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School districts
An Improved Method for Estimating School-Level Characteristics from Census Data
Topics: MethodsTags: School districts, NeighborhoodsWe propose a new method for estimating school-level characteristics from publicly available census data. We use a school’s location to impute its catchment area by aggregating the nearest n census block groups such that the number of school-aged children in those n block groups is just over the… more →
How and Why Do Estimates of US Education Finance Progressivity Change with School-Level Finance Data?
Tags: School districtsHow progressive is school spending when spending is measured at the school-level, instead of the district-level? We use the first dataset on school-level spending across schools throughout the United States to ask to what extent progressivity patterns previously examined across districts are… more →
Does School Funding Matter In a Pandemic? COVID-19 Instructional Models and School Funding Adequacy
The factors that influenced school districts’ decisions to offer virtual, hybrid, or in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year—the first full school year after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic—have been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Some of this research… more →
U.S. School Finance: Resources and Outcomes
Tags: School districts, School reformThe impact of school resources on student outcomes was first raised in the 1960s and has been controversial since then. This issue enters into the decision making on school finance in both legislatures and the courts. The historical research found little consistent or systematic relationship of… more →
Inequality in the Classroom: Electoral Incentives and the Distribution of Local Education Spending
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Equity, School districtsLocally-elected school boards have wide discretion over allocating money among the schools in their district, yet we know relatively little about how they decide “which schools get what.” I argue that electoral incentives are one factor that can influence the distribution of resources: board… more →
Politics and Children’s Books: Evidence from School Library Collections
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe recent spike in book challenges has put school libraries at the center of heated political debates. I investigate the relationship between local politics and school library collections using data on books with controversial content in 6,631 public school libraries. Libraries in conservative… more →
How State Takeovers of School Districts Affect Education Finance, 1990 to 2019
Tags: School districts, School reformState takeover of school districts—a form of political centralization that shifts decision-making power from locally elected leaders to the state—has increased in recent years, often with the purported goal of improving district financial condition. Takeover has affected millions of students… more →
School District Borrowing and Capital Spending: The Effectiveness of State Credit Enhancement
Tags: School districtsSchool districts in the United States often borrow on the municipal bond market to pay for capital projects. Districts serving economically disadvantaged communities tend to receive lower credit ratings and pay higher interest rates. To remedy this problem, 24 states have established credit… more →
Assessing School District Decision-Making: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe COVID-19 pandemic drew new attention to the role of school boards in the U.S. In this paper, we examine school districts' choices of learning modality -- whether and when to offer in-person, virtual, or hybrid instruction -- over the course of the 2020-21 pandemic school year. The… more →
What can we learn from the research on public school reopening decisions in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceBackground: After the near-universal school closures in the United States at the start of the pandemic, lawmakers and educational leaders made plans for when and how to reopen schools for the 2020-21 school year. As school reopening plans and data sets aggregating reopening… more →
Why Do School Districts Matter? An Interdisciplinary Framework and Empirical Review
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districts, EquityWhat guidance does research provide school districts about how to improve system performance and increase equity? Despite over 30 years of inquiry on the topic of effective districts, existing frameworks are relatively narrow in terms of disciplinary focus (primarily educational leadership… more →
Adult Culture Wars and Student Academic Achievement
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceHow do adult "culture wars" in education affect student learning in the classroom? I explore this question by combining information on nearly 500 school district political controversies with data on state test scores. Leveraging variation in the location and timing of these events as the… more →
Self-Interest in Public Service: Evidence from School Board Elections
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIn this paper, we show that the election of a new school board member causes home values in their neighborhood to rise. This increase is identified using narrowly-decided contests and is driven by non-Democratic members, whose neighborhoods appreciate about 4% on average relative to those of… more →
The Impacts of School District Consolidation on Rural Communities: Evidence from Arkansas Reform
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Rural education, School districtsOver the past fifty years, school districts have consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale. While the determinants and effects of district mergers on operations have been studied (Gordon and Knight 2006; Duncombe and Yinger 2007; Jones et al 2008), the impact on communities has not… more →
The Long-Term Effect of North Carolina’s Pre-Kindergarten Program is Larger in School Districts with Lower Rates of Growth in Academic Achievement
Robert C. Carr, Tyler Watts, Jade M. Jenkins, Yu Bai, Ellen S. Peisner-Feinberg, Clara G. Muschkin, Helen F. Ladd, Kenneth A. Dodge.Topics: Student LearningPrior research has found that public investments in North Carolina’s pre-kindergarten program—NC Pre-K—generated positive effects on student reading and math achievement through eighth grade (Bai et al., 2020). This study examined whether the effect of NC Pre-K funding exposure is moderated by… more →
New Schools and New Classmates: The Disruption and Peer Group Effects of School Reassignment
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePolicy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate… more →
All States Close but Red Districts Reopen: The Politics of In-Person Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe COVID-19 pandemic created enormous challenges for public education. We assess the role of political factors and public health in state and local education decisions, especially the continuation of learning during COVID-19. Using an original dataset of state education policies since the start… more →
School District Revenue Shocks, Resource Allocations, and Student Achievement: Evidence from the Universe of U.S. Wind Energy Installations
Tags: School districtsWe examine the impact of wind energy installation on school district finances and student achievement using data on the timing, location, and capacity of the universe of U.S. installations from 1995 through 2017. Wind energy installation substantially increased district revenues, causing large… more →
The Effect of School District Consolidation on Student Achievement: Evidence from Arkansas
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School districts, School reformSchool district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the… more →
Politics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education’s Response to COVID-19
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine how local governments respond to a public health crisis amid high levels of partisan polarization and an increasing tendency for local issues to become nationalized. As an arena that has, in recent years, been relatively separate… more →