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Human capital
Career ready or not? The relationship of WorkKeys scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs with college and early-career outcomes
Growing efforts to ensure that students graduate high school both college- and career-ready raise a need for better understanding and measures of “career readiness.” We leverage data from one state (North Carolina) where nearly half of students take a college entrance exam (the ACT) in 11th… more →
Talent at the Top: Effects of Taxation on University Presidents’ Compensation and Priorities
College presidents are among the highest-paid individuals in higher education, and in 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased their cost to their institutions via a 21% excise tax on nonprofit executive compensation above $1 million. I examine how private colleges and universities and their… more →
The Impact of Exam Schools on Disadvantaged Students: Evidence from NYC’s Discovery Program
This paper studies the New York City Department of Education's Discovery Program, an affirmative action policy implemented to increase access to some of New York City’s most elite public high schools. The Discovery Program allocates reserve seats at New York City’s exam schools to disadvantaged… more →
Staffing, Retention, and Expenditures in the Four-Day School Week
School districts across the United States are increasingly adopting the four-day school week, often in the hope of addressing teacher staffing challenges. We examine the effects of the four-day week on non-teacher staffing and recruitment, and schoolwide expenditures in Missouri, where three in… more →
Non-traditional Student Advising Before College: Lessons from Navigate Reconnect
Prospective college students benefit from tailored advising and guidance about whether, where, and how to enroll. Support for college planning drops sharply after students leave high school, however, leaving non-traditional students largely on their own. We study Navigate Reconnect, a Tennessee… more →
Heterogeneous Fadeout of Cognitive Gains: Evidence from Head Start Preschool
Topics: Student LearningFadeout is defined as the decline in an intervention's initial treatment effect in subsequent follow-up periods. This paper uses the Head Start Impact Study to examine heterogeneity in the fadeout of cognitive gains from access to Head Start preschool. I find that Black children experience… more →
Revisiting Why Superintendents Turn Over: Understanding Pathways Out of School District Leadership
Research has examined many facets of superintendent turnover but offers an incomplete understanding of superintendents’ pathways out of the role. We pair administrative data on Tennessee superintendents over 15 years with hand-collected information about the reported reasons for their departures… more →
Evaluation Scores and Student Learning under Compulsory Teacher Re-Evaluation
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe examine how lower-performing public school teachers respond to more frequent formative evaluations. A 2011 reform in Chile required teachers rated "basic" (the second-lowest category) to be re-evaluated after two years rather than four. Using nationwide administrative data on primary school… more →
The Disparate Impacts of Academic Probation
Institutional rules that appear neutral can produce unequal outcomes when applied to students who differ in how they respond to them. We study this in the context of academic probation, a policy used by nearly every U.S. college to warn students whose grades fall below a fixed threshold that… more →
Local Signals in a Global Tournament: Information Frictions, Optimism, and College Completion
Families frequently receive local signals about children’s skills, such as class rank in high school, yet the college market in which most students ultimately compete is much broader. Using nationally-representative data, we show that student effort, parental investment, and beliefs about… more →
Who Belongs in Math? Gendered Peer Math Beliefs and Girls' Gender Beliefs, Math Beliefs, and Achievement
Topics: Student LearningThis paper studies how exposure to gendered peer math beliefs shapes girls' gender-math beliefs, their own math beliefs, and mathematics achievement. I exploit quasi-random variation in girls' exposure to peer math beliefs generated by random classroom assignment at entry into Chinese middle… more →
Parental Health Behaviors Spill Over Through Peers to Shape Risk Environments and Adolescent Mental Health
Topics: Student Well-BeingI study whether peer-family health composition affects adolescent risk environments, school relationships, and mental health. Using nationally representative data from the China Education Panel Survey, I exploit quasi-random variation in the share of a student's middle school classmates whose… more →
First Impressions Matter: Instructor Gender and Women’s Persistence in Economics
Using near-random assignment of students to instructors in introductory economics at a broad-access public university, we study how instructor gender affects women’s persistence in economics. Female instructors close roughly 40 percent of the gender gap in advanced economics course-taking, with… more →
Success Begets Success: The Dynamic Treatment Effects of Financial Aid Tournaments
Financial aid programs in higher education vary widely in design, including how aid is structured and the timing of provision. This paper studies the impact of financial aid provided as a repeated tournament and its dynamic treatment effects. Pooling administrative data that captures 32% of all… more →
Meeting People Where They Are: Experimental Evidence on Embedded Supports, Service Use, and Educational Outcomes
Many public services suffer from persistently low take-up despite high potential returns. A growing body of evidence suggests that information alone does little to close this gap; instead, hassle costs and default access points may be binding constraints on utilization. We test whether… more →
Does Coursework Matter? Uncovering the Role of Skills in the Returns to College
The continuing shift of the U.S. economy toward a high-skill base has increased the demand for college-educated workers. To understand how higher education prepares students for this evolving economy, a large body of literature in labor economics has focused on the causes and consequences of… more →
The Anatomy of a High-Price Question: Text, Skills, and the Economics of Achievement Measurement
Standardized test scores aggregate item (question) responses into a single scalar, collapsing distinct skills into an undifferentiated measure of proficiency. Which of these component skills matter most for long-run economic outcomes is a question that aggregate scores cannot answer. We develop… more →
A Dynamic Model of the Economic Returns to Adolescent Social Skills
Topics: Families and CommunitiesSocial-skill formation during adolescence depends on peer environments, but those environments are equilibrium outcomes shaped by individual choices. To account for this endogeneity, we develop and estimate a dynamic model in which parents invest in adolescents, adolescents choose whether to… more →
The Effects of Capped Piece-Rate Teacher Bonuses: Evidence from Advanced Placement
I study a proficiency-based incentive program that rewards Advanced Placement (AP) teachers a piece-rate for each student scoring 3 or higher on the standardized exam. Using student-course-level administrative data and exploiting both withinand across-teacher variation, I find the program… more →
The legacy of Plyler v. Doe: A critical window of inclusion
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study examines whether the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision increased school participation among Latino K–12 students likely to be undocumented in Texas. The analysis asks whether removing tuition and enrollment barriers changed participation patterns relative to comparable states… more →