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Nudging Parents out the Door: The Impacts of Parental Encouragement on School Choice and Test Scores
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Counseling, ParentingThis study evaluates a large-scale SMS outreach program to engage caregivers of students in private primary schools in Kenya. Using a two-stage randomization design, we tested two types of weekly SMS messages: growth-mindset encouragement and personalized performance information. We find two… more →
Digital Incentives in Surveys: Response Rates and Sociodemographic Effects in a Large-Scale Parental Nudge Intervention
Topics: MethodsThis study examines how digital incentives influence survey participation and engagement in a large randomized controlled trial of parents across six school districts. We test how incentive amount and information about vendor options affect response behavior and explore differences by language… more →
Parent Perspectives on School Choice: Experimental Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample
Topics: School ChoiceParental attitudes and perspectives of student “success” will likely drive their educational choices, whether residentially assigned district public schools, alternative public schools, private schools, or homeschooling. However, little research has examined the importance of these attitudes on… more →
Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During the Pandemic
Topics: School ChoiceIn this paper, we show how positionality shapes caregivers’ decisions about children’s schooling, by expanding on research on Black families’ educational decision-making (Cooper, 2025; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021) to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply-marginalized… more →
The Causal Effect of Parenting Style on Early Child Development
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Child development, ParentingThis paper presents causal evidence on the impact of parenting practices on early child development. We exploit exogenous changes in nurturing care induced by a parent training intervention to estimate the impact of nurturing parenting practices on child outcomes. We find a large and significant… more →
The Challenges of Scaling up Effective Child-Rearing Practices Using Technology in Developing Settings: Experimental Evidence From India
Topics: Student Well-BeingHome-visitation programs have improved child development in low- and middle-income countries, but they are costly to scale due to their reliance on trained workers. We evaluated an inexpensive and low-tech alternative with 2,433 caregivers of children aged 6 to 30 months served by 250 public… more →
Understanding Heterogeneous Patterns of Family Engagement with Educational Technology to Inform School-Family Communication in Linguistically Diverse Communities
Topics: Families and CommunitiesWe leverage log data from an educational app and two-way text message records from over 3,500 students during the summers of 2019 and 2020, along with in-depth interviews in Spanish and English, to identify patterns of family engagement with educational technology. Based on the type and timing… more →
Parental and Student Time Use Around the Academic Year
Topics: Families and CommunitiesWe demonstrate how mothers, fathers, and 15–17-year-old students alter their schedules around the K-12 academic year. Using regression discontinuity (RDD) methods, combined with dates on school year start and end dates by locality, we document several notable results. First, mothers are… more →
Learning to Value Girls: Balanced Infant Sex Ratios at Higher Parental Education in the U.S. 1969-2018
Topics: Families and CommunitiesInfant sex ratios that differ from the biological norm provide a measure of gender status inequality that is not susceptible to social desirability bias. Ratios may become less biased with educational expansion through reduced preference for male children. Alternatively, bias could increase with… more →
The Impact of a Messaging Intervention on Parents’ School Hesitancy During COVID-19
Morgan S. Polikoff, Daniel Silver, Marshall Garland, Anna R. Saavedra, Amie Rapaport, Michael Fienberg.Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Covid-19 recovery, ParentingDuring the 2020-21 school year, families' access to--and desire to participate in--in-person schooling was highly stratified along racial and income lines. Research to date suggests that "school hesitancy" was driven by concerns about "fit" and safety, as well as simple access to in-person… more →
Public Investments and Class Gaps in Parents’ Developmental Expenditures
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceFamilies and governments are the primary sources of investment in children, proving access to basic resources and other developmental opportunities. Recent research identifies significant class gaps in parental investments that contribute to high levels of inequality by family income and… more →
Aspirations, Education, and Extreme Poverty
Topics: Families and CommunitiesAspirations shape important future-oriented behaviors, including educational investment. Higher family aspirations for children predict better educational outcomes in multiple developing countries. Unfortunately, aspirations sometimes outstrip people's ability to pursue them. We study the… more →
Parental Resources and College Attendance: Evidence from Lottery Wins
Tags: Higher education, ParentingWe examine U.S. children whose parents won the lottery to trace out the effect of financial resources on college attendance. The analysis leverages federal tax and financial aid records and substantial variation in win size and timing. While per-dollar effects are modest, the relationship is… more →
Engaging Girls in Math: The Unequal Effects of Text Messaging to Help Parents Support Early Math Development
Topics: Student LearningThis study assesses the effects of two text messaging programs for parents that aim to support the development of math skills in prekindergarten students. One program focuses purely on math, while the other takes an identical approach but focuses on a combination of math, literacy, and social-… more →
Using a Factorial Design to Maximize the Effectiveness of a Parental Text Messaging Intervention
Topics: Families and CommunitiesParental text messaging interventions are growing in popularity to encourage at-home reading, school-attendance, and other educational behaviors. These interventions, which often combine multiple components, frequently demonstrate varying amounts of effectiveness, and researchers often cannot… more →
Parent Engagement Interventions are Not Costless: Opportunity Cost and Crowd Out of Parental Investment
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: ParentingMany educational interventions encourage parents to engage in their child’s education as if parental time and attention is limitless. Sadly, though, it is not. Successfully encouraging certain parental investments may crowd out other productive behaviors.
The Impact of Low-Ability Peers on Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes: Random Assignment Evidence on the Effects and Operating Channels
Topics: Student LearningThis paper presents new experimental estimates of the impact of low-ability peers on own outcomes using nationally representative data from China. We exploit the random assignment of students to junior high school classrooms and find that the proportion of low-ability peers, defined as having… more →
Can Information Widen Socioeconomic Gaps in Postsecondary Aspirations? How College Costs and Returns Affect Parents’ Preferences for their Children
To estimate whether information can close socioeconomic gaps in parents’ aspirations for their child’s postsecondary education, we administer a four-armed survey experiment to a nationally representative sample of U.S. parents. After respondents estimate costs of and returns to further education… more →
Keeping kids in care: What makes a difference in state CCDF policy?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceChild care subsidies play an important role in stabilizing parental employment and helping low- income families access care. With limited federal requirements under CCDBG, states developed divergent subsidy program policies.
Helping Parents Navigate the Early Childhood Enrollment Process: Experimental Evidence from New Orleans
Topics: School ChoiceThe early childhood enrollment process involves searching for programs, applying, verifying eligibility(for publicly funded seats), and enrolling. Many families do not complete the process. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess strategies for communicating with families as they… more →