies and Private External Fundraising

School districts across the U.S. have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. However, schools are also increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. We document the interaction between funding policies and… more →

Suspended from Work and School? Impacts of Layoff Events and Unemployment Insurance on Student Disciplinary Incidence

We examine the impact of local labor market shocks and state unemployment insurance (UI) policies on student discipline in U.S. public schools. Analyzing school-level discipline data and firm-level layoffs in 23 states, we find that layoffs have little effect on discipline rates on average. However… more →

Experimental Evidence on "Direct Admissions" from Four States: Impacts on College Application and Enrollment

Complexity and uncertainty loom large in the college application process. We leverage a largescale experiment that reduces administrative burden through a proactive guarantee of admission coupled with tailored information, a simplified application form, and automatic fee waiver to test the… more →

Framing Effects and the Public’s Attitudes toward Racial Equity in Education Policy

Frames shape public opinion on policy issues, with implications for policy adoption and agenda-setting. What impact do common issue frames for racial equity in education have on voters’ support for racially equitable education policy? Across survey experiments with two independent representative… more →

Racial, linguistic, and economic diversity across schools with two-way dual language immersion programs: Evidence from Los Angeles Unified School District

Two-way dual language immersion programs (TWDL) aim to integrate English speakers and speakers of a partner language in the same classroom to receive content instruction in both languages. Stated goals include bilingualism and biliteracy, high academic achievement, and sociocultural competence.… more →