K-12 Education
Computer Science for All? The Impact of High School Computer Science Courses on College Majors and Earnings
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 →
Disability as Discipline? Effects of the New York City Suspension Ban on Identification of Students with Disabilities
Across the United States, suspension bans have become a popular policy response to address excessive and inequitable use of suspension in schools. However, there is little research that examines what strategies school staff employ when suspension is no longer permitted. I examine the effect of New… more →
What matters and for whom? Exploring characteristics of teacher residency programs and their relationship to participant perceptions
This concurrent mixed methods study descriptively explores teacher residency programs (TRPs) across the nation. We examine program and participant survey data from the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) to identify important TRP structures for resident support.
Are Students On Track?: Comparing the Predictive Validity of Administrative and Survey Measures of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills for Long-Term Outcomes
Education leaders need valid metrics to predict students’ long-term success. We use a unique dataset with cognitive skills, self-regulation, behavior, course performance, and test scores for 8th-grade students from a Northeast school district. We link these data to students' high school outcomes… more →
COVID-19, School Closures, and Student Learning Outcomes: New Global Evidence from PISA
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruption in schooling worldwide. This paper uses global test score data to estimate learning losses. It models the effect of school closures on achievement by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend using data from… more →
What Works and For Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments Across the U.S.
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 →
Clinical teaching learning trajectory: Exploring field supervisor written feedback on clinical teacher pedagogy
Field supervisors are central to clinical teaching, but little is known about how their feedback informs preservice teachers (PSTs) development. This sequential mixed methods study examines over 3,000 supervisor observation evaluations. We qualitatively code supervisor written feedback, which… more →
Grow Your Own: An Umbrella Term for Very Different Localized Teacher Pipeline Programs
“Grow Your Own” (GYO) programs have recently emerged as a promising approach to expand teacher supply, address localized teacher shortages, and diversify the profession. However, little is known about the scale and design of GYO programs, which recruit and support individuals from the local… more →
Making Moves: The Role of Demotion in School Leadership
This study examines the experience of demotion from a principalship to an assistant principalship and how race and gender can differentially impact career trajectories. Using administrative state dataset of 10,946 observations at the principal level, we used probit regression to determine the… more →
Paying for School Finance Reforms: How States Raise Revenues to Fund Increases in Elementary-Secondary Education Expenditures
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 →
Does Feedback on Talk Time Increase Student Engagement? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial on a Math Tutoring Platform
Providing ample opportunities for students to express their thinking is pivotal to their learning of mathematical concepts. We introduce the Talk Meter, which provides in-the-moment automated feedback on student-teacher talk ratios. We conduct a randomized controlled trial on a virtual math… more →
Latent Classes of Teacher Working Conditions in Virginia: Description, Teacher Preferences, and Contextual Factors
Many dimensions of teacher working conditions influence both teacher and student outcomes; yet, analyses of schools’ overall working conditions are challenged by high correlations among the dimensions. Our study overcame this challenge by applying latent profile analysis of Virginia teachers’… more →
Misclassification of Career and Technical Education Concentrators: Analysis and Policy Recommendations
Career and Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for life beyond high school by providing practical labor skills, workforce credentials, and early post-secondary credits. States are required to report the number of CTE concentrators to receive federal Perkins funding, but systems of… more →
Bending Without Breaking - COVID-19 Tests the Resilience of State Education Policymaking Institutions
COVID-19 upended schooling across the United States, but with what consequences for the state-level institutions that drive most education policy? This paper reports findings on two related research questions. First, what were the most important ways state government education policymakers… more →
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 school 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 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 →