K-12 Education
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking STEM Classroom Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Despite growing evidence that classroom interventions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) can increase student achievement, there is little evidence regarding how these interventions affect teachers themselves and whether these changes predict student learning.
Pension Reform and Labor Supply
As unfunded pension liabilities grow, governments experiment with ways to curb costs. We examine the effect of a representative cost-cutting reform on the retention and productivity of workers. The reform reduced pension annuities and increased penalties for early retirement, projected to save 8… more →
Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching in the Earliest Grades: Benefits for Executive Function Skills
The benefits of student-teacher ethnoracial matching on student outcomes—ranging from academic achievement to postsecondary attainment—are well documented. Yet, we know far less about the role of student-teacher ethnoracial matching in the earliest grades school and on less about effects on non-… more →
Does Monitoring Change Teacher Pedagogy and Student Outcomes?
In theory, monitoring can improve employee motivation and effort, particularly in settings lacking measurable outputs, but research assessing monitoring as a motivator is limited to laboratory settings. To address this gap, I leverage exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher… more →
Typologizing Teacher Practice: How Teachers Integrate Culturally Responsive, Ambitious, and Traditional Teaching Approaches
As states and districts expand their goals for equitable mathematics instruction to focus on cultural responsiveness and rigor, it is critical to understand how teachers integrate multiple teaching approaches. Drawing on survey data from a larger study of professional learning, we use mixture… more →
Effective teacher professional development: new theory and a meta-analytic test
Multiple meta-analyses have now documented small positive effects of teacher professional development (PD) on pupil test scores. However, the field lacks any validated explanatory account of what differentiates more from less effective in-service training. As a result, researchers have little in… more →
Student Misconduct and Learning Outcomes Evidence from Pennsylvania’s K-12 Building Records: 1999-2018
This paper compares and contrasts two required building level school violence measures under NCLB, arrests and incidents of well-defined school misconduct acts, across 20 years of Pennsylvania’s approximately 3,000 public school buildings. Generally, both arrests for school violence and… more →
Do Long Bus Rides Drive Down Academic Outcomes?
School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes… more →
Why Black Teachers Matter
Black teachers are critical resources for our children and schools.
Instructional Coaching Personnel and Program Scalability
Instructional coaching is an attractive alternative to one-size-fits-all teacher training and development in part because it is purposefully differentiated: programming is aligned to individual teachers’ needs and implemented by an individual coach. But, how much of the benefit of coaching as an… more →
Whose Turn Now? The Enactment & Expansion of Private School Choice Programs across the US
Private school choice policies have been enacted and expanded across the United States since the 1990s. By January 2021, 30 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico hosted 67 distinct private school choice policies. Why have some states adopted and expanded this education reform… more →
Federal Stimulus Aid and School Finance: Lessons from the Great Recession
In 2009, the federal government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to combat the effects of the Great Recession and state revenue shortfalls, directing over $97 billion to school districts. In this chapter, we draw lessons from this distribution of fiscal stimulus funding… more →
Taking Teacher Evaluation to Scale: The Effect of State Reforms on Achievement and Attainment
Federal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting their staggered implementation across… more →
Do Refugee Students Affect the Academic Achievement of Peers? Evidence from a Large Urban School District
Policy debate on refugee resettlement focuses on perceived adverse effects on local communities, with sparse credible evidence to ascertain its impact. This paper examines whether attending school with refugees affects the academic outcomes of non-refugee students. Leveraging variation in the… more →
Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes
High school Career and Technical Education (CTE) has received an increase in attention from both policymakers and researchers in recent years. This study fills a needed gap in the growing research base by examining heterogeneity within the wide range of programs falling under the… more →
The ‘Good’ Schools: Academic Performance Data, School Choice, and Segregation
We examine the effects of disseminating academic performance data—either status, growth, or both—on parents’ school choices and their implications for racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. We conduct an online survey experiment featuring a nationally representative sample of parents and… more →
Paraeducators: Growth, Diversity and a Dearth of Professional Supports
Paraeducators perform multiple roles in U.S. classrooms, including among others preparing classroom activities, working with students individually and in small groups, supporting individualized programming for students with disabilities, managing classroom behavior, and engaging with parents and… more →
Teachers’ Knowledge about and Preparedness for Retirement: Results from a Nationally Representative Teacher Survey
Adequately saving for retirement requires both planning and knowledge about available retirement savings options. Teachers participate in a complex set of different plan designs and benefit tiers, and many do not participate in Social Security. While teachers represent a large part of the public… more →
The Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs: What We Know and Can Do
Economic downturns can cause major funding shortfalls for U.S. public schools, often forcing districts to make difficult budget cuts including teacher layoffs. In this brief, we synthesize the empirical literature on the widespread teacher layoffs caused by the Great Recession. Studies find that… more →
Can Personnel Policy Improve Teacher Quality? The Role of Evaluation and the Impact of Exiting Low-Performing Teachers
Personnel evaluation systems have historically failed to identify and remediate low-performing teachers. In 2012, Chicago Public Schools implemented an evaluation system that incorporated remediation and dismissal plans for low-rated teachers. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that the… more →