School Choice
The Impact of Statewide Virtual Charter Schools on District Segregation
Enrollment patterns in K-12 online (“virtual”) charter schools have the potential to influence segregation in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. Yet, research has largely ignored how online schooling options impact racial segregation and poverty concentration within district schools.… more →
Who Leaves? Interdistrict Magnet School Openings and Enrollment Dynamics in Nearby Schools
Connecticut expanded interdistrict magnet schools (IMS) intending to reduce racial and socioeconomic segregation across districts, yet the potential unintended effects on student composition in nearby schools remains unclear. Leveraging the staggered rollout of IMS openings, this study finds… more →
Indiana Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling nationwide and contributed to substantial declines in student achievement. At the same time, enrollment patterns shifted and charter school sectors expanded in several states, raising questions about whether charter schools were better positioned to… more →
Nudging Parents out the Door: The Impacts of Parental Encouragement on School Choice and Test Scores
This study evaluates a large-scale SMS outreach program to engage caregivers of students in private primary schools in Kenya. Using a two-stage randomization design, we tested two types of weekly SMS messages: growth-mindset encouragement and personalized performance information. We find two… more →
The Nation’s Achievement Inequality Report Card: An Assessment of Test Score and Equality Trends in Traditional Public, Charter, Catholic, and Department of Defense Schools
We present a descriptive comparison of trends in achievement and inequality in traditional public, public charter, Catholic, and Department of Defense schools in the U.S. Our sample includes 6,155,570 observations for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading between 2005 and 2024. We focus on… more →
The Effect of Centralized-Admission School Lotteries on Between-School Segregation: Evidence from 300 Largest School Districts in the United States
This study examines how centralized-admission school lotteries affect between-school racial and ethnic segregation in the largest U.S. public school districts. Using original nationwide panel data and a difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption, the research analyzes effects on… more →
Right to Education (RTE) Act’s Influence on Caste-based Enrollment Gaps and Segregation in India
Section 12(1)(c) of the Right to Education (RTE) Act of India expanded affirmative action to primary schooling by requiring non-government-funded private schools to reserve 25% of their admissions for students from marginalized castes and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Using variation… more →
The Effects of Universal School Vouchers on Private School Tuition and Enrollment: A National Analysis
Three-quarters of a century after Milton Friedman popularized the idea, universal school vouchers have suddenly become a reality in 17 states since 2021. These new policies promise to be one of the most far-reaching reforms in U.S. education history. We make two contributions to understanding… more →
Parent Perspectives on School Choice: Experimental Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample
Parental attitudes and perspectives of student “success” will likely drive their educational choices, whether residentially assigned district public schools, alternative public schools, private schools, or homeschooling. However, little research has examined the importance of these attitudes on… more →
The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions
In this paper, I investigate how publicizing school social climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different economic backgrounds. I first provide descriptive evidence on the novelty of school climate relative to other school… more →
School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
The pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state- and district-level data to explore enrollment patterns five years after the pandemic’s onset.… more →
From Disruption to Recovery: Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
In recent decades, an increasing number of students have pursued alternative educational options, including charter schools, as school choice has continued to expand. This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is well established that students experienced widespread learning… more →
Choosing Schools in Choice Neighborhoods: Impacts of Student Mobility, School Composition, and Case Management on Academic Outcomes
This study examines the academic impacts of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a federal public housing revitalization program, focusing on how case management, student mobility, and school compositional change intersect to shape outcomes. Using an eight-year student-level panel (2015–… more →
The Impact of Increased Exposure of Diversity on Suburban Students’ Outcomes: An Analysis of the METCO Voluntary Desegregation Program
Over sixty years following Brown vs. Board of Education, racial and socioeconomic segregation and lack of equal access to educational opportunities persist. Across the country, voluntary desegregation busing programs aim to ameliorate these imbalances and disparities. A longstanding… 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 →
A Framework for Evaluating and Reforming School Vouchers
Following the 2002 work of economist Henry Levin, who laid out a framework for evaluating school vouchers, we provide an updated framework involving four major goals: equity, effiency, accountability and democratic goals. We review what is known from recent research around these four major areas… more →
The Differential Sorting of Disadvantaged Students in the Competitive K-12 Market
School choice options offer potential educational gains for disadvantaged students, but do they take advantage of such options? I study the sorting patterns of students with prior child welfare reports (12 percent of incoming kindergartners) across traditional public, magnet, charter, and… more →
Charter School Expansion, Catholic School Enrollment, & the Equity Implications of School Choice
Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some… 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 →
Neighbors' Spillovers on High School Choice
Do residential neighbors affect each others' schooling choices? We exploit oversubscription lotteries in Chile's centralized school admission system to identify the effect of close neighbors on application and enrollment decisions. A student is 5-7% more likely to rank a high school as their… more →