Staffing, Finance, and Operations
Separate, but Better? Measuring School Spending Progressivity and its Association with School Segregation
Recent public discussions and legal decisions suggest that school segregation will remain persistent in the United States, but increased transparency may help monitor spending across schools. These circumstances revive an old question: is it possible to achieve an educational system that is… more →
Toward An Economic Reformulation of Public Pension Funding Policy
We propose an economic reformulation of contribution policy integrating: (1) formalization of sustainability as the steady-state contribution rate, incorporating both the expected return on risky assets and a low-risk discount rate for liabilities; (2) derivation of contribution adjustment… more →
Socio-economic inequalities in opportunities and participation in in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
The disruption of in-person schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic has affected students’ learning, development, and well-being. Students in Latin America and the Caribbean have been hit particularly hard because schools in the region have stayed closed for longer than anywhere else, with long-… more →
School District Borrowing and Capital Spending: The Effectiveness of State Credit Enhancement
School districts in the United States often borrow on the municipal bond market to pay for capital projects. Districts serving economically disadvantaged communities tend to receive lower credit ratings and pay higher interest rates. To remedy this problem, 24 states have established credit… more →
Can a Commercial Screening Tool Help Select Better Teachers?
Improving teacher selection is an important strategy for strengthening the quality of the teacher workforce. As districts adopt commercial teacher screening tools, evidence is needed to understand these tools’ predictive validity. We examine the relationship between Frontline Education’s… more →
At What Cost?: Is Technical Education Worth the Investment?
Career and technical education (CTE) has existed in the United States for over a century, and only in recent years have there been opportunities to assess the causal impact of participating in these programs while in high school. To date, no work has assessed whether the relative costs of these… more →
Is there a national teacher shortage? A systematic examination of reports of teacher shortages in the United States
Teachers are critical to student learning, but adequately staffing classrooms has been challenging in many parts of the country. Even though teacher shortages are being reported across the U.S., teacher shortages are poorly understood. Determining and addressing teacher shortages is difficult… more →
Screening with Multitasking: Theory and Empirical Evidence from Teacher Tenure Reform
What happens when employers screen their employees but only observe a subset of output? We specify a model with heterogeneous employees and show that their response to the screening affects output in both the probationary period and the post-probationary period. The post-probationary impact is… more →
How States Prioritize Educational Needs during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Assessing the Distribution of the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress in 2020 included significant aid to state education systems. These included direct aid to K-12 districts and higher education institutions, and funds to be used at the discretion of Governors through the Governor’s… more →
Variation in the Relationship between School Spending and Achievement: Progressive Spending Is Efficient
The equity-efficiency tradeoff and cumulative return theories predict larger returns to school spending in areas with higher previous investment in children. Equity – not efficiency – is therefore used to justify progressive school funding: spending more in communities with fewer financial… more →
Changes in Teachers’ Mobility and Attrition in Arkansas During the First Two Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a trying period for teachers. Teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions, teaching in unprecedented ways. As a result, teachers' levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout the pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in… more →
The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring and Turnover
Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K-12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in… more →
The narrowing gender wage gap among faculty at public universities in the U.S.
We study the conditional gender wage gap among faculty at public research universities in the U.S. We begin by using a cross-sectional dataset from 2016 to replicate the long-standing finding in research that conditional on rich controls, female faculty earn less than their male colleagues. Next… more →
Two Years Later: How COVID-19 has Shaped the Teacher Workforce
The unprecedented challenges of teaching during COVID-19 prompted fears of a mass exodus from the profession. We examine the extent to which these fears were realized using administrative records of Massachusetts teachers between 2015-16 and 2021-22. Relative to pre-pandemic levels, average… more →
Unintended Consequences of Expanding Teacher Preparation Pathways: Does alternative licensure attenuate new teacher pay?
Texas reduced new teacher preparation requirements in 2001 to allow more alternate paths to licensure. Within five years, this policy change resulted in over half the state’s new teachers being alternatively licensed.
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? An Analysis of Pension Structure and Retirement Timing
Over the last two decades, twenty-two states have moved away from traditional defined benefit (DB) pension systems and toward pension plan structures like the defined contribution (DC) plans now prevalent in the private sector. Others are considering such a reform as it is seen as a means of… more →
How Did It Get This Way? Disentangling the Sources of Teacher Quality Gaps Through Agent-Based Modeling
We use publicly available, longitudinal data from Washington state to study the extent to which three interrelated processes—teacher attrition from the state teaching workforce, teacher mobility between teaching positions, and teacher hiring for open positions—contribute to “teacher quality gaps… more →
Fiscal Federalism and K-12 Education Funding: Policy Lessons from Two Educational Crises
We synthesize and critique federal fiscal policy during the Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic. First, the amount of aid during both crises was inadequate to meet policy goals. Second, the mechanisms used to distribute funds was disconnected from policy goals and provided different levels of… more →
The Impact of Natural Disasters on Human Capital
We show that natural disasters affect a region’s aggregate human capital through at least four channels. In addition to causing out-migration, natural disasters reduce student achievement, lower high school graduation rates, and decrease post-secondary attendance. We estimate that disasters that… more →
Leaving to Fit In: School Leadership, Peer Teacher Relationships, and Turnover Among Teachers of Color in New York City
Disparate turnover among teachers of color remains a persistent educational challenge, yet little research explores the link between school leadership, peer teaching staff, and turnover disparities. This study explores whether principal and peer teacher demographics predict teacher turnover in… more →