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School districts
Beyond the Special Education Gap: Differences in Special Education Expenditures Between Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools
Topics: School ChoiceResearchers and policymakers have long noted differences in disability enrollment and placement between charter schools and traditional public schools (TPSs), yet little is known about whether these differences correspond to special education expenditures. Using Texas administrative and… more →
Defaults, Discretion, and Local Capacity: District Leaders’ Accounts of Automatic English Learner Reclassification
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAutomatic policies, which produce a preferred outcome unless implementers act otherwise, are rare in K-12 education and have been studied almost entirely using quantitative methods. In 2019, Michigan replaced its district-led procedure for reclassifying students out of English learner (EL)… more →
A National Measure of School District Partisanship for the 2016 to 2024 Presidential Elections
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districtsScholars increasingly interested in the governance of local school districts, which invites curiosity about the partisanship of their voting constituencies. Presently, researchers have to translate precinct-level or county-level votes to school district geographies using imprecise imputation… more →
Do Civic Infrastructures Predict Student Outcomes? Comparing Grassroots and Professional Education Nonprofits
Local civic infrastructures—the networks of organizations, relations, and community resources supporting schools—can shape education policy and practice, yet evidence of their relationship to student outcomes remains limited. We examine this relationship using a novel panel dataset of US… more →
Revisiting Why Superintendents Turn Over: Understanding Pathways Out of School District Leadership
Research has examined many facets of superintendent turnover but offers an incomplete understanding of superintendents’ pathways out of the role. We pair administrative data on Tennessee superintendents over 15 years with hand-collected information about the reported reasons for their departures… more →
Post-pandemic achievement recovery based on student characteristics and district-level policies
Topics: Student LearningIt is well-established that student achievement has declined dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less is known how these patterns may vary by developmental timing of exposure to the pandemic and how district-level policies may have influenced student recovery.
What Drives Special Education Spending: Evidence from Texas School Districts
Special education finance systems rely on observable indicators such as disability classifications and educational placements to allocate resources, yet limited evidence exists regarding whether these indicators correspond to the expenditures districts incur serving students with disabilities.… more →
What’s in Play: The Strategic and Symbolic Use of Racial Equity Frames When Racial Politics Shift
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceShifting racial politics place substantial pressures on organizations to navigate whether and how to sustain DEI commitments. In this study, I examine how partnerships between public school districts and private school improvement organizations (SIOs) responded to shifting environmental… more →
Racial Status Threat and Anti-DEI Efforts in Local School Districts
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study draws on political science theory to analyze how perceived status threats to White social dominance influence local educational politics. We examine the relationship between racial status threat (RST) and the rise of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideas (contentious… more →
Property Tax Salience and Public Good Investment: Evidence from School Bond Elections
Tags: School districtsIn 2019, Texas passed legislation requiring that the ballot text for all school bond referenda include the phrase “THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE,” highlighting property taxes as their primary funding mechanism. Evaluating the impact of this policy change on voter behavior in a difference-in-… more →
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 →