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School districts
The Impact of Statewide Virtual Charter Schools on District Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceEnrollment patterns in K-12 online (“virtual”) charter schools have the potential to influence segregation in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. Yet, research has largely ignored how online schooling options impact racial segregation and poverty concentration within district schools.… more →
Growing Up in Disability-Dense School Districts: Long-Term Impacts of Childhood Exposure on Educational Attainment
This study examines whether growing up in a district with a higher share of people with disabilities shapes long-term educational attainment for children with and without disabilities. Using administrative data on more than 170,000 children from six Texas kindergarten cohorts (1994–1999) who… more →
Public Opinion on Electoral Policy: Evidence from U.S. School Board Elections
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceChanges to electoral systems are relatively rare in established democracies. Conventional explanations for this stability suggest elected officials and citizens who stand to lose influence under new arrangements will oppose change. We explore the nature of public awareness and opinion regarding… more →
Staffing and Resource Allocation in College Access Reform: How Dual Credit Shifts Educational Costs
Tags: Higher education, School districtsObjective. Dual credit (DC), or dual enrollment, is college-level coursework that confers credit towards both high school graduation and a postsecondary degree. As DC has grown rapidly across the country, this study provides needed evidence about how these courses shift… more →
The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWhat political and administrative resources contribute to the realization of rights in the United States? We examine this puzzle in the context of rights to education for students with disabilities by measuring the administrative ease of accessing local special education information: the extent… 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 →
How Large are District Effects on Student Attendance? Implications for School Funding Based on Average Daily Attendance
Tags: Absenteeism, School districtsGreater attendance rates in the K-12 grades demonstrate motivation and discipline and contribute to other desired educational outcomes such as cognitive development. A growing number of states incentivize school districts to increase attendance by allocating funding based on the average number… 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 →
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 →
A Longitudinal Study of External Contract Teacher Employment in Washington State School Districts
This study examines the phenomenon of external teacher contracting in Washington State schools. Using administrative data, we analyze shifting patterns of employment among external contract teachers. External contract teachers now represent a significant portion of the workforce in a few… more →
The Effect of Four-Day School Week Adoption on Teacher Retention and Sorting
As teacher shortages worsen across the U.S., many school districts have implemented a unique solution to attract and retain effective teachers: switching from the traditional five-day school week to a four-day school week (4DSW). I use 17 years of teacher-level employment data from Texas in a… more →
The Influence of Partisanship in Local School Board Elections: Evidence from Exit Polling in Michigan & Rhode Island
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districtsEducation in the U.S. has long been shaped by local school boards elected in nonpartisan contests, a structure intended to shield schools from broader political forces. Today, many states are considering reforms to make school board elections partisan, yet the impact on voters remains unclear.… more →
Values, Visions, and Variation in American School Districts: A Computational Mixed Methods Analysis of School District Strategic Plans
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe decentralization of power is a defining feature of the American education system, allowing schools to reflect community values and needs. Yet, little is known about how values and visions for education hold constant or vary across districts. Through an analysis of 617 district strategic… more →
Does State-Mandated Third-Grade Reading Retention Policy Improve Achievement? Evidence from a Staggered-Adoption Difference-in-Differences Design
Topics: Student LearningThis paper investigates whether the state-mandated third-grade reading retention policy autonomously enhances student achievement or depends on broader literacy reforms. Using district-level data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (2010–2019), I employ a staggered-adoption Difference-in-… 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 →
Schools Never Die: Toward a Dynamic Systems Theory of School Closure
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceEducational researchers and policymakers typically treat school closures as discrete administrative decisions with clear endpoints. This paper challenges that assumption by applying Dynamic Systems Theory to school closure policy and research. We argue that schools function as adaptive… more →
Democracy For What and For Whom?: The Possibilities and Challenges of K-12 School Boards
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceLocal school boards have historically played a major role in the functioning and character of US schools, providing fiscal oversight, shaping policy, and creating avenues for community voice, representation, and accountability. As such, school boards have regularly served as critical sites for… more →
The Fiscal and Resource Effects of Enrollment Increases and Decreases on American Public School Districts
Tags: School districtsPublic school enrollment has decreased over the past few years and is forecast to continue decreasing for the foreseeable future. Experts and educators are concerned about the fiscal and resource effects of these enrollment declines. Using data on all public school districts from 1998 to 2019,… more →
Tabling Debate: How Local Officials Use Agenda Control to Stifle Conflict
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePublic officials influence policymaking by deciding which items receive attention and action — and which do not. Accounts from national legislatures typically explain agenda control in terms of party leadership and discipline. But, do politicians exert agenda control outside highly… more →
School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
Topics: School ChoiceThe pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state- and district-level data to explore enrollment patterns five years after the pandemic’s onset.… more →