K-12 Education
The Achievement Effects of Scaling Early Literacy Reforms
While legislators have implemented many “science of reading” initiatives in the last two decades, the evidence on the impact of these reforms at scale is limited. In this pre-registered, quasi-experimental study, we examine California’s recent initiative to improve early literacy across the… more →
Access to Ethnic Studies in California Public Schools
We examine access to high school Ethnic Studies in California, a new graduation requirement beginning in 2029-30. Data from the California Department of Education and the University of California Office of the President indicate that roughly 50 percent of public high school students in 2020-21… more →
The Effects of Economic Conditions on the Labor Market for Teachers
Prior research has found that economic downturns have positive effects on new teacher quality, but has not been able to determine the extent to which this relationship arises from a supply response (increased quantity or positive selection of teaching candidates) vs. a demand response (selection… more →
Can States Sustain and Replicate School District Improvement? Evidence from Massachusetts
Limited scholarship examines districtwide turnaround reforms beyond the first few years of implementation or efforts to replicate successes in new contexts. We study Massachusetts, home to a state takeover of the Lawrence school district that led to academic gains in early reform years, and… more →
Disentangling Person-Dependent and Item-Dependent Causal Effects: Applications of Item Response Theory to the Estimation of Treatment Effect Heterogeneity
Analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions.
Early Algebra Affects Peer Composition
Although existing research suggests that students benefit on a range of outcomes when they enroll in early algebra classes, policy efforts that accelerate algebra enrollment for large numbers of students often have negative effects. Explanations for this apparent contradiction often emphasize… more →
Beyond Prescriptive Reforms: An Examination of North Carolina’s Flexible School Restart Program
While multiple studies have examined the impact of school turnaround, less is known about reforms under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). To advance this literature, we examine North Carolina’s Restart (NCR) model. NCR aligns with ESSA by giving school leaders increased flexibility. Also,… more →
The long-term distributional impacts of a full-year interleaving math program in Nigeria
This study reports the findings from a year-long randomized evaluation assessing the impact of assigning 62 classrooms in Nigeria to receive either blocked or interleaved math problem sets. Blocked practice sessions focused on a single skill at a time. Interleaved problem sets alternated between… more →
Automated Feedback Improves Teachers’ Questioning Quality in Brick-and-Mortar Classrooms: Opportunities for Further Enhancement
AI-powered professional learning tools that provide teachers with individualized feedback on their instruction have proven effective at improving instruction and student engagement in virtual learning contexts. Despite the need for consistent, personalized professional learning in K-12 settings… more →
Financial Deregulation, School Finance, and Student Achievement
This paper studies how school spending impacts student achievement by exploiting the US interstate branching deregulation as state tax revenue shocks. Leveraging school finance data from universal school districts, our difference-in-differences estimation reveals that deregulation leads to an… more →
Practice-Based Teacher Education Pedagogies Improve Responsiveness: Evidence from a Lab Experiment
Given the limited time available during teacher preparation, teacher educators must make zerosum choices about the pedagogies they choose to prepare pre-service teachers. Yet the field lacks rigorous causal evidence regarding the relative efficacy of different pedagogies to inform teacher… more →
Are Teachers Absent More? Examining Differences in Absence Between K-12 Teachers and Other College-Educated Workers
While it is commonly believed that teachers take more absences than other professionals, few empirical studies have systematically investigated the prevalence of teacher absences in the US. This study documents the level of teacher absences and compares it with other college-educated workers.… more →
Weighting for Progressivity? An Analysis of Implicit Tradeoffs Associated with Weighted Student Funding in Tennessee
We study the progressivity of state funding of school districts under Tennessee’s weighted student funding formula. We propose a simple definition of progressivity based on the difference in exposure to district per-pupil funding between poor and non-poor students. The realized progressivity of… more →
The Opportunity Costs of Career and Technical Education: Coursetaking Tradeoffs for High School CTE Students
Career and Technical Education (CTE) has long played a substantial, though controversial, role within America’s public schools. While supporters argue that CTE may increase student engagement and prepare students for success in the workforce, detractors caution that CTE may inhibit students’… more →
Information Frictions and Teacher Turnover
Many decentralized matching markets experience high rates of instability due to information frictions. This paper analyzes these frictions in a particularly unstable U.S. market, the labor market for first-year school teachers. We develop and estimate a dynamic, partial equilibrium model of… more →
Leveraging Item Parameter Drift to Assess Transfer Effects in Vocabulary Learning
Longitudinal models of individual growth typically emphasize between-person predictors of change but ignore how growth may vary within persons because each person contributes only one point at each time to the model. In contrast, modeling growth with multi-item assessments allows evaluation of… more →
How Free Market Logic Fails in Schooling— and What It Means for the Role of Government
Market-based policies, especially school vouchers, are expanding rapidly and shifting students out of traditional public schools. This essay broadens, deepens, and updates prior critiques of the free market logic in five ways. First, while prior articles have pointed to some of the conditions… more →
School and Crime
Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression… more →
Estimating Learning When Test Scores Are Missing: The Problem and Two Solutions
Longitudinal studies can produce biased estimates of learning if children miss tests. In an application to summer learning, we illustrate how missing test scores can create an illusion of large summer learning gaps when true gaps are close to zero. We demonstrate two methods that reduce bias by… more →
State Accountability Decisions under the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Validity, Stability, and Equity of School Ratings
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) began a new wave of school accountability under which states draw on multiple measures to assess school quality. States have options in terms of how to weight components in their school quality indices and how many years of data to use to determine school… more →