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Race, ethnicity, and education
HBCU Enrollment and Longer-Term Outcomes
Using data from nearly 1.2 million Black SAT takers, we estimate the impacts of initially enrolling in an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) on educational, economic, and financial outcomes. We control for the college application portfolio and compare students with similar… more →
Who becomes a teacher when entry requirements are reduced? An analysis of emergency licenses in Massachusetts
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teacher candidates’ capacity to complete licensure requirements. In response, many states temporarily reduced professional entry requirements to prevent a pandemic-induced teacher shortage. Using mixed methods, we examine the role of the emergency teaching license… more →
(Pay)Walled Gardens: Status and Racialized Discourse Among Authors of Student Loan News Articles
News media plays a crucial role in the student loan policy ecosystem by influencing how policymakers and the public understand the “problem” of student loans. Prior research emphasizes the causal impact of the media on the social construction of policy issues and the lack of knowledge about the… more →
Suspended from Work and School? Impacts of Layoff Events and Unemployment Insurance on Student Disciplinary Incidence
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe examine the impact of local labor market shocks and state unemployment insurance (UI) policies on student discipline in U.S. public schools. Analyzing school-level discipline data and firm-level layoffs in 23 states, we find that layoffs have little effect on discipline rates on average. However… more →
The Politics of Pandemic School Operations for Reopening and Beyond: Evidence from Virginia
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePost COVID, is education losing its special status as a policy domain more insulated from partisan politics than other policy areas? Indeed, a community’s political makeup influenced its’ schools’ pandemic learning modality, but did it predict other aspects of educational operations? We study… more →
OK Boomer: Generational Differences in Teacher Quality
We document that recent generations of elementary school teachers are significantly more effective in raising student test scores than those from earlier generations. Measuring teachers’ value-added for Black and white students separately, the improvements in teaching for Black students are… more →
Diversity Trends Among Faculty in STEM and non-STEM Fields at Selective Public Universities in the U.S. from 2016 to 2023
During the 2015-16 academic year, racial protests swept across college campuses in the U.S. These protests were followed by large university investments in initiatives to promote diversity, which combined with existing diversity dynamics, have helped to shape recent faculty diversity trends. We… more →
Investigating the “Draw of Home” and Teachers’ Career Decisions
Research shows that teachers seek out jobs close to home, but previous studies have been unable to test whether proximity to home is related to retention in the teaching profession. We leverage a unique dataset from Teach For America (TFA) linking individuals’ preferred teaching locations,… more →
Framing Effects and the Public’s Attitudes toward Racial Equity in Education Policy
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceFrames shape public opinion on policy issues, with implications for policy adoption and agenda-setting. What impact do common issue frames for racial equity in education have on voters’ support for racially equitable education policy? Across survey experiments with two independent representative… more →
Racial, linguistic, and economic diversity across schools with two-way dual language immersion programs: Evidence from Los Angeles Unified School District
Sarah Asson, Erica Frankenberg, Clemence Darriet, Lucrecia Santibanez, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Francesa Lopéz.Topics: Families and CommunitiesTwo-way dual language immersion programs (TWDL) aim to integrate English speakers and speakers of a partner language in the same classroom to receive content instruction in both languages. Stated goals include bilingualism and biliteracy, high academic achievement, and sociocultural competence.… more →
“Non-Submitters:” Evidence on Students Who Start but Don’t Complete a College Application
Not all students who could benefit from college apply. With novel data on over 1.2 million high schoolers, we show that nearly 25% start but never complete a college application. We use descriptive techniques, data visualizations, and fixed effects models to explore this population of college-… more →
Educational Spillover Effects of New English Learners in a New Destination State
Topics: Student LearningThe number of English learners enrolled in public schools has grown substantially in the United States over the past two decades. The growth is especially large in states in the South and Midwest that have not been traditional destinations for recent immigrants. In this study, we examine the… more →
Spillover Effects of Black Teachers on White Teachers’ Racial Competency: Mixed Methods Evidence from North Carolina
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe US teaching force remains disproportionately white while the student body grows more diverse. It is therefore important to understand how and under what conditions white teachers learn racial competency. This study applies a mixed-methods approach to investigate the hypothesis that Black… more →
Within-School Heterogeneity in Quality: Do Schools Provide Equal Value Added to All Students?
Topics: Families and CommunitiesLow-socioeconomic status (SES), minority, and male students perform worse than their high-SES, non-minority, and female peers on standardized tests. This paper investigates how within-school differences in school quality contribute to these educational achievement gaps. Using individual-level… more →
Race below the fold: Race-evasiveness in the news media’s coverage of student loans
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe media discourse on student loans plays a significant role in the way that policy actors conceptualize challenges and potential solutions related to student debt. This study examines the racialized language in student loan news articles published in eight major news outlets between 2006 and… more →
Structured Choice: School Segregation at the Intersection of Policy and Preferences
Deven Carlson, Thurston Domina, James S. Carter III, Rachel M. Perera, Andrew McEachin, Vitaly Radsky.Topics: School ChoiceThis paper conceptualizes segregation as a phenomenon that emerges from the intersection of public policy and individual decision-making. Contemporary scholarship on complex decision-making describes a two-step process—1) Editing and 2) Selection— and has emphasized the individual decision-maker… more →
Inequality Beyond Standardized Tests: Trends in Extracurricular Activity Reporting in College Applications Across Race and Class
Julie J. Park, Brian Heseung Kim, Nancy Wong, Jia Zheng, Stephanie Breen, Pearl Lo, Dominique J. Baker, Kelly Ochs Rosinger, Mike Hoa Nguyen, OiYan Poon.For years, discussions on inequality in college admissions have addressed standardized tests, but less is known about inequality in non-standardized components of applications. We analyzed extracurricular activity descriptions in 6,054,104 applications submitted through the Common Application… more →
Where are the Gifted English Learners and Students with Disabilities?
Prior research has documented substantial inequity across, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines within the population of students identified as gifted. Less attention has paid to the equity of gifted identification for student learning English or those with disabilities and what effect state… more →
Revisiting Ethnic Differences in In-Person Learning During 2021-2022
Topics: Families and CommunitiesDuring the 2020-21 school year, Black and Hispanic students were less likely to attend school in-person than white students. Prior research indicated multiple factors helped explain this gap. In this study, we revise these observed racial gaps in in-person learning to examine whether the… more →
Are Four-Year Public Colleges Engines for Economic Mobility? Evidence from Statewide Admissions Thresholds
Four-year public colleges may play an important role in supporting intergenerational mobility by providing an accessible path to a bachelor’s degree and increasing students' earnings. Leveraging a midsize state’s GPA- and SAT-based admissions thresholds for the four-year public sector, I use a… more →