Search and Filter
Student supports
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 →
How and Why Racial Isolation Affects Education Costs & the Provision of Equal Educational Opportunity
This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function… more →
What Impacts Should We Expect from Tutoring at Scale? Exploring Meta-Analytic Generalizability
Topics: MethodsU.S. public schools are engaged in an unprecedented effort to expand tutoring in the wake of the pandemic. Broad-based support for scaling tutoring emerged, in part, because of the large effects on student achievement found in prior meta-analyses. We conduct an expanded meta-analysis of 282… more →
The Scaling Dynamics and Causal Effects of a District-Operated Tutoring Program
Public school systems across the U.S. have made major investments in tutoring to support students’ academic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluate a large urban district’s efforts to design, implement, and scale a district-operated, standards-based tutoring program across… more →
Early Life Health Conditions and Racial Gaps in Education
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceRacial disparities in infant health conditions have persisted for decades. However, there is surprisingly limited evidence regarding the long-term consequences of these disparities. Using novel linked administrative data from Texas and the shift to Medicaid Managed Care (MMC), I show that MMC-… more →
Did COVID-19 Shift the “Grammar of Schooling”?
Topics: Families and CommunitiesThe immediate impacts of COVID-19 on K12 schooling are well known. Over nearly 18 months, students’ academic performance and mental health deteriorated dramatically. This study aims to identify if and how the pandemic led to longer-term changes in core aspects of schooling.
Implementation and Impacts of Career-Focused Advising
Recent policies have expanded the availability of career-focused advising in high schools, including for students pursuing career and technical education (CTE) courses of study who might not have been adequately served by traditional college-focused advising. However, there is limited research… more →
Priceless Benefits: Effects of School Spending on Child Mortality
Topics: Student Well-BeingThe academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments… more →
Understanding Individualized Education Program (IEP) Goals at Scale
Topics: Student LearningStudents with disabilities represent 15% of U.S. public school students. Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) inform how students with disabilities experience education. Very little is known about the aspects of IEPs as they are historically paper-based forms. In this study, we develop a… more →