Policy, Politics, and Governance
Title I and IDEA as Complementary Federal Responses: Distinguishing Opportunity-Mediated and Opportunity-Independent Underachievement
Title I and IDEA are complementary federal responses to different sources of low achievement: each addresses needs that the other does not fully address. Title I targets opportunity-mediated underachievement, or low achievement linked to limited educational opportunity, while IDEA addresses… more →
A Sandbox for Hard Choices: Using Simulation to Explore School Closure Scenarios and Their Consequences
School closures are often justified through seemingly neutral criteria such as enrollment or performance, but these metrics can unintentionally deepen educational disparities. This study uses a large urban district’s administrative data to simulate 5,040 closure scenarios, systematically varying… more →
The legacy of Plyler v. Doe: A critical window of inclusion
This study examines whether the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision increased school participation among Latino K–12 students likely to be undocumented in Texas. The analysis asks whether removing tuition and enrollment barriers changed participation patterns relative to comparable states… more →
Americans’ Attitudes about Political Neutrality in Public Schools
This paper presents the results of a study of Americans’ attitudes about political neutrality in public schools. Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in March of 2025, I find that Americans across the political spectrum largely oppose schools attempting to promote either… more →
School Finance in the US
This chapter provides an overview of K-12 public school finance in the United States by tracing how funding systems changed over time, how they operate today, and how well they advance core policy goals. Section 2 documents the long-run shift from local property tax finance toward larger state… more →
The Language of Closure: Examining Racial Differences in How A Community Discusses School Closure Metrics
School closures in urban districts disproportionately affect marginalized communities, yet community input often goes unanalyzed or is reduced to simple frequency counts. This study applies BERTopic, a neural topic modeling approach, to analyze 4,159 suggestions from 2,006 community members… more →
Examining the Role of Policy Instruments in Supporting Public HBCUs’ College Affordability
This study uses a multiple-case qualitative research design to examine the fiscal policy instruments that members of State Legislative Black Caucuses (SLBC) use to strengthen college affordability and broaden access for undergraduate low-income Black students attending public HBCUs. Guided by… more →
Residential Segregation and Unequal Access to Local Public Services in India: Evidence from 1.5m Neighborhoods
We study residential segregation and access to public services across 1.5 million urban and rural neighborhoods in India. Muslim and Scheduled Caste segregation in India is high by global standards, and only slightly lower than Black-White segregation in the U.S. Within cities, public facilities… more →
Strategic Decision-Making in Higher Education: State Legislators and Affordability Policy for Public HBCUs
This study uses a multiple-case qualitative research design to explores how power dynamics creates challenges and opportunities for SLBCs and their constituent members working to broaden college affordability and access for undergraduate low-income Black students attending public HBCUs. Guided… more →
The Economics of Age at School Entry: Insights from Evidence and Methods
This article reviews the growing literature on age at school entry and its effects across the life course. Age at school entry affects a broad range of outcomes, including education, labor-market performance, health, social relationships, and family formation. We synthesize the evidence using a… more →
Does Fadeout Preclude Long-Run Adult Effects? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Educational Intervention Randomized Controlled Trials
A perplexing pattern has been observed in the intervention literature: although impacts on children’s skills often fade, some interventions still produce long-run impacts on adult outcomes. Existing developmental theory does not provide a straightforward explanation. This “fadeoutemergence… more →
How General is Educational Intervention Fadeout? A Meta-Analysis of Educational RCTs with Follow-Up
Researchers and policymakers pursue educational interventions with the goal of altering children’s long-term trajectories. However, many effects fade quickly after interventions end. Researchers have sought to address the fadeout problem by identifying characteristics of interventions that lead… more →
No Pay? No Way! Teacher Compensation Reforms and the Market for Graduate Degrees
Graduate degrees in education serve as both a salary-boosting credential for teachers and a vital revenue source for institutions. But given a lack of evidence of their effectiveness, reformers have sought to decouple teacher pay from these credentials. Without a wage premium, educators may skip… more →
The Influence of Partisanship in Local School Board Elections: Evidence from Exit Polling in Michigan & Rhode Island
Education in the U.S. has long been shaped by local school boards elected in nonpartisan contests, a structure intended to shield schools from broader political forces. Today, many states are considering reforms to make school board elections partisan, yet the impact on voters remains unclear.… more →
What Districts Aim to Do: A Computational Mixed Methods Analysis of School District Strategic Plans
School districts are a distinct but long-critiqued feature of the United States educational system. Amid these critiques and increased public dissatisfaction with education, we revisit a fundamental question: What do school districts aim to do?
Removing Barriers to College Credits: Where and for Whom AP Exam Fee Waivers Work
Do policies that broaden educational access also foster success? We study this question in the context of North Carolina’s universal Advanced Placement (AP) exam fee waiver policy. Using student-course level administrative data, we exploit within-student variation on a sample of students who… more →
How do place-based scholarships affect student borrowing and academic outcomes? Lessons from Atlanta
Previous research shows that Achieve Atlanta’s placed-based scholarship and associated services meaningfully improve college persistence and completion. In this follow up study that uses similar methods but additional and more detailed data, we examine whether scholarship recipients exhibit… more →
The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Student Outcomes in a New Era of Immigration Policy in the United States
This study presents the first evidence, to our knowledge, of the effects of the surge in interior immigration apprehensions in 2025 in the United States on student academic performance using detailed student-level administrative records from Florida. We find evidence that immigration enforcement… more →
Schools Never Die: Toward a Dynamic Systems Theory of School Closure
Educational researchers and policymakers typically treat school closures as discrete administrative decisions with clear endpoints. This paper challenges that assumption by applying Dynamic Systems Theory to school closure policy and research. We argue that schools function as adaptive… more →
Higher Education as Regional Development: Labor Market Impacts of Nigeria’s 2011 Federal University Expansion
This paper examines the causal impact of higher education expansion on regional labor markets and human capital development. Exploiting the 2011 establishment of nine federal universities across previously underserved Nigerian states, we implement a difference-in-differences approach to analyze… more →