K-12 Education
From School to School: Examining the Contours of Switching Schools within the Special Education Teacher Labor Market
The United States is facing growing teacher shortages that may disproportionately affecting schools serving high proportions of students of color, low-income students, and those in rural or urban areas. Special education teachers (SETs) are particularly in demand. Each year, nearly half of all… more →
Spillover Effects of Specialized High Schools
Specialized high schools are an increasingly popular way to prepare young adults for postsecondary experiences and expand school choice. While much literature ex- amines charter school spillover effects and the effects of specialized schools on the students who attend them, little is known about… more →
The Implications of Digital School Quality Information for Neighborhood and School Segregation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Los Angeles
A digital information explosion has transformed cities’ residential and educational markets in ways that are still being uncovered. Although urban stratification scholars have increasingly scrutinized whether emerging digital platforms disrupt or reproduce longstanding segregation patterns,… more →
Implementation and Impacts of Career-Focused Advising
Recent policies have expanded the availability of career-focused advising in high schools, including for students pursuing career and technical education (CTE) courses of study who might not have been adequately served by traditional college-focused advising. However, there is limited research… more →
The Effects of Response to Intervention on Disability Identification and Achievement
Currently 15 percent of U.S. students receive special education services, a widespread intensive intervention with variable effects on students. Spurred by changes in federal policy, many states and districts have begun adopting the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach to identifying students… more →
Priceless Benefits: Effects of School Spending on Child Mortality
The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments… more →
Impact of States' Adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the Identification and Placement of Students in Special Education
This study investigates the impact of states' adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the identification and placement of students in special education. RTI, adopted by the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004, is designed to improve the… more →
The Impact of Additional Funding on Student Outcomes: Evidence from an Urban District Using Weighted Student Funding and Site-based Budgeting
This study uses a concurrent embedded mixed-methods design to assess the impact of additional funding on student outcomes in a large, urban school district in the Southeastern United States. The district implemented student-based budgeting (SBB), which allocates dollars to schools based on… more →
Failing to Learn from Failure: The Facade of Online Credit Recovery Assessments
Online credit recovery (OCR) courses are the most common means through which students retake courses required for high school graduation. Yet a growing body of research has raised concerns regarding student learning in these courses, with low quality assessments posited as one contributing… more →
The Effects of a Statewide Ban on School Suspensions
This research analyzes the implementation of a school suspension ban in Maryland to investigate whether a top-down state-initiated ban on suspensions in early primary grades can influence school behavior regarding school discipline. Beginning in the fall of 2017, the State of Maryland banned the… more →
Should They Pay, or Should I Go? Differential Responses to Base Salary Increases
This study uses administrative data from Oregon to estimate the extent to which base salary increases reduce teacher turnover and to investigate whether these effects are heterogeneous by teacher characteristics. Using multiple sets of fixed effects to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in… more →
Effectiveness of Structured Teacher Adaptations to an Online Content Literacy Intervention for Third Graders: A Randomized Controlled Trial During COVID-19
Scaling up evidence-based educational interventions to improve student outcomes presents challenges, particularly in adapting to new contexts while maintaining fidelity. Structured teacher adaptations that integrate the strengths of experimental science (high fidelity) and improvement science (… more →
The Decline in Teacher Working Conditions During and After the COVID Pandemic
We study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the pandemic was not… more →
How do hybrid school leaders measure program success? Experimental evidence from a national sample of hybrid schools
Hybrid school enrollments are trending up and many parents express a diverse range of reasons for enrolling their children in hybrid schools. Yet little is known about the pedagogical goals pursued by hybrid schools. We aim to help close this gap in the literature with a stated preferences… more →
(Dis)connection at Work: Racial Isolation, Teachers’ Job Experiences, and Teacher Turnover
Teachers of color often work in schools with few colleagues from the same racial or ethnic background. This racial isolation may affect their work experiences and important job outcomes, including retention. Using longitudinal administrative and survey data, we investigate the degree to which… more →
Local Licensure and Teacher Shortage: Policy Analysis and Implications
We use frame analysis to analyze the first iteration of the Texas District of Innovation policy, which allows districts to take exemption from state education requirements mandating the hiring of a state certified teacher. We analyzed 451 district policies and find the plans use very similar,… more →
Understanding Individualized Education Program (IEP) Goals at Scale
Students with disabilities represent 15% of U.S. public school students. Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) inform how students with disabilities experience education. Very little is known about the aspects of IEPs as they are historically paper-based forms. In this study, we develop a… more →
Instability in Foster Care: How Transitions Into and Out of Foster Care Relate to School Discipline
Students in the foster care system tend to have lower educational outcomes than their peers, including more frequent disciplinary events. However, few studies have explored how transitions into and out of foster care placements are associated with educational outcomes. Using longitudinal data… more →
Democratic Policymaking in Schools: The Influence of Teacher Empowerment on Student Achievement
Despite the popularity of teacher leadership since the 1980s, little research examines its effects on student achievement. In this paper, I assess the influence of the New York City Department of Education’s Teacher Career Pathways program, a teacher leadership initiative, on student achievement… more →
A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public Schooling Expansions on Families’ Constraints
As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children—through duration expansions to the kindergarten day—to… more →