Staffing, Finance, and Operations
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 →
What Happened to the K-12 Education Labor Market During COVID? The Acute Need for Better Data Systems
The COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S. education system and the economy in ways that dramatically affected the jobs of K-12 educators. However, data limitations have led to considerable uncertainty and conflicting reports about the nature of staffing challenges in schools. We draw on education… more →
Understanding how COVID-19 has Changed Teachers’ Chances of Remaining in the Classroom
The 2020-2021 academic year was a trying year for teachers. We use a nationally representative sample of teachers from the RAND American Teacher Panel to document that teachers’ stated consideration of leaving the profession increased during the pandemic. We also study factors associated with… more →
Comparing Turnover Intentions and Actual Turnover in the Public Sector Workforce: Evidence from Public School Teachers
Many studies rely on public sector employees’ reported career intentions instead of measuring actual turnover, but research does not clearly document how these variables relate to one another. We develop and test three ways in which measures of employee intentions and turnover might relate to… more →
From Interest to Entry: The Teacher Pipeline From College Application to Initial Employment
Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K–12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. We leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009–2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and… more →
Investing in the Teacher Workforce: Experimental Evidence on Teachers’ Preferences
While investing in the teacher workforce is central to improving schools, school resources are notoriously limited, forcing school leaders to make difficult decisions on how to prioritize funds. This paper examines a critical input to resource allocation decisions: teacher preferences. Using an… more →
Teacher Labor Market Equilibrium and Student Achievement
We study whether reallocating existing teachers across schools within a district can increase student achievement, and what policies would help achieve these gains. Using a model of multi-dimensional value-added, we find meaningful achievement gains from reallocating teachers within a… more →
Local Supply, Temporal Dynamics, and Unrealized Potential in Teacher Hiring
We explore the dynamics of competitive search in the K-12 public education sector. Using data from Boston Public Schools, we document how teacher labor supply varies substantially by position types, schools, and the timing of job postings. We find that early-posted positions are more likely to… more →