Highlighted Publications




 

Yoon (2026) examines how opening interdistrict magnet schools affects enrollment and student demographics in nearby public and private schools. She analyzes Connecticut school enrollment and demographic data from 1998 to 2020, using a difference-in-differences approach to estimate causal effects. She finds that magnet school openings reduced enrollment by 6.1% in nearby private K–8 schools and 5.3% in traditional public high schools. The proportion of White students in privat

Firoozi (2026) examines whether additional education changes political party affiliation. He analyzes administrative records covering millions of registered voters in California and Florida, along with approximately 250,000 University of California applicants. Using natural experiments involving compulsory schooling laws and college admissions, he finds that an additional year of high school education reduces Republican registration by approximately 1.4–2.5 percentage points.

Firoozi (2026) examines whether reducing college tuition for out-of-state and international students increases enrollment and encourages graduates to remain in the state. He analyzes a randomized tuition-waiver lottery involving 1,333 students at a major research university, tracking enrollment, employment, and migration over 12 years. Each $10,000 in tuition relief increased university enrollment by 3.2 percentage points and the likelihood of remaining in the state by approx

Harris and McKenzie (2026) examined how state regulations affect charter school growth, enrollment, and educational quality. Using national school data from 2002–2019, they analyzed charter school policies, student achievement, and school openings and closures. They found that states without enrollment caps and with multiple charter school authorizers generally had larger charter school sectors. Eliminating strict caps was associated with a 9-percentage-point higher charter s

Lenard and Wright-Kim (2026) examine whether earning multiple college credentials increases workers’ earnings and employment. They analyzed New Jersey education and employment records for nearly 26,000 adults, including approximately 900 who earned a second credential. They found that completing an additional credential increased earnings by approximately $703 per quarter, or 6%, compared with workers who pursued but did not complete a second credential. Workers also increase

Zamarro et al. (2026) examined whether raising minimum teacher salaries improves teacher retention. They analyzed Arkansas’s 2023 education reform, which increased minimum annual teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000. Using statewide salary schedules and administrative employment records covering approximately 31,500 teachers annually, they examined retention over three years following the reform. They found that teachers receiving raises exceeding $6,000 were substantiall

Lee and Scafidi (2026) examine how changes in public school enrollment affect district funding, spending, staffing, and other resources. They analyze National Center for Education Statistics data for 11,688 U.S. public school districts from 1998–99 through 2018–19. They find that declining enrollment generally did not reduce resources per student. Instead, declining districts experienced larger increases in per-pupil revenues, expenditures, and staffing than growing districts

Muñiz-Fernández (2026) examines whether shortening the school day, and thereby reducing school-based childcare, affects fertility. He analyzes annual data from 50 Spanish provinces from 1981 to 2016, including total fertility rates and women’s age at first birth. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach, he finds that shifting from full-day to morning-only school reduced fertility by 0.12 children per woman, about a 9% decline, and delayed first births by roughly

Li (2026) examines whether reducing remedial education requirements improves outcomes for California community college students with different levels of academic preparation. She analyzes administrative records from California community colleges linked to public high school data, comparing students before and after the state expanded direct access to transfer-level courses. The reform substantially increased transfer-level enrollment and course completion. Among the least-pre

Mumma (2026) examines whether the high school a student attends affects civic engagement, especially voting, in adulthood. She analyzes education records for nine cohorts of Indiana public school students, linking them to birth records, parental voting histories, and nationwide voter records. After accounting for student, family, school, and community characteristics, she finds meaningful differences in schools’ effects on later voting. A one-standard-deviation increase in a

Egalite and Gottfried (2026) examine whether matching students with teachers who share their race or ethnicity improves educational outcomes, especially for students with disabilities and English learners. They draw on three studies using longitudinal student-level data from Massachusetts and a large California school district. They find that race matching reduced special education referrals by about 5%, including 7% for boys. Among students with disabilities, same-race teach

Morton and DeArmond (2026) examine whether four-day school weeks improve teacher recruitment and retention. They synthesize recent evidence from Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Oregon, including causal difference-in-differences studies comparing staffing outcomes under four- and five-day schedules. They find little consistent evidence that four-day weeks improve staffing. Estimated retention effects generally range from a 3.0-percentage-point decrease to a 1.2-per

El Khoury (2026) asks which students are most responsible for gender bias in online professor evaluations. She combines RateMyProfessor data from business and economics instructors at Arizona State University and several other large public universities with a randomized experiment involving 288 students. Students evaluated identical teaching content delivered with either a male or female voice. Female professors received online quality ratings 0.13 to 0.17 points lower on a 1

Kim (2026) examines how public school closures affect students’ academic progress and later economic outcomes. He uses linked Texas administrative records covering K–12 schooling, college attendance, employment, and earnings, combined with difference-in-differences designs comparing students in closed schools with matched controls. School closures reduce math and reading scores by about 0.03 standard deviations and increase disciplinary days by 23 percent. By age 26, closures

Carrell et al. (2026) examined whether a simple information nudge encouraging recent high school graduates to enroll in summer community college courses increases summer enrollment. They analyzed data from a randomized field experiment involving 8,222 California high school seniors who had applied for financial aid and planned to attend college, linking survey responses with administrative college enrollment records. They found that students who received the informational mes

Ainsworth, Liu, and Penner (2026) asked whether adopting a four-day school week changes teacher turnover in the short and long term. They analyzed administrative records for all public school employees in Oregon from 2006–2007 through 2023–2024, using a difference-in-differences research design to estimate the policy’s causal effects. They found that schools adopting a four-day week experienced a 2.0 percentage point increase in teacher turnover. This included a 0.7 percentag

Diliberti et al. (2026) examined whether stricter school cell phone policies reduce students’ cell phone use during the school day. They analyzed survey responses from 774 U.S. middle and high school students in the nationally representative RAND American Youth Panel, comparing students across five levels of policy strictness. They found that stricter policies substantially reduced phone use. About 84% of students in schools with the most lenient policies checked their phones

Swiderski and McDonnell (2026) examined whether students who begin at a community college have different long-term educational, occupational, and wage outcomes than similar students who start at a four-year college. They analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), linked to O*NET occupational data, and compared similar students using propensity score weighting. They found that community college starters were more than 20 percentage points less

Mejia, Wigul, Hsieh, and Johnson (2026) examined whether the benefits of earning a college degree outweigh the costs for California students. They drew on labor market, higher education, financial aid, and student debt data from California and national sources to compare earnings, employment outcomes, college costs, and borrowing patterns across educational levels. They found that college graduates earn substantially more than non-graduates, with bachelor’s degree holders ear

Sacerdote, Staiger, and Tine (2025) examined whether test-optional college admissions policies help or harm high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. They analyzed admissions and enrollment data from Dartmouth College covering more than 99,000 applicants across test-required and test-optional years. Their primary question was whether withholding SAT or ACT scores affects admission outcomes. They found that high-achieving disadvantaged students often failed to