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Reading has been at the forefront of early-grade educational interventions, but addressing the educational needs of students in math early on is also critical given that early gaps in math skills widen further over the course of schooling. In this study, we examine the effects of Kentucky's Math Achievement Fund -- a unique state-level program that combines targeted interventions, peer-coaching, and close collaboration among teachers to improve math achievement in grades K-3 -- on student outcomes and the costs associated with this policy. We find significant positive effects of the program not only on math achievement, but also on test scores in reading and non-test outcomes including student attendance and disciplinary incidents. The benefits exist across racial/ethnic groups and students from different socioeconomic statuses, and they are slightly higher for racial minorities. These findings, along with the cost estimate of the program, suggest that this program could provide a cost-effective blueprint to address the educational needs of students in math in early grades.

In March 2022 a random sample of one third of Stride K12 families (37,856) were emailed a survey asking parents a series of questions about their families' experiences in their children's current Stride K12-powered online schools and their experiences in their children's former schools. 1,949 parents completed the survey, and of that total, 1,613 had Stride K12 students who had attended another school prior to attending their current online schools. These families reside in one of 28 states that have Stride K12-powered schools that were included in the survey. The purpose of the survey, and this report, are to learn more about what parents value regarding the education of their children, why they chose to enroll their children in a Stride K12-powered online school, their degree of satisfaction with various aspects of their current online schools, and their satisfaction levels with their children's Stride K-12 powered schools as compared with their former schools, when applicable. The survey results indicate that parents have overwhelmingly positive views of how their children are faring at their Stride K12-powered online schools and that their children who did migrate from other schools faced a variety of challenges in their former schools.

Dual enrollment (DE) is one of the fastest growing programs that support the high school-to-college transition. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence about its impact on either students' college application choices or admission outcomes. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach and data from two cohorts of ninth-grade students in one anonymous state, we found that taking DE credits increased the total number of colleges students applied to and the likelihood of applying to any moderately or highly selective in-state four-year institution. Attempting DE credits also increased the total number of in-state four-year colleges a student got admitted to and the probability of being admitted to a highly selective in-state four-year college. Heterogeneous analysis further indicates that the gains were primarily driven by Black students.

The study examined the effect of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) on social-emotional competencies of fifth and sixth graders in the 2018-19 academic year in Spokane, Washington. The study used archival data and quasi-experimental design with matching to compare social-emotional competencies of students taught by NBCTs and students taught by non-NBCTs. The study examined 10 social-emotional competencies. The results suggest that NBCTs are significantly more effective than non-NBCTs at facilitating students' self-efficacy approximately 2 months after the start of the school year (effect size = 0.21). Results for self-management are in the same direction (effect size = 0.10), however not statistically significant. Findings for the remaining eight social-emotional competencies are not statistically significant, and the effect sizes are small. The results also suggest that NBCTs are effective at developing social-emotional competencies for students who are native English speakers for two social-emotional measures: self-efficacy (effect size = 0.23) and social awareness (effect size = 0.16). The study is the first attempt to rigorously examine the effect of NBCTs on students' social-emotional competencies. Although the evidence is encouraging, additional rigorous research is needed to make confident conclusions, particularly for students who are English language learners and from different racial/ethnic subgroups because of the small number of these students in the current study. [This study was funded by the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant.]

Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states (plus D.C.), we investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty. We find that remote instruction was a primary driver of widening achievement gaps. Math gaps did not widen in areas that remained in-person (although there was some widening in reading gaps in those areas). We estimate that high-poverty districts that went remote in 2020-21 will need to spend nearly all of their federal aid on academic recovery to help students recover from pandemic-related achievement losses.

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that prohibit students with poor introductory grades from declaring popular majors. We investigate these GPA restrictions by constructing a novel 50-year dataset covering four public research universities' student transcripts and employing a dynamic difference-in-difference design around the implementation of 29 restrictions. Restricted majors' average URM enrollment share falls by 20 percent, which matches observational patterns and can be explained by URM students' poorer average pre-college academic preparation. Using first-term course enrollments to identify students who intend to earn restricted majors, we find that major restrictions disproportionately lead URM students from their intended major toward less-lucrative fields, driving within-institution ethnic stratification and likely exacerbating labor market disparities. [Funding for this report was provided by University of California Humanities Research Institute and Opportunity Insights.]

This study linked ninth-grade student background data and school-reported high school transcript data from the national High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) to student item responses on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment to examine the relationships between high school coursework and end-of-high school mathematics achievement. In a series of marginal maximum likelihood regression analyses, we find that STEM course GPAs, credits earned in AP/IB math and science courses, higher levels of math course content, and course-taking in chemistry and physics are all positively associated with NAEP math achievement. These relationships persist even when gender, race/ethnicity, early grade 9 mathematics achievement, and socioeconomic status are included as covariates. Cluster analysis of students with high estimated achievement suggest multiple paths to high mathematics achievement for students with both high- and low-socioeconomic status backgrounds.

This report focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Kalamazoo Public Schools District in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which closed its doors to students from mid-March 2020 to June 2021. During this time, instruction transitioned from face-to-face to virtual, with students having three options for virtual instruction. In addition to individual KPS student data, the study looks at the NWEA national sample as presented in several publications and technical appendices. The study addresses three basic questions, as well as examining students' race/ethnicity and poverty status, summer learning loss to determine the change in achievement gains, and attendance rates as an example of students not receiving face-to-face instruction. The first question asks whether the pandemic, which began in March of 2020, adversely affected student enrollment. The second question examines how achievement gains based on the NWEA math tests during the 2020-2021 pandemic school year compared to prepandemic and post-school-closure trends. The third question examines the variability of NWEA math test scores during the pandemic compared to the school years before and after the 2020-2021 pandemic school year. We find that student enrollment declined during and after the pandemic school year for at least two years, which is more than appears to be the case in all but the first few years of the century. In addressing the second question, we found that achievement gains rebounded after KPS schools opened, although achievement gains are not as high as in the prepandemic school year. It also appears that the lower grades were more resilient than the upper grades during this period. Regarding the third question, we found that test scores were more variable at the low end of the distribution than at the high end and that variability increased in the year following school closure.

Growing evidence illustrates the size and character of public-school enrollment declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, far less is known about where unenrolled students went. Using unique cross-sector enrollment and mobility data from the state of Hawaii, this study provides evidence that demographic changes and movement to private schools, out of the state, or to homeschooling did not account for the full loss of public-school students. Many unenrolled students appear to have redshirted or dropped out of formal education during school year (SY) 2020-21. Further, regression analyses with island fixed effects indicate that two pre-pandemic factors predicted school-level enrollment declines: (1) the share of the Pacific Islander students; and (2) whether the school had a high pupil-teacher ratio.

There is empirical evidence of substantial heterogeneity in economic mobility across geographic areas and the efficacy of schools has been suggested as an explanatory factor. Using administrative microdata from seven states covering nearly 3 million students, we explore the potential role of schools in promoting economic mobility by estimating cross-district variation in "academic mobility"--a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their schooling careers. We show that there exists considerable heterogeneity in academic mobility across school districts. However, after aggregating our district-level measures of academic mobility to the commuting-zone level and merging them with geographically matched external estimates of economic mobility, we find little scope for geographic differences in academic mobility to meaningfully account for differences in economic mobility.

This study examined the performance of English learners (ELs) taking the ACT® test with testing supports, as compared to ELs and non-ELs taking the ACT without supports or accommodations. Contextual factors were also explored, including high school experiences and demographic characteristics such as low-income and first-generation college student status that may be associated with their scores. Results indicate that ELs tended to score substantially lower than non-ELs, and ELs who tested with supports tended to score lower than ELs who tested without supports. ELs in both groups, particularly those testing with supports, tended to take fewer core academic courses, fewer honors or AP courses, and had lower high school grades than non-ELs. ELs in both groups, particularly those testing with supports, were also more likely to be non-White, low income, and/or first-generation college students. Regression analyses found that demographic and contextual factors, along with limited English proficiency, played a substantial role in predicting the performance of ELs taking the ACT, both those testing with and without supports. It is important that ELs are provided with a rigorous education that includes instruction in both English language and core academic content to ensure that they have equitable opportunities and experiences as compared to their English proficient peers.

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

All universities and colleges in the United States were deeply and immediately affected by the sudden appearance of COVID-19. Two-year public community colleges suffered the same fate as their university neighbors: the immediate needs were to close up operations, shift instruction to online and distance modalities and keep students engaged and focused when all around them collapsed. But the community colleges suffered under constraints not shared by many of their university neighbors: limited discretionary, little or no funding from endowments to fall back on and students whose limited economic resources and constrained family circumstances made any transitions much more difficult and stress-inducing. But it would be an error to look at the experience of U.S. community colleges and their students during the pandemic only through the lens of their constraints or their limited resources. This is instead a story of resilience and engagement, and the remarkable ability of poor and first-generation students to resist despair and isolation. More critically, it is a story of what happens when equity drives college practice and commitments to participation and democratic governance matter.

We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. We propose a new identification strategy to partial out the unobserved non-random selection into schools, and find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of US-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not affect negatively the performance of affluent US-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. We provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.

Equitable representation within a school occurs when the principals, teachers, or other school-based leaders reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the local communities they serve. When students of color, who have historically been underestimated and underserved in our nation's schools, see themselves in the teachers and leaders at their school, they imagine bigger and bolder dreams for themselves. Yet, gaps in representation exist in school systems across the country. Forty percent of our nation's schools do not have any teachers of color. While the population of teachers in public schools in the US has grown slightly more diverse in recent decades, most teachers still identify as white. This gap also extends into school and district leadership. In the nation's schools, where more than half of the student population identifies as students of color, only 22 percent of the nation's principals identify as leaders of color : 11 percent African American, nine percent Latinx, two percent Asian American and other race/ethnicity. Eight percent of superintendents identify as leaders of color. This paper argues by diversifying teacher and school leader pipelines, more students would be empowered to realize their futures. This is the first in a series of papers on reshaping educational leadership for the future.

In recent ACT mode comparability studies, students testing on laptop or desktop computers earned slightly higher scores on average than students who tested on paper, especially on the ACT® reading and English tests (Li et al., 2017). Equating procedures adjust for such "mode effects" to make ACT scores comparable regardless of testing mode. However, it remains possible that the mode effects are different for different groups of students. For example, differences in performance between paper and online testing may be different for groups with different levels of comfort taking tests on computers. Thus, a general mode adjustment may be inappropriate. The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of differential mode effects by gender, race/ethnicity, and ability using data from three recent mode comparability studies (Steedle, Pashley, & Cho, 2020). Results indicated that mode effects in English, reading, math, and science did not vary significantly between genders or race/ethnicity groups. Analyses detected significant interactions between mode effects and ability because mode effects tended to be smaller for lower ability examinees. Fortunately, equating processes appropriately adjust scores for differential mode effects by ability.

Which occupations are best for wellbeing? There is a large literature on earnings differentials, but less attention has been paid to occupational differences in non-pecuniary rewards. However, information on both types of rewards is needed to understand the dispersion of wellbeing across occupations. We analyse subjective wellbeing in a large representative sample of UK workers to construct a measure of "full earnings", the sum of earnings and the value of non-pecuniary rewards, in 90 different occupations. We first find that the dispersion of earnings underestimates the extent of inequality in the labour market: the dispersion of full earnings is one-third larger than the dispersion of earnings. Equally, the gender and ethnic gaps in the labour market are larger than data on earnings alone would suggest, and the true returns to completed secondary education (though not to a degree) are underestimated by earnings differences on their own. Finally, we show that our main results are similar, and stronger, for a representative sample of US workers. [Funding for this report was provided by an Écoles Universitaires de Recherche, EUR (University Research Schools, EUR) grant.]

A primary focus among colleges implementing student success reforms has been to increase overall rates of completing any credential and to reduce racial and socioeconomic equity gaps in such completion rates. The focus on general completion may overlook inequities in the type of program students complete, which is particularly significant given the wide variety of credentials offered at community colleges--from short-term certificates to transfer-oriented associate degrees that may lead to bachelor's and graduate degree programs--and the resulting variation in labor market returns among completers. Our study examines racial/ethnic stratification among community college students as they enter and progress through different programs leading to higher- and lower-paying jobs. Specifically, we develop a discrete-time survival analysis using longitudinal enrollment and transcript data on first-time-in-college, credential-seeking community college students from a state with more than 20 community colleges. We track student enrollment, completion, and transfer for up to nine years and examine when equity gaps in completion emerge. We also measure the student achievement of academic milestones (such as levels of credit accrual) along educational pathways that are associated with higher rates of credential completion and transfer over the long term. Results suggest that a significant gap in the likelihood of bachelor's degree completion between Black and White students emerges more episodically, while the gap between Hispanic and White students develops earlier and remains more consistent over time. Our results also suggest that, while all students generally benefit from the attainment of academic milestones such as gaining credit momentum or completing pre-transfer associate degrees, doing so disproportionately benefits Black and Hispanic students.

Thousands of American schools shuttered their doors during the second half of the 2019-2020 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most schools that closed their physical campus switched to online learning to conclude the school year. Brick and mortar schools uninitiated to online learning were tasked with adapting teaching practices to a different modality with almost no training or experience to call upon. While anecdotal accounts indicate that some schools achieved remarkable success in transitioning to distance modalities of learning, many others schools struggled to keep students and teachers engaged in the learning process. There is great urgency in assessing the overall efficacy with which brick and mortar schools executed online learning. Many American schools are beginning the 2020-2021 academic year with virtual or blended models of schooling, while countless others scheduled to open will inevitably transition to virtual or blended learning as public health concerns mount. This working paper compares the online learning experience of students enrolled in brick and mortar schools that transitioned to online learning to the experience of students who were already enrolled in virtual schools when the pandemic began.

College students who are parents or caregivers of dependent children make up more than one in five U.S. undergraduates. Colleges need basic information about the experiences and outcomes of the student parents they serve, since these students face distinct challenges, including high rates of economic insecurity and significant time and caregiving demands that can affect their educational outcomes (Institute for Women's Policy Research and Ascend at the Aspen Institute 2019). This briefing paper discusses why data on student parents are critical to increasing equity in college outcomes, and reviews existing and potential new data sources on undergraduate college students with children. It also provides recommendations for improving data collection efforts around parent status, including examples of how these data can be collected by institutions of higher education.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a policy change to the federally-administered National School Lunch Program that allows schools serving low-income populations to classify all students as eligible for free meals, regardless of individual circumstances. This has implications for the use of free and reduced-price meal (FRM) data to proxy for student disadvantage in education research and policy applications, which is a common practice. We document empirically how the CEP has affected the value of FRM eligibility as a proxy for student disadvantage. At the individual student level, we show that there is essentially no effect of the CEP. However, the CEP does meaningfully change the information conveyed by the share of FRM-eligible students in a school. It is this latter measure that is most relevant for policy uses of FRM data. [Portions of this paper were previously circulated under the title "Using Free Meal and Direct Certification Data to Proxy for Student Disadvantage in the Era of the Community Eligibility Provision" (ED595218). The authors have since split the original paper into two parts. This is the first part.]

We use rich administrative microdata from Missouri to examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] degrees at universities by tapping into the population of community college students. We find that the scope for expansion is modest, even at an upper bound, because most community college students have academic qualifications that make them unlikely to succeed in a STEM field at a university. We also find there is almost no scope for community college students to improve the racial/ethnic diversity of four-year STEM degree recipients. We conclude that it will be challenging to expand and diversify STEM degree production at universities with interventions targeted toward community college students.

Although many programs remotely disseminate information to students about the college application process, there is little evidence as to how students experience these programs. This paper examines a large-scale remote counseling program in which college counselors initiated interactions with 15,000 high school seniors via text message to support them through the college application process. Given the passive nature of text messaging, not all of the counselors' prompts elicited similar responses from students. I use text-as-data methods (combining qualitative coding and supervised machine learning) to measure which interactions lead to productive engagement between counselors and students, and which do not. I show that interactions about financial aid offers and financial aid applications are much more likely to generate productive engagement than interactions about college lists. This finding may help to explain why recent remote counseling interventions that have sought to influence students' college lists have been ineffective.

This paper estimates the patterns and sources of White-Black and White-Hispanic enrollment gaps in Advancement Placement (AP) and dual enrollment (DE) programs across several thousand school districts and metropolitan areas in the U.S. By merging several data sources, we show that both AP and DE enrollment gaps vary substantially across districts. We find that the vast majority of districts have racial/ethnic gaps in AP and DE participation, and about a quarter of districts have racial/ethnic gaps equal to or larger than 10 and 7 percentage points for AP and DE, respectively. Available district-level characteristics and state-level policies explain much more of the geographic variation in AP enrollment gaps as compared to DE enrollment gaps, and local factors (either district-level or metro-level characteristics) dominate state-level factors in shaping these racial/ethnic participation gaps. Among all the available district-level characteristics, racial/ethnic composition and racial/ethnic income disparity are the strongest correlates of participation gaps, where districts with larger proportions of Black and Hispanic students and greater racial/ethnic income disparity are associated with larger racial/ethnic gaps in both AP and DE enrollment.

Academic self-efficacy is a student's belief about their ability to learn or to perform within a school environment. This paper captures differential trends in academic self-efficacy by gender using self-efficacy survey data from five large districts in California from the 2014-15 through 2017-18 school years. We find that female students report significantly higher self-efficacy in elementary school compared to males. In middle school, students' self-efficacy declines for both genders; however, this drop is substantially greater for females, leading to significantly lower levels of reported self-efficacy for females than males from middle school onward. Despite large differences in average self-efficacy, this gendered pattern of drop-off occurs consistently across racial, socioeconomic, and academic subgroups. Average self-efficacy also varies significantly among schools; however, school demographics and culture and climate, as reported by students, are not strongly associated with the average female-male self-efficacy gap. Looking at how the general measure of academic self-efficacy corresponds with test scores, we find the drops in self-efficacy are most pronounced for low scoring students, and that changes in grade-to-grade test scores modestly correlate with changes in general academic self-efficacy.

Over the past 50 years, homeschooling has grown from a fringe act to a widely accepted education model reflective of a diverse American population. Many parents choose homeschooling to avoid the constraints of the conventional classroom and to embrace education in a broader, often more pluralistic way. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. homeschooling population more than doubled between 1999 and 2012, from 850,000 to 1.8 million children, or 3.4 percent of the K-12 student population. Federal data show that the homeschooling population dipped slightly between 2012 and 2016, but state-level data reveal that some states with robust education choice programs saw rising numbers of homeschoolers during that time. This paper offers an overview of homeschooling trends and a glimpse at the current homeschooling population while arguing that educational freedom creates momentum for families to seek alternatives to conventional mass schooling.

Existing research on self-management skills shows that measures of self-management predict student success. However, these conclusions are based on small samples or narrowly defined self-management measures. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh grade students, this paper describes self-management gaps across student groups, and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of self-management for achievement gains, even with unusually rich controls for students' background, previous achievement, and measures of other social-emotional skills. Self-management is a better predictor of student learning than are other measures of socio-emotional skills. Average growth in English language arts due to changing from a low to a high level of self-management is between 0.091 and 0.112 standard deviations, equivalent to almost 80 days of learning.

A data set from an urban Midwestern school district was mined to explore how the technology-based reading enrichment known as Mindplay Virtual Reading Coach (MVRC) affects children's performance on the English Language Arts (ELA) Standards state-wide assessment (N = 6098 students from Grades 3 to 9). ELA data from two times points were available, approximately one year apart. ELA data were correlated with various data points obtained from MVRC, including the benchmark assessment administered at the beginning and at the end of the year. Results revealed large correlations across grade levels for the MVRC Composite score obtained from the MVRC Universal Screener, 0.40 < r < 0.74. Results also revealed that the amount of MVRC exposure was linearly related to an increase in ELA performance at the end of the year, largely independent of grade level and students' initial reading competence. Girls and boys benefited equally from MVRC exposure, as did children from different ethnicities. The most prevalent factor in predicting the ELA-MVRC relation was the type of school, with MVRC exposure having the highest benefits in non-failing elementary schools, compared to high schools.

Students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or somewhere else on the gender/sexuality spectrum (LGBTQI+) are among the diverse student groups in need of extra support and protection in order to succeed in education and reach their full potential. Because they belong to a minority that is often excluded by heteronormative/cisgender people, they are often the targets of physical and psychological harassment. Such discrimination can place them at risk for isolation, reduced academic achievement, and physical and mental harm. This paper provides a brief history of how the LGBTQI+ population has often been misunderstood and labelled in order to understand challenges faced by students who identify as a part of this population. It continues by considering supportive educational policies and programmes implemented from national to local levels across OECD countries. Finally, the paper considers policy gaps and discusses policy implications to strengthen equity and inclusion for LGBTQI+ students.

In this paper we use data from students who participated in the oversubscribed Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten program as a window into variation in the program's medium-term effects. We first examine whether, for the sample of students who applied to oversubscribed BPS prekindergarten programs, there is variation in the effects of the Boston prekindergarten program on children's kindergarten-through-second-grade retention, kindergarten-through-third-grade special education placement, and third-grade state test scores. We find statistically significant variation in effects on student outcomes, and we predict this variation with multiple proxies for early elementary school quality. We find that the academic proficiency of third-graders within the schools for which prekindergarten children competed is most strongly associated with prekindergarten program effects. Students who won a lottery for a prekindergarten program in a school with third-grade academic proficiency scores in the bottom quartile of the distribution experience no or negative effects by third grade. In contrast, students who won a lottery for a prekindergarten program in a school with third-grade academic proficiency scores in the top quartile of the distribution experience positive effects by third grade. An exploration of how this quality measure is defined suggests that while a part of its predictive power may be related to the characteristics of the students who enroll in these schools (specifically, their family income level), it also appears that the schools themselves contribute to these effects. Prekindergarten gains persisted if kids applied to and won a seat in a higher-quality elementary school.

In this paper we estimate the impacts of the "pathways" chosen by community college students--in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths--on the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focus on the extent to which there are recorded changes in students' choices over time, whether students make choices informed by their chances of success and by labor market value of credentials, and the impacts of choices on outcomes. We find that several characteristics of chosen pathways, such as field of study and desired credential as well as early "momentum," affect outcomes. Student choices of pathways are not always driven by information about later chances of success, in terms of probabilities of completing programs and attaining strong earnings. Students also change pathways quite frequently, making it harder to accumulate the credits needed in their fields. Attainment of credentials with greater market value could thus likely be improved by appropriate guidance and supports for students along the way, and perhaps by broader institutional changes as well. [Financial support for this report was provided by the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute (ESSPRI) at UC Irvine.]

In this study, we examine which student and school characteristics predict students' perceptions of the school climate. Our data come from a survey administered to nearly 3,000 students in grades 4-12 in 18 charter schools throughout the country. The survey asks students about their perceptions of seven distinct aspects of the school's culture and climate: cultural and linguistic competence, learning strategies, rigorous expectations, school safety, sense of belonging, student engagement, and teacher-student relationships. We find substantial "within"-school variation in student perceptions of the school climate, which is explained in part by differences in student race/ethnicity and grade level. This finding suggests that among our diverse sample of charter schools, school climate surveys may be better suited to capture group-level differences in student experiences within a school as opposed to school-level differences. Although there is far less variation in student perceptions of school climate "between" schools, school composition, as measured by the racial/ethnic diversity of the school, is a meaningful predictor of student perceptions of the school's cultural and linguistic competence, student engagement, and sense of belonging. While further analyses are needed, our findings suggest that schools with more diverse student bodies may be better able to foster positive student experiences.

We identify externalities in human capital production function arising from sibling spillovers. Using regression discontinuity design generated by school-entry cutoffs and school records from one district in Florida, we find positive spillover effects from an older to a younger child in less affluent families and negative spillover effects from a younger to an older child in more affluent families. These results are consistent with direct spillovers dominating in economically disadvantaged families and with parental reinforcement in more affluent families.

Free and reduced-price meal (FRM) data are used ubiquitously to proxy for student disadvantage in education research and policy applications. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)--a recently-implemented policy change to the federally-administered National School Lunch Program--allows schools serving low-income populations to identify all students as FRM-eligible regardless of individual circumstances. We study the CEP's effect on FRM eligibility as a proxy for student disadvantage, and relatedly, we examine the viability of direct certification (DC) status as an alternative disadvantage measure. Our findings on whether the CEP degrades the informational content of FRM data are mixed. At the individual level there is essentially no effect, but the CEP does meaningfully change the information conveyed by the FRM-eligible share of students in a school. Our comparison of FRM and DC data in the post-CEP era shows that these measures are similarly informative as proxies for disadvantage, despite the CEP-induced information loss in FRM data. Using both measures together can improve the identification of disadvantaged students, but only marginally.

While spring of 2020 introduced virtual instruction to all public schools, virtual schooling had already been growing in most states. We focus on pre-COVID-19 changes to fulltime virtual school enrollment in public schools, and provide evidence on the relationship between virtual school enrollment, internet speed, community demographics, and traditional K-12 school achievement levels. We find negative associations between online enrollment and test achievement in brick-and-mortar schools, and low internet speeds. There is some evidence that students are less likely to enroll in virtual schools as the share of students of their own demographic in brick-and-mortar schools increases.

Economic information may close aspiration disparities for postsecondary education across socio-economic, ethnic and partisan divides. In 2017, we estimated impacts of information on such disparities by means of a survey experiment administered to a nationally representative sample of 4,214 adults. A baseline group was asked whether they preferred a four-year degree, a two-year degree, or no further education for their oldest child under the age of eighteen (or on the option they would prefer if they had one). Before three other randomly selected segments of our sample were asked the same question, they were given either information about (1) both net costs and returns; (2) net costs; or (3) returns to a two-year and four-year degree. Information about both costs and returns did not reduce SES disparities but did affect ethnic and partisan divides. The findings suggest that reductions in socioeconomic inequalities in educational opportunity will require more than simple changes in the dissemination of information aimed at altering economic cost-benefit calculations. Sustained effort that mitigates deeper-seated cultural and social barriers seems necessary.

"Gulino v. New York State Department of Education" is a class action lawsuit that involves a teacher certification examination in New York. The case spanned over two decades and three iterations of the exam. The case is unique as the plaintiffs were already teaching in classrooms when they were required to sit for a new certification exam. Despite the unique nature of the case, it is a useful case study to examine what factors the court uses in evaluating employment assessments where there is a disparate impact (i.e., one racial/ethnic group consistently scores lower than another group). This paper will first discuss the legal criteria used by courts in evaluating challenges to employment assessments, then describe the "Gulino" case and its resulting opinions.