Student Learning
Helping the Many by Tutoring the Few: The Social Multiplier of Early Literacy Instruction
Tutoring is almost always evaluated by randomizing students within schools, a design that differences out any spillover onto classmates. We instead randomize 81 Danish schools and 2,583 kindergartners, tutoring a few children in each and testing all. Decoding improved 0.38 standard deviations… more →
Virtual Tutoring with Computer-Assisted Learning: An Experiment in Take-Up and Learning
We explore the efficacy of an online after-school tutoring program that complements teacher-provided computer-assisted learning practice. The aim is to scaffold students struggling with online Khan Academy practice at school with low-cost, one-on-one virtual supervision for about an hour a week… more →
Making AI Tutoring Productive: Evidence from a Mastery-Based Math Practice Experiment
Large language models (LLMs) can make tutoring more scalable, but only if students use them to reason through mistakes rather than avoid effort. We study this question in a randomized field experiment with more than 6,000 middle-school students in Hamilton County Schools using NUMI, a research-… more →
One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment
Generative AI has been promoted as the technology that could transform education by providing every student a personal tutor. We provide some of the first large-scale experimental evidence, from a two-year cluster randomized trial in 18 Tennessee middle schools in which randomly assigned… more →
Early literacy tutoring and children’s reading trajectories: Evidence from a four-year randomized controlled trial
Most evidence on early literacy tutoring comes from intensive one-year interventions. Much less is known about whether schools can sustain individualized instructional support as students’ reading needs evolve across the early grades. We present findings from a four-year randomized controlled… more →
A Systematic Review of Research Designs Used to Evaluate State and Locally Funded Pre-K Programs
Expansions of state and locally funded pre-k programs in recent decades have been promoted by advocates citing strong research support. However, questions have been raised about how supportive the research base actually is. We conducted a systematic review of pre-k evaluation studies (from 2000-… more →
Who Belongs in Math? Gendered Peer Math Beliefs and Girls' Gender Beliefs, Math Beliefs, and Achievement
This paper studies how exposure to gendered peer math beliefs shapes girls' gender-math beliefs, their own math beliefs, and mathematics achievement. I exploit quasi-random variation in girls' exposure to peer math beliefs generated by random classroom assignment at entry into Chinese middle… more →
Compounded Disadvantage: Intersectional Inequities in Chronic Absenteeism Prevalence and Recovery During the COVID-19 Era
This study applies an intersectional lens to examine how chronic absenteeism evolved across intersecting dimensions of race, gender, economic disadvantage, disability status, and housing instability before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic using statewide, administrative data from Georgia… more →
Does Relative Performance Feedback Improve Academic Outcomes? Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial in a Spanish University
The effects of relative performance feedback on student achievement remain contested in the economics of education literature. Some studies find that providing students with information about their standing relative to peers improves academic outcomes, while others show negative effects driven… more →
The Causal Effect of Student Absences Post Pandemic: Evidence from Three School Systems
Researchers, educators, and policymakers have long worried about the consequences of student absences for educational achievement and attainment—concerns that have grown with the significant rise in absenteeism during and following the Covid-19 pandemic. Using administrative data from Maryland,… more →
Long-term Consequences of Early Access to Educational Opportunity
This paper examines the long-term consequences of tracking in middle school. Using longitudinal administrative data from a large, urban school district and regression and quasi-experimental matching methods, we find that students who had the opportunity to take advanced math earned higher math… more →
Supporting Females in STEM: Evidence on Student-Instructor Gender-Matching in 4-Year Research Universities in Texas
Despite progress in overall educational attainment, female students remain underrepresented in STEM fields. One proposed mechanism for improving female students' outcomes is exposure to same-gender faculty, yet evidence on both the prevalence and impacts of student–instructor gender matching in… more →
Math coursetaking trajectories in high school during the COVID-19 disruptions to schooling
Using student-level transcript data and information about instructional mode among public high school students in Massachusetts, this study examines the impact of disruptions to in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ math coursetaking trajectories. We find that rates of… more →
Testing frequency and student achievement: A systematic review
School-based testing is widely used for monitoring students’ academic progress. Proponents argue that testing ensures accountability and guides teachers and managers, whereas opponents point to adverse consequences such as teaching to the test, and frequent testing creating anxiety and stress.… more →
The Consequences of Cellphone Restrictions in Classrooms
Schools are increasingly restricting cellphones worldwide amid concerns about achievement and mental health, yet causal evidence on school-level bans remains mixed. We examine cellphone restrictions in Chile before the pandemic, where teacher discretion over cellphone use generated classroom-… more →
Cheapskin Effects? The Heterogeneous Value of Industry-Recognized Certificates Earned by High School Students
Human capital theory and signaling models posit that educational credentials convey information about workers’ skills, producing discrete labor market returns beyond years of schooling. While extensive evidence documents these “sheepskin effects” for degrees, far less is known about industry-… more →
Beyond the Shutdown: Tracking Language Growth in Early Head Start Children Before, During, and After COVID-19
Understanding early language outcomes for low-income children in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is an important concern for researchers, policymakers, and educators. We examined language environments and language development among infants and toddlers in Early Head Start from pre-COVID,… more →
Who Is Newly Absent? Racial Inequities in Post-Pandemic Transitions into Chronic and Severe Absence in Georgia
Chronic absenteeism rose sharply following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has declined only modestly since, yet most evidence remains cross-sectional and cannot distinguish persistence from redistribution in absence behavior. Using a cohort transition framework, the analysis compares… more →
The Effect of Air Pollution on Student Achievement: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence
Air pollution is one of the most pressing global public health challenges of the 21st century. This article presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the best available evidence of the effect of air pollution on student achievement. A meta-analysis of 28 causal studies around the world… more →
The Trade-off between Quality and Quantity: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Tutoring
High-dosage tutoring has the potential to substantially raise adolescent academic achievement. However, at scale, schools may not have the financial ability to deliver small-group tutoring frequently. In this paper, I test the relative importance of group size (quality) versus tutoring frequency… more →