Using data from the 2017–2018 and 2020–2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), we document disparities in exposure to security personnel across US high schools and geographic levels. We distinguish between law enforcement officers (LEOs) and school security guards (SSGs) to capture variation in how security roles are deployed. Results show that Black and Hispanic students experience greater exposure to security personnel than White students. The disparity mainly arises from differences in exposure to SSGs and district and metropolitan variation, although disparities are present across all geographic scales and for LEOs. Our findings suggest that reform should not only focus on officer presence within schools but also on structural inequalities in security personnel deployment by type and across districts and regions.
Parents’ role in school discipline has been the subject of little research. Drawing from a national sample ( n = 439) of parents/caregivers of K–12 students, this study seeks to understand their perspectives on school discipline. Using a mixed-methods analysis, we find parents are generally pleased with their level of involvement in the discipline of their own children but desire more involvement in discipline policy. They express the importance of consistently implementing discipline, yet many acknowledge disparities for students of color. Parents/caregivers show support for practices like suspension, despite research evidence on the harms of exclusionary discipline, but also support alternatives like restorative justice. The study examines subgroup differences and alignment between parental views and those of teachers. The findings bring national evidence to the role of parents in school discipline, a previously understudied stakeholder in the discipline process, and can inform discipline systems, particularly the components of such systems that require parental involvement.
Studies of teacher residencies highlight their potential to increase the diversity and persistence of the workforce while addressing district staffing shortages. However, prior research is largely unable to directly attribute these promising trends to the programmatic elements of the residency model itself. Using a novel statewide survey and leveraging temporal variation in when predominantly undergraduate traditional teacher preparation programs across Tennessee reported becoming residencies, we estimate the causal impacts of adoption of the model on recruitment, employment, retention, and effectiveness. We generate skepticism that any improvements in diversity, employment, and retention stem from this transition; however, we find suggestive evidence that adoption may increase the instructional effectiveness and—somewhat surprisingly—the likelihood of migration across schools and districts of graduates.
Media accounts suggest that American school board meetings have transformed from bureaucratic affairs into arenas of conflict, particularly around race. Yet systematic evidence remains limited. Analyzing over 40,000 meeting minutes from 2018 to 2022, we examine the prevalence and predictors of race-related discourse. Using large language models and natural language processing, we find that race-related content appears in 24% of meetings, predominately voiced by officials. Opposition related to racial issues occurs in only 1% of meetings, coming from both officials and the public. Race-related discussions—both affirmative and oppositional—are most common in suburban, high-income, highly educated districts in the Northeast and West, where local discourse tracks national race-related discourse. Oppositional content also peaks in politically competitive areas.
Extensive research has explored the uses and consequences of high-stakes assessment systems within accountability policies. However, the gap between the stated objectives of these systems and the perspectives of actors at the micro- and meso-levels of the school system has received limited attention. This qualitative study, based on individual and group interviews with local education administrators and school leaders, examines the theory of action attributed to Chile’s national teacher assessment system. The results highlight various interpretations and positions of actors toward the system. These are discussed in relation to the consequential validity of the assessment, as well as the implications of discrepancies between policy design and the ways in which beneficiaries interpret and enact it.
School boards are central to local education policy and governance in the United States. Given their localized nature, the methods of electing school boards vary widely. Most boards are elected on a nonpartisan basis—where candidate partisan affiliation does not appear on the ballot—but in some states, there has been a shift toward partisan elections. Our paper focuses on North Carolina, where a sizable fraction of districts has recently shifted to partisan elections. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that partisan elections affect the partisan, racial, and gender composition of boards. We then explore impacts beyond politics, testing for changes in school and student outcomes.
A growing volume of research shows college promise programs increase the likelihood that students enroll in and complete college. Place-based promise programs provide a guaranteed college scholarship for students who attend a specified school district. We examine the societal benefits and costs of a place-based scholarship program in rural Arkansas, the El Dorado Promise. Our cost framework treats tuition payments as a cash transfer that shifts the cost burden of higher education rather than causing new societal costs. Findings show the program provides societal benefits equal to $4.60 for each dollar invested. A break-even analysis shows the program produces benefits to society that exceed costs within an 81% confidence interval of effects, providing relatively high likelihood of positive returns.
This study estimates the effects of New York City’s (NYC) Gifted and Talented (G&T) program on students’ absenteeism and academic achievement. Leveraging a longitudinal student-level dataset and a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we provide evidence on middle and high school absence and achievement outcomes for students who entered G&T in grades 1 through 3. For students in G&T, we find modest but consistent effects on attendance and academic outcomes (middle school grade-level math and English Language Arts proficiency), with effects accumulating over time and reaching 0.11 to 0.18 standard deviations for students entering in grade 3. The results hold even during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting the program’s resilience in supporting attendance despite external disruptions. Overall, the findings indicate that G&T participation supports long-term improvements in attendance and academic achievement for students who enter in elementary grades.
Student absenteeism has remained high following the COVID-19 pandemic, and districts need low-cost strategies to improve attendance. During the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) conducted a randomized trial of a personalized messaging intervention that had promising results in an early pilot with eight rural districts. NCRERN worked with a student information system to test the intervention in 47 districts in 16 states. We find that the personalized messages reduced student absences by between 1.7% (p < .05) and 4.5% (p < .05) and cost, on average, $4.07 per student. While generally cost-effective, these effects represent a modest 0.2 to 0.5 days saved. We discuss implementation challenges and heterogeneous effects that suggest caution prior to full-scale adoption.
The reform landscape of teacher education in the United States is both complex and rapidly evolving, and reforms to teacher education have emerged as a contested site of struggle between diverse political and ideological camps in education. In this qualitative multiple case study, I investigate the extent to which the underlying logics of these reforms to teacher education shape teacher education programs as organizations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 74 program leaders, teacher educators, and teacher candidates across three U.S. teacher education programs, I find that each program is organized around multiple competing reform logics. Each program draws upon two “logic constellations”—democratic professionalism and corporate marketplace—which both shape and constrain programs’ enactment of their organizational missions.
Using administrative data, we estimate models of community college students' upward transfer decisions and compute each covariate's contribution to the gap in transfer rates between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students and, alternatively, between white and Black students. We find that college entry age, completed credits, and enrollment duration account for over 50% of the economically advantaged-disadvantaged gap and 92% of the racial/ethnic gap; this combined effect is robust to alternative definitions of transfer. Many other factors are associated with increased transfer rates, but our findings suggest that economically disadvantaged, Black, and Hispanic students cannot catch up to their peers in transfer rates without starting college earlier and earning more credits-changes that are likely to require pre-college interventions and financial assistance.
As teacher strikes remain a prominent phenomenon within the United States, it is critical to examine their prevalence, potential causes, and consequences to understand the evolving dynamics of education policy, labor relations, and teaching as a profession. Using a unique longitudinal dataset of large teacher strikes between 1993 and 2019, we find strikes occur in waves and various economic, socio-political, and occupational factors predict strike occurrences. We also find evidence that these factors operate differently in right-to-work and non-right-to-work states. Lastly, we find that large strikes are associated with higher average teacher salaries in subsequent years, but with no substantive change in student achievement.
This study focuses on improving the predictive power of early warning systems (EWSs) to decrease chronic absenteeism in early childhood. Using a demographically diverse sample of students followed from PreK to third grade in Boston Public Schools (N = 6,698), we demonstrate how and why two modern machine learning (ML) algorithms-the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)-can enhance EWS accuracy. The best-performing XGBoost model with SMOTE achieved a 54-percentage point improvement in accuracy (in terms of recall rate) over the logistic regression model closest to those used in current EWSs, more accurately detecting students who would become chronically absent in third grade, and outperformed other ML approaches evaluated. Notably, models excluding student demographic information maintained comparable predictive accuracy.
Universal public prekindergarten programs increasingly include 3-year-olds, but evidence on their effects on public school enrollment remains limited. This study uses data on 4,561 applicants to the District of Columbia's (DC's) Pre-K3 program (2014-2017) and a centralized admissions lottery to estimate causal impacts on early elementary enrollment. Students offered seats in school-based Pre-K3 were more likely to remain in the public education system through kindergarten and stay in the same school, suggesting stronger school continuity. These effects become less precise in the first and second grades. We find no evidence that Pre-K3 attendance affects grade retention, a less frequent outcome for younger children. Overall, results suggest that Pre-K3 may strengthen early engagement with public schools, though effects were not significant across all measures.
Although ample scholarship has examined the coherence of district-level instructional systems, the literature pays limited attention to crafting coherence around district visions for equitable instruction. In this multiple case study, we use interviews, documents, and observations to examine four districts' efforts to craft coherence around a shared vision for equitable mathematics. We found that in only one district did district and school leaders describe a shared equity-focused vision, bolstered by consistent messaging. Across all districts, the critical elements of equitable mathematics (e.g., identity and power) received substantially less attention in instructional visions and supports than dominant elements (e.g., access to ambitious mathematics and achievement). We document the promises and pitfalls of crafting coherence around a shared vision for equitable instruction.
This article details the development and validation of the Academic Cultural Wealth Scale (ACW)-a survey instrument that measures the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) postsecondary Students of Color use to pursue their educational and career goals. Through four stages of testing with students attending different colleges and universities, we created a scale that suitably captures various dimensions of CCW. We also provide evidence to support the quantitative measurement of newer forms (e.g., Spiritual Capital) and distinct subforms (e.g., Chosen Familial Capital) of CCW. Finally, we offer advice to those who wish to measure the CCW of specific student populations and to those who hope to quantify highly interrelated concepts from other frameworks within the Critical Race Theory (CRT) tradition.
Mixed-income initiatives provide critical investments in neighborhoods, including investments to improve schools, and provide case management and family support services to low-income families. The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) is one of the largest and most comprehensive mixed-income neighborhood redevelopment initiatives to date; however, research has yet to examine the CNI's effect on educational outcomes. We applied a robust difference-in-difference (DID) method to dynamically estimate the effect of attending a CNI partner school and receiving CNI family case management services on student performance in math and reading, as well as attendance and behavior. We found that attending a CNI partner school substantially decreased suspensions, modestly decreased absences, and slightly decreased math performance. While receiving case management services marginally increased English language arts (ELA) performance, this effect was only found among students with a history of economic distress. Furthermore, dynamic modeling revealed that the effects on punishment were durable, while the effects on academics were short-lived. Moreover, the effects differed across both gender and age, representing substantial heterogeneity.
Reclassification, the process by which English learner (EL) students exit EL classification, often determines access to mainstream academic coursework. While existing research finds that many students who demonstrate English proficiency do not reclassify, few studies evaluate policies that effectively reclassify eligible students. We examine the impact of shifting reclassification responsibility from school districts to the state in Michigan. Using a difference-in-regression discontinuities (DiRDs) design, we find that state-level responsibility increases reclassification rates by 35 percentage points for students just above the threshold of reclassification eligibility. Effects are larger for Spanish speakers, suggesting automatic procedures may reduce linguistic bias in the reclassification process. Our findings contribute to the literature on default policies in K-12 education and policies that promote equitable EL education.
Early school leaving presents significant disparities, closely tied to observable characteristics such as gender and socioeconomic status (SES). This study examines the complex interplay between these factors using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions microdata from 28 EU countries, covering the period from 2011 to 2019. Through logistic regression analyses, we uncover a nonlinear relationship between gender and SES, revealing that the gender gap in early school leaving diminishes as SES increases. Notably, our findings indicate that males from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately at risk of dropping out of school. We show that this phenomenon can be partly explained by deeply rooted gender norms, which are further shaped by national attitudes toward gender roles.
This study examined predictors of persistence and fadeout across multiple cluster randomized controlled trials that evaluated a preschool mathematics curriculum. We used meta-analytic methods to explore how impacts on student mathematics achievement faded between post-test (i.e., endline) and 1-year follow-up. We found that the magnitude of the impact at post-test was a strong predictor of the 1-year follow-up impact. Contrary to popular theory, we found that intervention impacts faded faster when students attended sites that showed more learning in the year following the end of the intervention. Factors related to intervention fidelity and dosage did not strongly predict fadeout patterns after considering the magnitude of the post-test effect. Results suggest that educational program evaluators can use immediate impacts to forecast follow-up effects.
