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Capturing Voter Turnout at the School District Level: Validating a Geospatial Strategy
Topics: MethodsTags: Neighborhoods, School districtsSchool boards are critical sites of education policymaking, yet scholarship on these institutions is scarce because of severe data limitations. We introduce a geospatial strategy and open-source R package, called “Query, Overlay, Recover” (QOR), that generates high-quality estimates of voter… more →
Residential Segregation and Unequal Access to Local Public Services in India: Evidence from 1.5m Neighborhoods
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe study residential segregation and access to public services across 1.5 million urban and rural neighborhoods in India. Muslim and Scheduled Caste segregation in India is high by global standards, and only slightly lower than Black-White segregation in the U.S. Within cities, public facilities… more →
College Enrollment Patterns After SFFA v. Harvard
Michael D. Bloem, Ashley Edwards, J. Parker Goyer, Jessica Howell, Xiaowen Hu, Michael Hurwitz, Samuel J. Imlay, Jennifer Ma, Matea Pender.We study how U.S. high school students’ patterns of college entry changed in the first year after the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard ruling. Drawing on a rich dataset linking more than 12 million domestic PSAT, SAT, and AP takers in the 2021-2024 high school graduation cohorts to their… more →
U.S. Schools’ Proximity to Environmental Hazard Sites: A National Analysis
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe conduct a nationwide assessment of U.S. PreK-12 public and private schools’ proximity to known environmental hazard sites tracked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Superfund sites, Brownfields, and Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Prior research documents a range of negative… more →
The West Texas Measles Outbreak and Student Absences
Topics: Student Well-BeingDeclining child-vaccination rates are driving a measles resurgence in the US, yet little evidence documents how these outbreaks may disrupt schooling. Using daily absence data from a school district at the center of the West Texas outbreak, this preregistered analysis finds absences increased 41… more →
The Effect of Centralized-Admission School Lotteries on Between-School Segregation: Evidence from 300 Largest School Districts in the United States
Topics: School ChoiceThis study examines how centralized-admission school lotteries affect between-school racial and ethnic segregation in the largest U.S. public school districts. Using original nationwide panel data and a difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption, the research analyzes effects on… more →
The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Student Outcomes in a New Era of Immigration Policy in the United States
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study presents the first evidence, to our knowledge, of the effects of the surge in interior immigration apprehensions in 2025 in the United States on student academic performance using detailed student-level administrative records from Florida. We find evidence that immigration enforcement… more →
Neighborhood Effects on STEM Major Choice
Tags: Higher education, NeighborhoodsThis paper provides causal evidence that the neighborhoods where students grow up play a significant role in shaping their college major choices, focusing on STEM fields. Using administrative data from Texas and variation in the timing of school moves across counties and districts, we estimate… more →
From Rural Schools to City Factories: Assessing the Quality of Chinese Rural Schools
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe changing pattern of quality in China’s rural schools across time and province is extracted from the differential labor market earnings of rural migrant workers. Variations in rates of return to years of schooling across migrant workers working in the same urban labor market but having… more →
The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions
Topics: School ChoiceIn this paper, I investigate how publicizing school social climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different economic backgrounds. I first provide descriptive evidence on the novelty of school climate relative to other school… more →
Assessing Permanent School Closures: A Conceptual Framework
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAmid widespread declining enrollment, the expiration of COVID-19 ESSER funding, and looming uncertainty in federal P-12 education involvement, many school districts may soon consider permanent school closures. While extant permanent school closure literature provides a starting point for future… more →
Choosing Schools in Choice Neighborhoods: Impacts of Student Mobility, School Composition, and Case Management on Academic Outcomes
Topics: School ChoiceThis study examines the academic impacts of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a federal public housing revitalization program, focusing on how case management, student mobility, and school compositional change intersect to shape outcomes. Using an eight-year student-level panel (2015–… more →
Searching for the Queen’s Gambit: An Exploratory Analysis of Male-Female Ratings Gaps in U.S. Chess
Topics: Student LearningWe examine the origin and evolution of male-female rating gaps for young chess players using two decades of data from the U.S. Chess Federation, the national chess association that tracks competitive tournament play and provides ratings for U.S. chess players. An important feature of our… more →
Making the Case? Unpacking Family Case Management Effects and School Effects in Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiatives
Topics: Families and CommunitiesMixed-income initiatives provide critical investments in neighborhoods, including investments to improve schools, and provide case management and family support services to low-income families. The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) is one of the largest and most comprehensive mixed-income… more →
How Does Early Achievement Predict Within-Year Student Mobility? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Topics: Student LearningStudent mobility that occurs within a school year may be especially disruptive for student outcomes, yet little is known regarding the predictors of within-year mobility. In particular, research has yet to comprehensively examine the role of student achievement in predicting within-year student… more →
Count Me In? Identifying Factors That Predict Centers’ Application to Boston’s Mixed-Delivery Universal Pre-K Program
Topics: MethodsUniversal prekindergarten (UPK) programs often expand through mixed-delivery systems by offering seats in public schools and community-based centers (CBOs). Although this approach aims to meet varied family needs, little is known about potential systematic differences between CBOs that apply to… more →
Unequal Access: How Public Library Closures Affect Educational Performance
Topics: Families and CommunitiesLocal public institutions, such as public libraries, offer access to low-cost educational resources, potentially mitigating human capital investment disparities. However, from 2008 to 2019, 766 public library outlets closed across the US, reducing access to these critical resources. This study… more →
Peer Income Exposure Across the Income Distribution
Michelle Spiegel, Leah Clark, Thurston Domina, Emily Penner, Paul Hanselman, Paul Yoo, Andrew M. Penner.Topics: Families and CommunitiesChildren from families across the income distribution attend public schools, making schools and classrooms potential sites for interaction between more- and less-affluent children. However, limited information exists regarding the extent of economic integration in these contexts. We merge… more →
Variations in Pre-Primary Education Infrastructure Within and Across Administrative Sectors in Rwanda
Topics: Families and CommunitiesThis study examines disparities in structural quality across Rwanda’s pre-primary modalities—centre-based, community-based, and home-based—operating under a single policy framework. Using data from 4,875 settings across 91 administrative sectors in seven districts, we applied multilevel models… 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 →