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Race, ethnicity, and education
Hmong but not Asian, Sāmoan but not Pacific Islander: Tracing the ECLS-K Racial Data (Mis)Classification Journey
Topics: MethodsRace is a socially and politically charged concept that remains contested in the United States. We examine racial data (mis)classification in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS-K) dataset. Centering the racial data journey of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA… more →
Unequal and Persistent Effects of Student Loan Policy: Evidence from Parent PLUS Reforms
Federal student loan policy is designed as a uniform intervention, yet institutions differ in their reliance on specific sources of financing. We study how these differences shape the transmission of policy shocks using two reforms to the Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (Parent PLUS)… more →
The Impact of the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard Decision on Undergraduate Demographics
The 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) effectively ended the explicit consideration of race in college admissions. This paper examines the impact of SFFA on the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic composition of undergraduate… more →
Student and Faculty Same-Race Matching at Research Universities
Racial disparities in college persistence and completion remain substantial, yet relatively little evidence exists on how student–faculty interactions contribute to these gaps in research universities. This study examines the prevalence and consequences of student–faculty same-race matching… more →
Understanding the Construction of Compliance with Anti-"DEI" Legislation
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceDespite documented harms of anti-“DEI” laws, little is known about the mechanisms that shape implementation to give these laws expanded and suppressive meaning. Guided by legal mobilization theory and repressive legalism, we examine how institutional actors implement legislation restricting… more →
Democratizing School Reform: Race, Participation, and Redistribution in Education
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis paper examines a school-based participatory budgeting initiative as a form of race-conscious democratic design. Drawing on a multi-year study of Participatory Redistribution (PR) in middle schools, I analyze whether embedding deliberative structures into schools can empower racially… more →
Towards a Developmental Model of Democratic Family Rights Policy Regimes: Tracing Federal Literacy Policy, 1968-1990
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Culturally responsive schooling, Race, ethnicity, and education, Reading and literacy educationBy excavating submerged dynamics underlying literacy accountability policy, this historical case study conceptualizes its institutional logic and political drivers. Bridging and extending theorization in American political development and racial political behavior, I contribute an original… more →
A Sandbox for Hard Choices: Using Simulation to Explore School Closure Scenarios and Their Consequences
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool closures are often justified through seemingly neutral criteria such as enrollment or performance, but these metrics can unintentionally deepen educational disparities. This study uses a large urban district’s administrative data to simulate 5,040 closure scenarios, systematically varying… more →
The legacy of Plyler v. Doe: A critical window of inclusion
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study examines whether the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision increased school participation among Latino K–12 students likely to be undocumented in Texas. The analysis asks whether removing tuition and enrollment barriers changed participation patterns relative to comparable states… more →
The Language of Closure: Examining Racial Differences in How A Community Discusses School Closure Metrics
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool closures in urban districts disproportionately affect marginalized communities, yet community input often goes unanalyzed or is reduced to simple frequency counts. This study applies BERTopic, a neural topic modeling approach, to analyze 4,159 suggestions from 2,006 community members… more →
Not Too Young to Notice: The Early Emergence of Racial Disparities in Elementary Students’ School Climate Perceptions
Topics: Student Well-BeingScholarship on school climate often fails to explore the perspectives of elementary-school students. To fill this gap, we use survey-data from Georgia to examine racial disparities in elementary-school students’ school climate perceptions, how they vary over time, and the factors that associate… more →
Examining the Role of Policy Instruments in Supporting Public HBCUs’ College Affordability
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study uses a multiple-case qualitative research design to examine the fiscal policy instruments that members of State Legislative Black Caucuses (SLBC) use to strengthen college affordability and broaden access for undergraduate low-income Black students attending public HBCUs. Guided by… 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 →
Strategic Decision-Making in Higher Education: State Legislators and Affordability Policy for Public HBCUs
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study uses a multiple-case qualitative research design to explores how power dynamics creates challenges and opportunities for SLBCs and their constituent members working to broaden college affordability and access for undergraduate low-income Black students attending public HBCUs. Guided… 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 →
Transitioning Teacher Talent: An Ethnoracial Descriptive Portrait of the Paraprofessional-to-Teacher Pipeline in New York City Public Schools
Districts nationwide seek to diversify the educator workforce, yet pathways for paraprofessionals—typically more ethnoracially and linguistically diverse than the general teacher pipeline—remain understudied. Using administrative data from New York City Public Schools (NYCPS), this study… 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 →
Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income
Nicholas Ainsworth, Aaron J. Ainsworth, Christopher Cleveland, Leah R. Clark, Quentin Brummet, Emily Penner, Jacob Hibel, Andrew Saultz, Michelle Spiegel, Paul Hanselman, Andrew Penner.Topics: Student LearningCurrently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. Under 4… more →
School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income
Nicholas Ainsworth, Christopher Cleveland, Leah R. Clark, Jacob Hibel, Quentin Brummet, Andrew Saultz, Emily Penner, Michelle Spiegel, Paul Yoo, Juan Camilo Cristancho, Paul Hanselman, Andrew Penner.Topics: Student LearningCurrently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets identified as having a disability, yet limited large-scale evidence examines how disability… 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 →