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NEW EdWorkingPapers
Persisting Income-Based Preschool Enrollment Gap in the U.S., 2000 to 2023
This study aims to understand whether access to early childhood education (ECE) has become more equitable over a period of substantial growth in public pre-K investment. This study describes and statistically tests the differential trends across income groups in center-based ECE enrollment among 3- and 4-year-olds. Across descriptive, regression, and decomposition analyses, the income-based… more →
Incidence and Effects of Reported University Student Absences
Despite the potential for illness or bereavement to significantly disrupt education, there is little evidence about the frequency and impact of absences in higher education. Using administrative data from a large public university in the United States, we analyze the incidence of reported student absences and their effects on grades and retention. We document significant heterogeneity in the… more →
Revisiting Why Superintendents Turn Over: Understanding Pathways Out of School District Leadership
Research has examined many facets of superintendent turnover but offers an incomplete understanding of superintendents’ pathways out of the role. We pair administrative data on Tennessee superintendents over 15 years with hand-collected information about the reported reasons for their departures and jobs they took after leaving. Our data show that interpreting exits from state administrative… more →
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 →
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.