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NEW EdWorkingPapers
Off the Books: School-Based Informal Diversion and Student and Community Outcomes
Efforts to reduce school-based arrest may reshape policing beyond school doors, yet their downstream effects are largely unknown. We study a New York City policy that encouraged informal diversion in place of arrest, using a difference-in-differences strategy. The probability of a juvenile crime record near a school fell by 6.9 percentage points---concentrated among misdemeanor offenses and… more →
Superintendent (In)Stability and Student Achievement in the United States
Superintendents shape conditions for teaching and learning, yet the limited studies of their impact—concentrated in a few states and focused on superintendent turnover—find small or null effects on student achievement. Using more than 37,000 district-year records from national superintendents and student achievement datasets, and drawing on organizational learning and managerial succession… more →
(How) Do We Teach Emotions?
Emotional intelligence constitutes a key component of human capital, shaped partially by educational materials. Using machine learning and generative AI tools, we examine emotional content in public-school textbooks and children’s literature. A stark mismatch emerges: text exposes children to a broad emotional range, but images overwhelmingly depict happiness and calm, regardless of emotions… more →
"How You Spend Your Money is Your Strategy": Education Spending and the Academic Achievement of Students with and without Disabilities in Virginia, 2018-2025
Virginia experienced a boost in federal and state education funding from 2020-2025 and launched the Virginia Literacy Act in 2023. These policy events prompted our study of the impact of education spending by school divisions on growth in academic pass rates in reading and mathematics for students with and without disabilities in grades three through eight (2018-2025). To do this, we estimated… more →
Is Calculus a Gatekeeper in Selective Engineering Admissions? Insights from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment with Admissions Officers
Lower-resourced high schools are far less likely to offer calculus, raising concerns that calculus availability may be a gatekeeper in selective college admissions. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment (292 admissions officers, 1768 total observations), we investigate whether engineering applicants are penalized for not taking calculus—even when it was unavailable to them. We also investigate… more →
Post-pandemic achievement recovery based on student characteristics and district-level policies
It is well-established that student achievement has declined dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less is known how these patterns may vary by developmental timing of exposure to the pandemic and how district-level policies may have influenced student recovery.
Policy and Practice Series
EdTalks
Centering Teachers in the AI Era
What happens when teachers are treated as professional decision-makers, not just end users of AI tools?
Watch the conversation about the future of the teaching profession in an AI-enabled education system, grounded in two recent EdWorkingPapers.