K-12 Education
The Differential Sorting of Disadvantaged Students in the Competitive K-12 Market
School choice options offer potential educational gains for disadvantaged students, but do they take advantage of such options? I study the sorting patterns of students with prior child welfare reports (12 percent of incoming kindergartners) across traditional public, magnet, charter, and… more →
Making the Grade: Accounting for Course Selection in High School Transcripts with Item Response Theory
We use student-level administrative data from Delaware for 43,767 high school students across five 12th grade cohorts from 2017 to 2021. We apply Item Response Theory (IRT) to high school transcript data, treating courses as items and grades as ordered responses, to estimate both student… more →
Effects of High-Impact Tutoring on Student Attendance: Evidence from the OSSE HIT Initiative in the District of Columbia
Student absenteeism, which skyrocketed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, has negative consequences for student engagement and achievement. This study examines the impact of the High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) Initiative, implemented by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in… more →
Empty Plates, Empty Seats: Food Insecurity and Student Absence in the US and Across the Globe
Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in student absenteeism in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, food insecurity remains a persistent issue across the globe, including in the US. Food insecurity shapes students’ immediate and wider contexts and may worsen school… more →
The Architecture of Expected Wage Gaps: Between- and Within-School Sources of Career Education Inequality
Using administrative data from Delaware and aggregate occupational wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this paper examines expected wage inequality in Career and Technical Education (CTE) by analyzing how student demographics relate to selection into programs of study (POS) with… more →
What Happens When We Pay Our Teachers More? Evidence from New Jersey Public Schools
This paper examines the impact of increasing teacher salaries on student outcomes by exploiting variation from the “50K The First Day” campaign that established a $50K salary floor for new teachers across New Jersey school districts. Using school-level data from 2003 to 2019, we employ a… more →
Measuring Conflict in Local Politics
Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in American's lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this paper, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and… more →
Experimental Effects of “Opportunity Gap” and “Achievement Gap” Frames
Racial equity in education is often framed around “closing the achievement gap,” but many scholars argue this frame perpetuates deficit mindsets. The “opportunity gap” (OG) frame has been offered as an alternative to focus attention on structural injustices. In a preregistered survey experiment… more →
Integrating Open Science Principles into Quasi-Experimental Social Science Research
Quasi-experimental methods are a cornerstone of applied social science, providing critical answers to causal questions that inform policy and practice. Although open science principles have influenced experimental research norms across the social sciences, these practices are rarely implemented… more →
Entering and Exiting the Foster Care System: Implications for Absenteeism Among Child Welfare Involved Youth
While foster youth miss more school versus their non-foster counterparts, their status as a foster youth is not static, with many of them entering and exiting the foster care system over time. These dynamics of entry and exit can represent particularly crucial transition periods of stability and… more →
A Bibliometric Review of Research on Inequality of Educational Achievement, 1934 to 2023
In this bibliometric review of the research landscape on achievement gaps, we analyze temporal trends and geographic distributions, identify key scholars and publications, and uncover the intellectual structure and thematic focus of achievement gap research. By examining 1,607 achievement gap… more →
The Effects of School Building HVAC System Conditions on Student Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
There is growing awareness of the importance of school building environments for student health, well-being, and even educational outcomes. We ask in this study what role school building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play in shaping student attendance, behavior, and… more →
Measuring the Affective Language of Principals' Evaluation Feedback and Investigating Differences by Principal Gender and Race
Over the past decade, reforms to principal evaluation systems have sought to incorporate formal feedback structures as a lever for principal improvement. However, we know little about the feedback that principals receive. Using statewide administrative data from Tennessee, including principals’… more →
Exploring the Move Away from ‘Zero -Tolerance’ Policies: Evidence from Restorative Justice Practices in Texas and Michigan Schools
This study examines the impact of statewide Restorative Justice (RJ) policy reforms in Michigan and Texas on student disciplinary outcomes and behavior, in light of increasing concerns over the negative effects of zero-tolerance policies. As schools move away from exclusionary discipline… more →
Pathways to the Teaching Profession: Teaching Assistants’ and Substitute Teachers’ Transitions into the Teacher Workforce
Teacher shortages and lack of teacher diversity have led to growing efforts nationally to recruit teaching assistants (TAs) to be classroom teachers. Substitute teachers are not typically considered in these efforts. We pair longitudinal administrative data from a mid-sized urban district with… more →
Causal Mechanisms of Relative Age Effects on Adolescent Risky Behaviours
We investigate the mechanisms by which a student’s age relative to classmates (i.e., relative age) influences risky health behaviors among European adolescents. Using a two-stage least squares approach, we show that relatively young students are more prone to engage in risky behaviors. These… more →
Effects of Early College on Educational Attainment for All in Massachusetts
Evaluations of Early College, a type of intervention that enables simultaneous enrollment in secondary and post-secondary courses in the United States, consistently find positive effects on educational attainment across racial and socioeconomic groups.
Leveling the Playing Field: Default Policy and its Effects on English Learner Reclassification
Reclassification, 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 →
Socioeconomic and Racial Discrepancies in Algebra Access, Teacher, and Learning Experiences: Findings from the American Mathematics Educator Study
In this study, we highlight the differences in classroom-, teacher-, and school-level factors in 8th and 9th grade algebra experiences along socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines using nationally representative survey data from the American Mathematics Educator Study. Several takeaways emerge… more →
Mechanisms of Effect Size Differences Between Researcher Developed and Independently Developed Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of Item-Level Data
Differences in effect sizes between researcher developed (RD) and independently developed (ID) outcome measures are widely documented but poorly understood in education research. We conduct a meta-analysis using item-level outcome data to test potential mechanisms that explain differences in… more →