Finance

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 →

There is a large and growing number of non-degree credential offerings between a high school diploma and a bachelor's degree, as well as degree programs beyond a bachelor’s degree. Nevertheless, research on the financial returns to non-degree credentials and degree-granting programs is often… more →

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 →

The U.S. has witnessed a resurgence of labor activism, with teachers at the forefront. We examine how teacher strikes affect compensation, working conditions, and productivity with an original dataset of 772 teacher strikes generating 48 million student days idle between 2007 and 2023. Using an… more →

Targeted school funding is a potentially valuable policy lever to increase educational equality by race, ethnicity, and income, but it remains unclear how to target funds most effectively. We use a regression discontinuity approach to compare districts that narrowly passed or failed a school… more →

The 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 →

This study uses a concurrent embedded mixed-methods design to assess the impact of additional funding on student outcomes in a large, urban school district in the Southeastern United States. The district implemented student-based budgeting (SBB), which allocates dollars to schools based on… more →

“Free college” programs are widespread in American higher education. They are discussed as addressing college access, affordability, inequality, and skills shortages. Many are last-dollar tuition guarantees restricted to use at single community colleges. Using student-level data spanning the… more →

School finance inequities are a key driver of disparities in educational outcomes. Higher per-pupil funding levels allow schools to provide more qualified educators, smaller class sizes, and high-quality physical resources such as modern instructional technology. We study how Washington state… more →

This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of a one-time emergency financial relief program among Pell Grant eligible undergraduate students in Spring 2015 pursuing their first bachelor’s degree across academic and financial outcomes. The academic outcomes included retention to the… more →

Promise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors… more →

This manuscript explores the argument for lower student-to-school counselor ratios in U.S. public education. Drawing upon a comprehensive historical review and existing research, we establish the integral role of school counselors and the notable benefits of reduced student-tocounselor ratios.… more →

Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers is a pressing policy concern. Increasing teacher salaries and creating more attractive compensation packages are often proposed as a potential solution. Signed into law in March 2023, the LEARNS Act increased Arkansas's minimum teacher salary from $… more →

Why do employers offer pensions? We empirically explore two theoretical rationales, namely that pensions may improve worker effort and worker selection. We examine these hypotheses using administrative measures on effort and output in public schools around the pension-… more →

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically… more →

To understand the causes and consequences of polarized demand for government expenditure, we conduct three field experiments in the context of public higher education. The first two experiments study polarization in taxpayer demand. We provide information to shape beliefs about social returns on… more →

We analyzed the proposed spending data for the American Recovery Plan’s Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief III (ESSER III) fund from the spring of 2021 of nearly 3,000 traditional public-school districts in the United States to (1) identify trends in the strategies adopted and (2) to test… more →

This study provides the first causal analysis of the impact of expanding Computer Science (CS) education in U.S. K-12 schools on students’ choice of college major and early career outcomes. Utilizing rich longitudinal data from Maryland, we exploit variation from the staggered rollout of CS… more →

This paper identifies which investments in school facilities help students and are valued by homeowners. Using novel data on school district bonds, test scores, and house prices for 29 U.S. states and a research design that exploits close elections with staggered timing, we show that increased… more →

This study investigates how individual states raise revenue to pay for elementary-secondary education spending following school finance reforms (SFRs). We identify states that increased and sustained education expenditures after reform, search for legislative statutes that appropriated more… more →