Student Well-Being
COVID-19, Online Learning, and Absenteeism in Detroit
How much school students attend is a powerful indicator of their well-being and a strong predictor of their future success in school. Prior research has documented the myriad in-school and out-of-school factors that contribute to high levels of student absenteeism, many emerging from the root… more →
Strictly Speaking: Examining Teacher Use of Punishment and Student Outcomes
While a growing body of literature has documented the negative impacts of exclusionary punishments, such as suspensions, on academic outcomes, less is known about how teachers vary in disciplinary behaviors and the attendant impacts on students. We use administrative data from North Carolina… more →
Beyond Chronic Absenteeism: The Dynamics and Disparities of Class Absences in Secondary School
Student absenteeism is often conceptualized and quantified in a static, uniform manner, providing an incomplete understanding of this important phenomenon. Applying growth curve models to detailed class-attendance data, we document that secondary school students' unexcused absences grow steadily… more →
Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching in the Earliest Grades: Benefits for Executive Function Skills
The benefits of student-teacher ethnoracial matching on student outcomes—ranging from academic achievement to postsecondary attainment—are well documented. Yet, we know far less about the role of student-teacher ethnoracial matching in the earliest grades school and on less about effects on non-… more →
Student Misconduct and Learning Outcomes Evidence from Pennsylvania’s K-12 Building Records: 1999-2018
This paper compares and contrasts two required building level school violence measures under NCLB, arrests and incidents of well-defined school misconduct acts, across 20 years of Pennsylvania’s approximately 3,000 public school buildings. Generally, both arrests for school violence and… more →
The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing Across the U.S.
U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet, little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national… more →
The Effects of Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching on Exclusionary Discipline for Asian American, Black, and Latinx Students: Evidence From New York City
Although Black and Latinx students disproportionately face exclusionary school discipline, prior research finds that the likelihood of suspension for Black students decreases when they are taught by greater proportions of Black teachers. Little prior work, however, has examined whether these… more →
Who’s Left Out of Learning? Racial Disparities in Teachers’ Reports of Exclusionary Discipline Strategies Beyond Suspensions and Expulsions
We documented (1) the use of strategies, beyond suspensions and expulsions, that exclude young students from learning opportunities and (2) how teacher-reported use of these strategies varied according to student racial/ethnic composition. In a sample of 2,053 teachers and 40,771 kindergarten… more →
Can nudging mentors weaken student support? Experimental evidence from a virtual communication intervention
This paper presents results from a randomized trial of a nudge intervention designed to encourage and enhance virtual student support. During the 2019-20 school year, randomly selected mentors in a school-based mentoring program received monthly reminders with tips for communicating with youth… more →
Desegregated but still separated? The impact of school integration on student suspensions and special education classification
In this paper I study the impact of court-mandated school desegregation by race on student suspensions and special education classification. Simple descriptive statistics using student enrollment and outcome data collected from the largest school districts across the country in the 1970s and… more →
The Spillover Effects of Parental Conflict on Classmates' Cognitive and Noncognitive Outcomes
Children exposed to Interparental Verbal Conflict (IPVC) exert negative spillovers on their peers. Using nationally representative survey data from middle schools in China, focusing on schools that randomly assign students into classrooms, and using both (1) within-school, across-classroom… more →
From Referrals to Suspensions: New Evidence on Racial Disparities in Exclusionary Discipline
We use novel data on disciplinary referrals, including those that do not lead to suspensions, to better understand the origins of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline. We find significant differences between Black and white students in both referral rates and the rate at which referrals… more →
The COVID-19 Pandemic Disrupted Both School Bullying and Cyberbullying
School bullying is widespread and has substantial social costs. One in five U.S. high school students report being bullied each school year and these students face greater risks of serious mental health challenges that extend into adulthood. As the COVID-19 pandemic forced most students into… more →
School Discipline and Racial Disparities in Early Adulthood
Despite interest in the role of school discipline in the creation of racial inequality, previous research has been unable to identify how students who receive suspensions in school differ from unsuspended classmates on key young adult outcomes. We utilize novel data to document the links between… more →
The Effect of Universal Free Meals on Student Perceptions of School Climate: Evidence from New York City
Over the last decade, more and more schools have adopted Universal Free Meals (UFM), a program that provides meals free of charge to all students, regardless of household income. Recent research finds UFM increases participation in school meals, improves test scores, and reduces incidences of… more →
The effect of smaller classes on infection-related school absence: Evidence from the Project STAR randomized controlled trial
In an effort to reduce viral transmission, many schools are planning to reduce class size if they have not reduced it already. Yet the effect of class size on transmission is unknown. To determine whether smaller classes reduce school absence, especially when community disease prevalence is high… more →
The Effects of Teacher-Student Demographic Matching on Social-Emotional Learning
A growing body of research shows that students benefit when they demographically match their teachers. However, little is known about how matching affects social-emotional development. We use student-fixed effects to exploit changes over time in the proportion of teachers within a school grade… more →
Equal Time for Equal Crime? Racial Bias in School Discipline
Well-documented racial disparities in rates of exclusionary discipline may arise from differences in hard-to-observe student behavior or bias, in which treatment for the same behavior varies by student race or ethnicity. We provide evidence for the presence of bias using statewide administrative… more →
Unequal Opportunity Spreaders: Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the U.S.
Mixed evidence on the relationship between school closure and COVID-19 prevalence could reflect focus on large-scale levels of geography, limited ability to address endogeneity, and demographic variation. Using county-level CDC COVID-19 data through June 15, 2020, two matching strategies address… more →
Understanding Teacher Perceptions of Efficacy in Social and Emotional Learning: Toward Equity-Based Approaches to SEL in Urban Schools
Researchers have noted the importance of equity-based approaches to social and emotional learning (SEL), which emphasize the role of school environment, including adult beliefs, in student well-being. This article builds on this work by examining 129 teachers’ perceptions of efficacy in SEL.… more →