Student Learning
Rural Early Childhood Programs & School Readiness: An Evaluation of the Early Steps to School Success Program
Prior research has clearly established the substantial expected payoffs to investments in early childhood education. However, the ability to deliver early childhood programs differs across communities with access to high quality programing especially hard to establish in rural communities. We… more →
Educational Spillover Effects of New English Learners in a New Destination State
The number of English learners enrolled in public schools has grown substantially in the United States over the past two decades. The growth is especially large in states in the South and Midwest that have not been traditional destinations for recent immigrants. In this study, we examine the… more →
Who Benefits from Remote Schooling? Self-Selection and Match Effects
We study the distributional effects of remote learning. Our approach combines newly collected data on parental preferences with administrative data from Los Angeles. The preference data allow us to account for selection into remote learning while also studying selection patterns and treatment… more →
Sibling Spillovers May Enhance the Efficacy of Targeted School Policies
Public policies often target individuals but within-family externalities of such interventions are understudied. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document how a third grade retention policy affects both the target children and their younger siblings. The policy improves test scores of… more →
Can brick phones bridge the digital learning divide? Evidence from SMS-based math practice
Hardware requirements are a barrier to widespread adoption of digital learning software among low-income populations. We investigate the demand among smallholder-farming households for a simple, adaptive math learning tool that can be accessed by widely available ``brick'' phones, and its effect… more →
Learning during the Pandemic: Evidence from Uzbekistan
School closures induced by the COVID-19 pandemic led to concerns about student learning. This paper evaluates the effect of school closures on student learning in Uzbekistan, using a unique dataset that allows assessing change in learning over time. The findings show that test scores in math for… more →
Unequal Learning Loss: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Influenced the Academic Growth of Learners at the Tails of the Achievement Distribution
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantial unfinished learning for U.S. students, but to differing degrees for various subgroups. For example, students of color, from low-income families, or who attended high-poverty schools experienced greater unfinished learning. In this study we examined… more →
Time to Transfer: Long-Term Effects of a Sustained and Spiraled Content Literacy Intervention in the Elementary Grades
We investigated the effectiveness of a sustained and spiraled content literacy intervention that emphasizes building domain and topic knowledge schemas and vocabulary for elementary-grade students. The Model of Reading Engagement (MORE) intervention underscores thematic lessons that provide an… more →
In School, Engaged, On-track? The Effect of the Pandemic on Student Attendance, Course Grades, and Grade Retention in North Carolina
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ experiences in school were widespread. Early research show reductions in test scores across grade levels and student groups. This study extends research evidence to additional student outcomes – absences, course grades, and grad retention – and… more →
Online tutoring works: Experimental evidence from a program with vulnerable children
We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The intensive, eight-week-long program was delivered by qualified math teachers in… more →
Comparing the School Readiness Skills of Public Pre-Kindergarten and Head Start Participants: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
A systematic review of the literature (1965–2022) and meta-analysis were undertaken to compare the school readiness skills of children participating in public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) or Head Start. Seven quasi-experimental studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis and 38 effect… more →
Student Demand For Relative Performance Feedback: Evidence from a Field Experiment
We administer a survey to study students' preferences for relative performance feedback in an introductory economics class. To do so, we elicit students' willingness to pay for/avoid learning their rank on a midterm exam. Our results show that 10% of students are willing to pay to avoid learning… more →
Understanding High Schools’ Effects on Longer-Term Outcomes
Improving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of low-income students, using detailed longitudinal data. We estimate… more →
What We Can Learn About Latin American Educational Systems from International Tests: A Brief Foray
The Revista del Centro de Estudios Educativos, numero 3, 1971 included an early Carnoy article on the economics of education: “Un enfoque de sistemas para evaluar la educación, ilustrado con datos de Puerto Rico.” The article used a unique data set that had student test scores, students’ family… more →
Capturing the Educational and Economic Impacts of School Closures in Poland
The effect of school closures in the spring of 2020 on the math, science, and reading skills of secondary school students in Poland is estimated. The COVID-19-induced school closures lasted 26 weeks in Poland, one of Europe's longest periods of shutdown. Comparison of the learning outcomes with… more →
Discipline Reform, School Culture, and Student Achievement
Does relaxing strict school discipline improve student achievement, or lead to classroom disorder? We study a 2012 reform in New York City public middle schools that eliminated suspensions for non-violent, disorderly behavior, replacing them with less disruptive interventions. Using a difference… more →
When Girls Outperform Boys: The Gender Gap in High School Math Grades
Across an array of educational outcomes, evidence suggests that girls outperform boys on average. For example, in Chicago, ninth-grade girls earn math GPAs that are 0.29 points higher than boys on average. This paper examines explanations for this gap, such as girl-boy differences in academic… more →
Integrated Student Support and Student Achievement: A Replication Study
Growing up in poverty presents numerous nonacademic barriers that impede academic progress for economically disadvantaged students (Duncan and Murnane, 2016). Because schools alone have limited capacity to address the systemic nature of economic inequalities that directly affects student… more →
Holding Back to Move Forward: The Effects of Retention in the Third Grade on Student Outcomes
We evaluate the effects of grade retention on students’ academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the… more →
Global Universal Basic Skills: Current Deficits and Implications for World Development
How far is the world away from ensuring that every child obtains the basic skills needed to be internationally competitive? And what would accomplishing this mean for world development? Based on the micro data of international and regional achievement tests, we map achievement onto a common (… more →