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Learning environments
Does School Context Moderate the Relationship between Student Mobility and Academic Performance? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Topics: Student LearningStudent mobility is highly prevalent in the United States and has negative impacts on students’ academic performance. Within-year mobility may be especially disruptive. However, research on the impacts of within-year mobility is limited, and less is known how impacts may vary across different… more →
Beyond School Police Officers: Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Exposure to a Fuller Range of School Disciplinary Personnel
Topics: Student Well-BeingUsing data from the 2017–18 and 2020–21 Civil Rights Data Collection, we document dis-parities in exposure to disciplinary staff across US high schools and geographic levels. Black and Hispanic students are exposed to 1.1 and 0.8 more disciplinary personnel than White students, respectively,… more →
The Effects of School Building HVAC System Conditions on Student Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
Topics: Student Well-BeingThere is growing awareness of the importance of school building environments for student health, well-being, and even educational outcomes. We ask in this study what role school building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play in shaping student attendance, behavior, and… more →
What’s the Goal Here? Educator’s Perspectives of Iowa’s Senate File 496 on School Mental Health Systems
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIowa's Senate File 496 requires parent permission to formally survey students about their mental health, bans the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools before 7th grade, mandates schools obtain parental permission to use a nick name, and bans any books that depict or… more →
Falling Behind as Peers Age Up: The Effects of Peer Age on Student Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes
Topics: Student LearningUnderstanding the factors that influence student outcomes is crucial for both parents and schools when designing effective educational strategies. This paper explores the impact of peer age on both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes using a randomized sample of middle school students. By… more →
Ending Early Grade Suspensions
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe investigate the beginning of the school discipline pipeline using a reform in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that limited the use of out-of- school suspension for students in grades K–2. We find that the reform reduced the likelihood of out-of-school suspension by 1.4 percentage points (56%)… more →
The Role and Influence of Exclusively Online Degree Programs in Higher Education
This study leverages national data and a quasi-experimental design to examine the influence of enrolling in an exclusively online degree program on students’ likelihood of completing their degree. We find that enrolling in an exclusively online degree program had a negative influence on students… more →
Estimating Learning When Test Scores Are Missing: The Problem and Two Solutions
Topics: MethodsTags: Assessment, Learning environmentsLongitudinal studies can produce biased estimates of learning if children miss tests. In an application to summer learning, we illustrate how missing test scores can create an illusion of large summer learning gaps when true gaps are close to zero. We demonstrate two methods that reduce bias by… more →
From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice in Schools
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Absenteeism, Counseling, Culturally responsive schooling, Curriculum, Elementary schools, High schools, Human capital, Juvenile justice, Learning environments, School climate and culture, School districts, School reform, Social and emotional learning, Student discipline, Student well-beingSchool districts historically approached conflict-resolution from the perspective that suspending disruptive students was necessary to protect their classmates, even if this caused harm to perceived offenders. Restorative practices (RP) – focused on reparation, accountability, and shared… more →
The Effect of Universal Free School Meals on Child BMI
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Poverty, Learning environmentsWe estimate the effect of universal free school meal access through the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) on child BMI. Through the CEP, schools with high percentages of students qualified for free or reduced-priced meals can offer freebreakfast and lunchto all students. With administrative… more →
Heterogeneity of item-treatment interactions masks complexity and generalizability in randomized controlled trials
Ishita Ahmed, Masha Bertling, Lijin Zhang, Andrew D. Ho, Prashant Loyalka, Hao Xue, Scott Rozelle, Benjamin W. Domingue.Topics: MethodsResearchers use test outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of education interventions across numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Aggregate test data—for example, simple measures like the sum of correct responses—are compared across treatment and control groups to determine whether an… more →
“I Don’t Think the System Will Ever Be the Same”: Distance Education Leaders’ Predictions and Recommendations for the Use of Online Learning in Community Colleges Post-COVID
While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the… more →
Mixed-Delivery Public Prekindergarten: Differences in Demographics, Quality, and Children’s Gains in Community-Based versus Public School Programs across Five Large-Scale Systems
Christina Weiland, Meghan P. McCormick, Jennifer Duer, Allison Friedman-Kraus, Mirjana Pralica, Samantha Xia, Milagros Nores, Shira Mattera.Topics: Student LearningNearly all states with public prekindergarten programs use mixed-delivery systems, with classrooms in both public schools and community-based settings. However, experts have long raised concerns about systematic inequities by setting within these public systems. We used data from… more →
Students' Grade Satisfaction Influences Evaluations of Teaching: Evidence from Individual-level Data and an Experimental Intervention
Student surveys are widely used to evaluate university teaching and increasingly adopted at the K-12 level, although there remains considerable debate about what they measure. Much disagreement focuses on the well-documented correlation between student grades and their evaluations of instructors… more →
Do Refugee Students Affect the Academic Achievement of Peers? Evidence from a Large Urban School District
Topics: Student LearningPolicy debate on refugee resettlement focuses on perceived adverse effects on local communities, with sparse credible evidence to ascertain its impact. This paper examines whether attending school with refugees affects the academic outcomes of non-refugee students. Leveraging variation in the… more →
The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing Across the U.S.
Topics: Student Well-BeingU.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet, little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national… more →
Increasing success in higher education: The relationships of online course taking with college completion and time-to-degree
Online courses provide flexible learning opportunities, but research suggests that students may learn less and persist at lower rates compared to face-to-face settings. However, few research studies have investigated more distal effects of online education. In this study we analyzed six years of… more →
Is a Name Change a Game Change? The Impact of College-to-University Conversions
In the competitive U.S. higher education market, institutions differentiate themselves to attract both students and tuition dollars. One understudied example of this differentiation is the increasing trend of "colleges" becoming "universities" by changing their names. Leveraging variation in the… more →
High-Impact Tutoring: State of the Research and Priorities for Future Learning
Topics: Student LearningResearch consistently demonstrates that tutoring interventions have substantial positive effects on student learning. As a result, tutoring has emerged as a promising strategy for addressing COVID-related learning loss and affording greater educational opportunities for students living in… more →
Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students
Topics: Student LearningWe study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among… more →