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Instructional design
Why Does Education Policy so Frequently Disappoint? Lessons from Teacher Evaluation
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceDecades of K–12 education reform — much of it focused on teaching — have produced a persistent paradox: policies grounded in strong evidence disappoint when scaled, even as some implementations achieve striking success. Teacher evaluation is the clearest case. Cincinnati, Dallas, Chicago, and… more →
Better Together? Female Instructors, Female Advisors, and Women’s Persistence in Economics
Female instructors and female advisors each matter for women’s persistence in economics. We ask whether the two work better together than apart and whether this is specific to women. Using administrative records from a broad-access public university, we combine quasi-random instructor assignment… more →
Efficiency or Burnout? The Effects of Condensed Course Formats on Student Achievement in Community Colleges
Topics: Student LearningCondensed courses—those that compress instructional content into a shorter time frame—are increasingly popular in higher education. While they offer greater flexibility, concerns remain that the accelerated pace may compromise learning. Using administrative data from a state community college… more →
The Effects of Early Childhood Science Educational Interventions on Children’s Science Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Classroom-Based Studies
Topics: Student LearningThe importance of providing children with more robust opportunities to access high-quality science instruction is a widely recognized challenge. Unfortunately, science instruction is often neglected in the earliest school grades, meaning that many young children face opportunity gaps to learning… more →
Separation of Church and State Curricula? Public Standards, Private Values, and Textbook Content
Tags: Belonging, Culturally responsive schooling, Curriculum, Elementary schools, Equity, Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, Human capital, Instructional design, Instructional practices, Instructional technology, LGBTQIA+ students, Parenting, Race, ethnicity, and education, Reading and literacy education, School reform, Science education, Social studies educationCurricula are a critical site of cultural transmission, yet we know little about the values conveyed in textbooks across educational settings or the forces that shape them. We examine textbooks from Texas and California public schools and religious-private and home schools spanning 1980-2022,… more →
Educator Attention: How computational tools can systematically identify the distribution of a key resource for students
Topics: MethodsEducator attention is critical for student success, yet how educators distribute their attention across students remains poorly understood due to data and methodological constraints. This study presents the first large-scale computational analysis of educator attention patterns, leveraging over… more →
Using Meta-Analytic Data to Examine Fadeout and Persistence of Intervention Impacts on Constrained and Unconstrained Skills
Mindy L. Rosengarten, Emma R. Hart, Drew H. Bailey, Meghan P. McCormick, Benjamin J. Lovett, Tyler W. Watts.Topics: MethodsRecent reviews of the educational intervention literature have noted patterns of intervention impact fadeout on cognitive skills, whereby skill trajectories between children in the intervention and control group converge in the years following the end of the intervention. Some early childhood… more →
Same Idea, Shifting Standards: An Experimental Study of Racial-Ethnic Biases in Ambitious Math Teaching
Topics: MethodsTeacher expectations and judgments about student capabilities are predictive of student achievement, yet such judgments may be influenced by salient dimensions of student identity and invite biases. Moreover, ambitious math teaching may also invite teacher biases due to the emphasis on student-… more →
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise
Topics: Student LearningTags: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, Instructional design, Instructional practices, Student engagement, Student supportsGenerative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), can expand access to expert guidance in domains like education, where such support is often limited. We introduce Tutor CoPilot, a Human-AI system that models expert thinking to assist tutors in real time. In a randomized controlled trial… more →
Using Gaussian Process Regression in Two-Dimensional Regression Discontinuity Designs
Topics: MethodsTags: High schools, Instructional designSometimes a treatment, such as receiving a high school diploma, is assigned to students if their scores on two inputs (e.g., math and English test scores) are above established cutoffs. This forms a multidimensional regression discontinuity design (RDD) to analyze the effect of the educational… more →
Disentangling Person-Dependent and Item-Dependent Causal Effects: Applications of Item Response Theory to the Estimation of Treatment Effect Heterogeneity
Topics: MethodsAnalyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions.
Estimating Treatment Effects with the Explanatory Item Response Model
Topics: MethodsThis simulation study examines the characteristics of the Explanatory Item Response Model (EIRM) when estimating treatment effects when compared to classical test theory (CTT) sum and mean scores and item response theory (IRT)-based theta scores. Results show that the EIRM and IRT theta scores… more →
Computationally Identifying Funneling and Focusing Questions in Classroom Discourse
Topics: Student LearningResponsive teaching is a highly effective strategy that promotes student learning. In math classrooms, teachers might funnel students towards a normative answer or focus students to reflect on their own thinking, deepening their understanding of math concepts. When teachers focus, they treat… more →
The Uncertain Role of Educational Software in Remediating Student Learning: Regression discontinuity evidence from three local education agencies
Topics: Student LearningEducators must balance the needs of students who start the school year behind grade level with their obligation to teach grade-appropriate content to all students. Educational software could help educators strike this balance by targeting content to students’ differing levels of mastery. Using a… more →
Spread Too Thin: The Effects of Teacher Specialization on Student Achievement
Topics: Student LearningAlthough the majority of elementary school teachers are in self-contained classrooms and teach all major subjects, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher… more →
Do 2 weeks of instruction time matter? Using a natural experiment to estimate the effect of a calendar change on students' performance
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Instructional designOne of the most obvious and not sufficiently well understood political decisions in education regards the optimal amount of instruction time required to improve academic performance. This paper considers an unexpected, exogenous regulatory change that reduced the school calendar of non-fee-… more →
Dual Language Education and Academic Growth
Topics: Student LearningThis paper reports math and reading academic achievement and growth in grades 2 to 8 for Hispanic participants and nonparticipants of a Spanish-English dual language program. I apply a piecewise multilevel growth model to administrative data from a large school district that enrolls a… more →
Effects of the Flipped Classroom: Evidence from a Randomized Trial
Topics: Student LearningIn a flipped classroom, an increasingly popular pedagogical model, students view a video lecture at home and work on exercises with the instructor during class time. Advocates of the flipped classroom claim the practice not only improves student achievement, but also ameliorates the achievement… more →