Student Learning
Does School Context Moderate the Relationship between Student Mobility and Academic Performance? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Student mobility is highly prevalent in the United States and has negative impacts on students’ academic performance. Within-year mobility may be especially disruptive. However, research on the impacts of within-year mobility is limited, and less is known how impacts may vary across different… more →
Are School Discipline Practices Pushing Students Out…to Another School? A Longitudinal Analysis of School Transfers in Five Midwest Counties
Sociology of education scholars have positioned punitive discipline practices as factors that work to “push” unwanted students to drop out of school before graduating. However, limited research examines how punitive discipline practices may push students to transfer to another schools—… more →
How Does Early Achievement Predict Within-Year Student Mobility? Longitudinal Evidence from Missouri
Student mobility that occurs within a school year may be especially disruptive for student outcomes, yet little is known regarding the predictors of within-year mobility. In particular, research has yet to comprehensively examine the role of student achievement in predicting within-year student… more →
Who Transfers and Where do They Go? Identifying Risk Factors Across Student, School, and Neighborhood Characteristics
Research demonstrates student mobility, or students transferring schools, significantly affects student academic outcomes, making it a critical concern for policymakers and practitioners. Within-school-year transfers, in particular, often reflect sudden, unexpected circumstances. However,… more →
The Learning Crisis: Three Years After COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to education, with school closures affecting over one billion children. These closures, aimed at reducing virus transmission, resulted in significant learning losses, particularly in mathematics and science. Using data from TIMSS 2023, which… more →
Empty Plates, Empty Seats: Food Insecurity and Student Absence in the US and Across the Globe
Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in student absenteeism in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, food insecurity remains a persistent issue across the globe, including in the US. Food insecurity shapes students’ immediate and wider contexts and may worsen school… more →
A Bibliometric Review of Research on Inequality of Educational Achievement, 1934 to 2023
In this bibliometric review of the research landscape on achievement gaps, we analyze temporal trends and geographic distributions, identify key scholars and publications, and uncover the intellectual structure and thematic focus of achievement gap research. By examining 1,607 achievement gap… more →
Socioeconomic and Racial Discrepancies in Algebra Access, Teacher, and Learning Experiences: Findings from the American Mathematics Educator Study
In this study, we highlight the differences in classroom-, teacher-, and school-level factors in 8th and 9th grade algebra experiences along socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines using nationally representative survey data from the American Mathematics Educator Study. Several takeaways emerge… more →
Skills and Earnings: A Multidimensional Perspective on Human Capital
The multitude of tasks performed in the labor market requires skills in many dimensions. Traditionally, human capital has been proxied primarily by educational attainment. However, an expanding body of literature highlights the importance of various skill dimensions for success in the labor… more →
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise
Generative AI, particularly Language Models (LMs), has the potential to transform real-world domains with societal impact, particularly where access to experts is limited. For example, in education, training novice educators with expert guidance is important for effectiveness but expensive,… more →
Falling Behind as Peers Age Up: The Effects of Peer Age on Student Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes
Understanding the factors that influence student outcomes is crucial for both parents and schools when designing effective educational strategies. This paper explores the impact of peer age on both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes using a randomized sample of middle school students. By… more →
Understanding the Association Between Educational Experiences and Economic and Social Mobility: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, we examine differences in educational experiences and in social and economic mobility for youths experiencing poverty relative to their more affluent peers. We also explore the extent to which different educational experiences are… more →
Teaching Teachers to Use Computer Assisted Learning Effectively: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence
Mastery learning – the process by which students must demonstrate proficiency with a single topic before moving on – is well recognized as one of the best ways to learn, yet many teachers struggle or remain unsure about how to implement it into a classroom setting. This study leverages two field… more →
The Racial Gap in Friendships Among High-Achieving Students
High-achieving minority students have fewer friends than their majority counterparts. Exploring patterns of friendship formation in the Add Health data, we find strong racial homophily in friendship formations as well as strong achievement homophily within race. However, we find that achievement… more →
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking Mathematics and Science Professional Development Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Despite evidence that teacher professional development interventions in mathematics and science can increase student achievement, our understanding of the mechanisms by which this occurs – particularly how these interventions affect teachers themselves, and whether teacher-level changes predict… more →
The Effects of Public Pre-K for 3-year-olds on Early Elementary School Outcomes: Evidence from the DC Centralized Lottery
This study examines the effects of universal public pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds (Pre-K3) on later public education outcomes, including enrollment, school mobility, special education status, and in-grade retention from kindergarten through second grade. While universal pre-kindergarten… more →
The Effects of Response to Intervention on Disability Identification and Achievement
Currently 15 percent of U.S. students receive special education services, a widespread intensive intervention with variable effects on students. Spurred by changes in federal policy, many states and districts have begun adopting the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach to identifying students… more →
Impact of States' Adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the Identification and Placement of Students in Special Education
This study investigates the impact of states' adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the identification and placement of students in special education. RTI, adopted by the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004, is designed to improve the… more →
Effectiveness of Structured Teacher Adaptations to an Online Content Literacy Intervention for Third Graders: A Randomized Controlled Trial During COVID-19
Scaling up evidence-based educational interventions to improve student outcomes presents challenges, especially when adapting to new contexts while maintaining fidelity. Structured teacher adaptations that integrate the strengths of experimental science (high fidelity) and improvement science (… more →
Understanding Individualized Education Program (IEP) Goals at Scale
Students with disabilities represent 15% of U.S. public school students. Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) inform how students with disabilities experience education. Very little is known about the aspects of IEPs as they are historically paper-based forms. In this study, we develop a… more →