K-12 Education
Social Emotional Learning, Student Attendance, and Chronic Absenteeism in Pre- and Post-Pandemic Periods
We develop and implement a quasi-experimental panel data model to address the relationships between social emotional learning competencies (SEL) and annual student attendance in the pre- and post-pandemic periods. Although panel data models tend to focus on changes over time in outcomes and… more →
The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions
In this paper, I investigate how publicizing school social climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different economic backgrounds. I first provide descriptive evidence on the novelty of school climate relative to other school… more →
Identifying Indicators to Support Educational Attainment for Different Groups of English Learners in High School
This study examines a broad array of potential indicators for early warning and college readiness indicator systems for different subgroups of English Learners in high school. Using data from 2008 through 2021 from the Chicago Public Schools, the study follows cohorts of students from eighth… more →
Education and Climate Change: Synthesizing the Evidence to Guide Future Research
The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly visible across all aspects of the U.S. PreK-12 education system. Schools are both vulnerable to climate change and uniquely positioned to be part of the solution. We synthesize a broad body of interdisciplinary research and data to… more →
Reclassifying English Learners
Most English learners (ELs) eventually gain sufficient English proficiency to be reclassified and receive instruction without linguistic supports. Though well-identified, prior regression discontinuity estimates for the effect of reclassification are estimated too imprecisely to detect policy-… more →
School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
The pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state- and district-level data to explore enrollment patterns five years after the pandemic’s onset.… more →
Revisiting The Rural Teacher Workforce: Insights from a Novel Rurality Measure
How we define rurality fundamentally shapes our place-based understanding of the teacher workforce. This study uses the Community Assets and Relative Rurality (CARR) Index—a novel, multidimensional measure of rurality—alongside longitudinal administrative data to examine K–12 teachers in Kansas… more →
Assessing Permanent School Closures: A Conceptual Framework
Amid widespread declining enrollment, the expiration of COVID-19 ESSER funding, and looming uncertainty in federal P-12 education involvement, many school districts may soon consider permanent school closures. While extant permanent school closure literature provides a starting point for future… more →
The Effect of Raising School Quality on Earnings
The evidence underscores the need to shift attention from school attainment to actual learning. While the average global return to an additional year of schooling is about 10 percent, a one standard deviation increase in test scores raises earnings by 15 percent. Studies show that including… more →
A Critical Appraisal of the Evidence on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education
This essay provides a two-pronged critical assessment of a subset of the literature on racial disproportionality in special education: that which aims to estimate racial disparities among otherwise similar children. This body of research has shown that Black students are less likely than… more →
The Sensitivity of Value-Added Estimates to Test Scoring Decisions
Value-Added Models (VAMs) are both common and controversial in education policy and accountability research. While the sensitivity of VAMs to model specification and covariate selection is well documented, the extent to which test scoring methods (e.g., mean scores vs. IRT-based scores) may… more →
From Disruption to Recovery: Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
In recent decades, an increasing number of students have pursued alternative educational options, including charter schools, as school choice has continued to expand. This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is well established that students experienced widespread learning… more →
Choosing Schools in Choice Neighborhoods: Impacts of Student Mobility, School Composition, and Case Management on Academic Outcomes
This study examines the academic impacts of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a federal public housing revitalization program, focusing on how case management, student mobility, and school compositional change intersect to shape outcomes. Using an eight-year student-level panel (2015–… more →
Supportive Teacher Working Conditions as a Tool to Retain Non-Local Teachers in Rural Schools
Rural school administrators prefer hiring homegrown teachers because they are more likely to stay than non-local teachers; however, administrators need to hire non-local candidates to meet their staffing needs. Our examination of rural teachers’ preferences for local was guided by person-… more →
Testing Away from One's Own School: Exam Location and Performance in High-Stakes Exams
High-stakes exams are often administered at designated test centers, requiring many students to test in unfamiliar environments. We investigate whether such arrangements impact students' test performance and, by extension, access to educational opportunities.
Behind the Push for Licensure Reform: How Beliefs About the Teaching Profession Unite and Divide Coalitions
A long history of scholarship on teacher professionalism documents how different narratives about teaching animate education policy and practice. We bridge the Advocacy Coalition Framework with institutional logics to examine how beliefs about teaching unite and divide a state-level coalition… more →
The Extent of Student Mobility Among Vulnerable Groups in California
Nonstructural student mobility—school changes not tied to grade-level promotion—is common and consequential yet remains underexamined in recent research. This paper analyzes the incidence, disparities, and predictors of nonstructural school mobility using longitudinal data from six… more →
The Impact of Increased Exposure of Diversity on Suburban Students’ Outcomes: An Analysis of the METCO Voluntary Desegregation Program
Over sixty years following Brown vs. Board of Education, racial and socioeconomic segregation and lack of equal access to educational opportunities persist. Across the country, voluntary desegregation busing programs aim to ameliorate these imbalances and disparities. A longstanding… more →
The Unintended Cost of Distance Learning: An Analysis of Child Maltreatment
Education personnel play a crucial role in identifying and reporting child maltreatment. However, school closures amid COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this vital reporting system. I causally investigate how remote learning influenced trends in child maltreatment reports and risks, leveraging county-… more →
High Turnover with Low Accountability: Local School Board Elections in 16 States
We analyze the most comprehensive dataset on U.S. school board elections. We find that nearly half of races go uncontested and that incumbents are reelected more than 80 percent of the time when they run. Because many incumbents retire instead of running for another term, however, turnover is… more →