K-12 Education
Costly Withdrawals Reduce Future College-Going for Low-Income Students: Evidence from Return of Title IV Funds
Governments must strike a balance between promoting access to financial aid while at the same time remaining good stewards of taxpayer funds by preventing fraudulent access. This paper focuses on one of the largest-scale and most consequential policies determining whether students maintain… more →
The Impact of Tutor Gender Match on Girls’ STEM Interest, Engagement, and Performance
Gender disparities in STEM persist despite girls performing as well as boys academically, suggesting girls may benefit from role models who shape their perceptions of STEM. We examine whether female math tutors influence girls’ STEM interest, attendance, and performance. We randomly assigned 422… more →
Education Governance and Race: An Analysis of School Board Discourse Using Large Language Models
Despite growing attention to school boards, it is unclear whether they primarily operate as bureaucratic forums, policy-making bodies, or arenas for contentious debate—particularly on issues of race. Recent controversies suggest increasing public engagement and conflict, but little evidence… more →
Expanding Access to Highly Effective Educators for All Students: A Review of Recent Evidence
We have long known that some teachers are much more effective than others. Highly effective teachers and their students thrive in ways that have been hard to replicate on a large and consistent scale. In this paper, we read across studies to identify actionable lessons about what it will take to… more →
Item-Level Heterogeneity in Value Added Models: Implications for Reliability, Cross-Study Comparability, and Effect Sizes
Value added models (VAMs) attempt to estimate the causal effects of teachers and schools on student test scores. We apply Generalizability Theory to show how estimated VA effects depend upon the selection of test items. Standard VAMs estimate causal effects on the items that are included on the… more →
Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During the Pandemic
In this paper, we show how positionality shapes caregivers’ decisions about children’s schooling, by expanding on research on Black families’ educational decision-making (Cooper, 2025; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021) to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply-marginalized… more →
Disparate Teacher Effects, Comparative Advantage, and Match Quality
Does student-teacher match quality exist? While prior research documents disparities in teachers' impacts across student types, it has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I develop a flexible disparate value-added model (DVA) and introduce a… more →
Unveiling Racism: A Systematic Review of Survey Measures of Racism in Education
Education policy research aimed at eliminating racism necessitates methodological innovation that fosters both equity-centered approaches and robust empirical analysis of the systemic nature of racism. Most quantitative research in educational psychology omits the racist environment that… more →
Closing the Gender Gap in STEM: Role of Performance Feedback and Advice
The gender gap in STEM careers is shaped in part by educational choices. This study investigates two interventions—absolute performance feedback and personalized advice— aiming at narrowing the gender disparities in investments in math skills. Using an online lab experiment, participants chose… more →
The “Work” of Mobilizing, Advocating, and Organizing for Care in The School District Central Office
This 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 →
The Effects of Daily Air Pollution on Students and Teachers
Recent empirical research shows that air pollution harms student test scores and attendance and increases office discipline referrals. However, the mechanism by which air pollution operates within schools to negatively affect student and teacher outcomes remains largely opaque. The existing… more →
Does School Context Moderate the Relationship between Student Mobility and Academic Performance? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Student mobility is highly prevalent in the United States and has negative impacts on students’ academic performance. Within-year mobility may be especially disruptive. However, research on the impacts of within-year mobility is limited, and less is known how impacts may vary across different… more →
Are School Discipline Practices Pushing Students Out…to Another School? A Longitudinal Analysis of School Transfers in Five Midwest Counties
Sociology of education scholars have positioned punitive discipline practices as factors that work to “push” unwanted students to drop out of school before graduating. However, limited research examines how punitive discipline practices may push students to transfer to another schools—… more →
How Does Early Achievement Predict Within-Year Student Mobility? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Student mobility that occurs within a school year may be especially disruptive for student outcomes, yet little is known regarding the predictors of within-year mobility. In particular, research has yet to comprehensively examine the role of student achievement in predicting within-year student… more →
Heterogeneous Effects of Closing the Digital Divide During COVID-19 on Student Engagement and Achievement
Equitably expanding technology access among K-12 students has long been viewed as critical for equalizing educational opportunities. But these interventions may influence students’ academic outcomes in unexpected ways. Prior research suggests key technological resources, like broadband Internet… more →
Backlash? Schooling Reassignments and the Politics of School Desegregation
School desegregation efforts often spark fierce political backlash. This dissent is typically ascribed to families’ dissatisfaction with the changes in schooling assignments required to achieve desegregation aims. In this paper we use the empirical context of the Wake County Public School System… more →
Peer Victimization Among English Learners: Examining the Role of Dual-Language and English-Only Programs
This study examines the relationship between English Learner (EL) classification, language program type, and peer victimization using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Kindergarten Class of 2011. Leveraging a sample of 9,562 children, this study… more →
Who Leads During and After a Crisis? The Pandemic’s Role in Diversifying School Leadership
Organizational crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, influence the appointment of leaders from underrepresented groups, including women and people of color. This study examines the relationship between the pandemic, school organizational characteristics, and the appointment of women and people… more →
The Learning Crisis: Three Years After COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to education, with school closures affecting over one billion children. These closures, aimed at reducing virus transmission, resulted in significant learning losses, particularly in mathematics and science. Using data from TIMSS 2023, which… more →
The Peer Effects of Grade Retention
We study the peer effects of grade retention in the context of Indiana’s statewide third-grade retention policy. When a retention occurs, it changes the peer group for two cohorts: rising fourth graders who lose a peer and rising third graders who gain a peer. We identify peer effects in both… more →