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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 investigates disparities in the quality of pre-primary education settings in Rwanda, focusing on differences across setting types—centre-based, community-based, and home-based—and examining the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) at the sector level. Using a dataset of 4,875… 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 →
The Implications of Digital School Quality Information for Neighborhood and School Segregation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Los Angeles
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceA digital information explosion has transformed cities’ residential and educational markets in ways that are still being uncovered. Although urban stratification scholars have increasingly scrutinized whether emerging digital platforms disrupt or reproduce longstanding segregation patterns,… more →
Local Licensure and Teacher Shortage: Policy Analysis and Implications
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe use frame analysis to analyze the first iteration of the Texas District of Innovation policy, which allows districts to take exemption from state education requirements mandating the hiring of a state certified teacher. We analyzed 451 district policies and find the plans use very similar,… more →
Neighbors' Spillovers on High School Choice
Topics: School ChoiceDo residential neighbors affect each others' schooling choices? We exploit oversubscription lotteries in Chile's centralized school admission system to identify the effect of close neighbors on application and enrollment decisions. A student is 5-7% more likely to rank a high school as their… more →
How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Influence School Board Elections?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Covid-19 recovery, NeighborhoodsMedia reports suggest that parent frustration with COVID school policies and the growing politicization of education have increased community engagement with local public schools. However, there is no evidence to date on whether these factors have translated into greater engagement at the ballot… more →
The Politics of Teachers' Union Endorsements
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Neighborhoods, School districtsSchool board candidates supported by local teachers' unions overwhelmingly win and we examine the causes and consequences of the "teachers' union premium" in these elections. First, we show that union endorsement information increases voter support. Although the magnitude of this effect varies… more →
Dual Language Program Expansion and Dispersion in the Context of Neighborhood Change, School Choice, and Enrollment Decline
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: NeighborhoodsPurpose. Bilingual programs in the United States, particularly two-way dual language immersion (TWDL) programs, have been implemented since the 1960s to support the education of English Learner-classified (EL-classified) and language minoritized students. Over the past decade, TWDL programs have… more →
An Improved Method for Estimating School-Level Characteristics from Census Data
Topics: MethodsTags: School districts, NeighborhoodsWe propose a new method for estimating school-level characteristics from publicly available census data. We use a school’s location to impute its catchment area by aggregating the nearest n census block groups such that the number of school-aged children in those n block groups is just over the… more →
Are Connections the Way to Get Ahead? Social Capital, Student Achievement, Friendships, and Social Mobility
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Neighborhoods, EquityChetty et al. (2022) say county density of cross-class friendships (referred to here as “adult-bridging capital”) has causal impacts on social mobility within the United States. We instead find that social mobility rates are a function of county density of family capital (higher marriage rates… more →