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Student supports
Fast Track to Success? A Mixed Methods Evaluation of Condensed Course Formats at Tennessee Community Colleges
Kaylee T. Matheny, Madison Dell, Gus Gluek, Rachel Baker, Eric Bettinger, Alex Monday, Hidahis Mesa.As colleges face increasing pressure to improve student outcomes, one solution gaining traction is the adoption of condensed courses (i.e., shortened academic terms). We employ quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effect of enrolling in a condensed course on course- and student-level… more →
Beyond the One-Teacher Model: Experimental Evidence on Using Embedded Paraprofessionals as Personalized Instructors
Topics: Student LearningUsing embedded paraprofessionals to provide personalized instruction is a promising model for differentiating instruction within the classroom. This study examines two randomized controlled trials of paraprofessional-led tutoring in early-grade math and literacy. However, intent-to-treat (ITT)… more →
Behind the Scenes: Faculty-Staff Collaboration in a Student Success Effort
Interventions to improve postsecondary student success often involve supports that are external to the college classroom, although there is growing evidence that faculty involvement in interventions can improve student outcomes. This paper explores the challenges that arise when faculty and… more →
The impact of increasing school resources on peer victimization: Evidence from targeted funding on low-income families in Chile
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWhile a large body of literature has examined the impact of school spending on academic outcomes, far less is known about its effect on students’ socioemotional development and school experiences. This study contributes to narrowing this gap by evaluating the impact of a nationwide school… more →
Comparative Cost Analyses of Community College Student Success Initiatives
Limited resources hinder completion and exacerbate inequality in community colleges. Existing research identifies strategies that raise outcomes but leaves policymakers and campus leaders asking, “What do these interventions really cost—and can we afford it?” I answer these questions by… more →
Reclassifying English Learners
Topics: Student LearningMost English learners (ELs) eventually gain sufficient English proficiency to be reclassified and receive instruction without linguistic supports. Though well-identified, prior regression discontinuity estimates for the effect of reclassification are estimated too imprecisely to detect policy-… more →
The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor’s Degree Completion through the City University of New York ACE Program
Judith Scott-Clayton, Irwin Garfinkel, Elizabeth Ananat, Sophie Collyer, Robert Paul Hartley, Anastasia Koutavas, Buyi Wang, Christopher Wimer.In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program— Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)—aimed at improving college graduation rates. A randomized-control evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry.… more →
The Unintended Cost of Distance Learning: An Analysis of Child Maltreatment
Topics: Student Well-BeingEducation personnel play a crucial role in identifying and reporting child maltreatment. However, school closures amid COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this vital reporting system. I causally investigate how remote learning influenced trends in child maltreatment reports and risks, leveraging county-… more →
The Impacts of Grade Retention Policy With Minimal Retention
Topics: Student LearningState laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan’s third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21… more →
The “Work” of Mobilizing, Advocating, and Organizing for Care in The School District Central Office
Topics: Student Well-BeingThis paper presents a case study of a caring school district located in a farmworker community composed largely of Latinx families. I examine how central office leaders create or maintain care supports under crisis conditions. Findings suggest that district-level care was multidimensional and… more →
Educator Attention: How computational tools can systematically identify the distribution of a key resource for students
Topics: MethodsEducator attention is critical for student success, yet how educators distribute their attention across students remains poorly understood due to data and methodological constraints. This study presents the first large-scale computational analysis of educator attention patterns, leveraging over… more →
Causal Mechanisms of Relative Age Effects on Adolescent Risky Behaviours
Topics: Student Well-BeingAge differences between classmates are attracting growing attention in academic research and public policy, yet their underlying mechanisms remain understudied. We examine how relative age affects adolescents’ risky behaviors across Europe. Using Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC)… more →
Leveling the Playing Field: Default Policy and its Effects on English Learner Reclassification
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Poverty, Student supportsReclassification, the process by which English learner (EL) students exit EL classification, often determines ELs’ access to mainstream academic coursework. While existing research finds that many students who demonstrate English proficiency do not reclassify, few studies evaluate policies that… more →
The Role of Comprehensive Student Support Interventions during School Turnaround
Topics: MethodsThe persistence of underperformance in schools within large urban districts remains a significant challenge in the U.S. K-12 education system. Education policymakers have enacted legislation aiming at improving these schools through ``turnaround'' initiatives. However, students attending… more →
Do Innovative Career Pathways in Massachusetts High Schools Promote Equitable Access to Higher Education?
Two persistent shortcomings of the American labor market are the wage gaps and unequal unemployment rates that exist between racial groups. More specifically, Black and Latinx high school graduates earn less and are more likely to be unemployed than their White counterparts, on average. Likewise… more →
Are Community College Students Increasingly Choosing High-Paying Fields of Study? Evidence from Massachusetts
The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by… more →
Distance to Degrees: How College Proximity Shapes Students’ Enrollment Choices and Attainment Across Race-Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status
Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are… more →
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise
Topics: Student LearningTags: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, Instructional design, Instructional practices, Student engagement, Student supportsGenerative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), can expand access to expert guidance in domains like education, where such support is often limited. We introduce Tutor CoPilot, a Human-AI system that models expert thinking to assist tutors in real time. In a randomized controlled trial… more →
Framing the pandemic: Tracking educational problem formulation, Spring 2020-Fall 2021
We use data from the applications North Carolina public school districts and charter schools submitted for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) to investigate the sense that educational leaders made of the pandemic as it unfolded. LEAs understood the pandemic as a… more →
Understanding the Association Between Educational Experiences and Economic and Social Mobility: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
Topics: Student LearningTags: Poverty, Student supportsUsing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, we examine differences in educational experiences and in social and economic mobility for youths experiencing poverty relative to their more affluent peers. We also explore the extent to which different educational experiences are… more →