Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
In 2019, Maryland’s Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) attempted to redistrict, or redraw school attendance boundaries, to desegregate. Whereas political resistance and legal constraints have thwarted redistricting efforts elsewhere, HCPSS’s diversity and commitments to equity positioned it favorably to desegregate. Using a mixed methods design, I explore how political factors shaped (a) different redistricting alternatives’ potential to reduce segregation and (b) segregation rates under the new attendance boundaries. I find that, despite some advocacy for desegregation, resistance from White and Asian parents led the school board to enact a segregative redistricting plan. Findings highlight the challenges with redistricting to reduce segregation, but also point to policy changes that could help districts capitalize on their limited remaining opportunities to desegregate.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Many school districts consider family preferences in allocating students to schools. In theory, this approach provides disadvantaged families greater access to high-quality schools by weakening the link between residential location and school assignment. We leverage data on the school choices made by over 233,000 New York City families across a 4-year period to examine the extent to which the city’s school choice system fulfills this promise. Although families can apply to any school, oversubscribed and high-quality schools enroll smaller proportions of students from traditionally disadvantaged families. We explored three mechanisms to explain this inequitable distribution: application timing, the school matching structure, and neighborhood stratification. We find that all three mechanisms have a disequalizing influence and propose several potential policy solutions.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
We examine student attendance patterns in North Carolina across three post-pandemic years (2021–22 to 2023–24) compared to three pre-pandemic years (2016–17 to 2018–19). We find that the percentage of students who were chronically absent at least once over the 3-year period increased from 17% pre-pandemic to 38% post-pandemic, while the percentage who were chronically absent in all 3 years quadrupled from 2.4% to 9.6%. Persistent chronic absence rates are higher for Black and Hispanic than for White students and for students in high-poverty schools. Results show that while chronic absenteeism has been widespread post-pandemic, some students are experiencing especially deep and persistent levels of absenteeism. These students may face deeper underlying challenges to attendance and require more intensive intervention to recover.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
At schools with low grading standards, students receive higher school-awarded grades across multiple courses than students with the same skills receive at schools with high grading standards. I show school grading standards vary substantially, enough to affect post-secondary opportunities, across high schools in Alberta, Canada. Schools with low grading standards are more likely to be private, rural, offer courses for students returning to high school after dropping out, have smaller course cohorts, have a smaller percentage of lone-parent households, and have a larger percentage of well-educated parents. The article makes a useful methodological contribution in clarifying the assumptions needed to estimate and interpret a measure of grading standards from course-year-school observations of average school-awarded grades and average external examination grades.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Teacher turnover is a persistent policy concern in public education. Researchers have documented negative impacts of turnover on student outcomes; yet we know little about the causal mechanisms by which turnover influences, or disrupts, schools’ efforts to improve. In our longitudinal qualitative study, we examined how turnover affects relationships, trust, and shared knowledge in organizations—that is, organizational social capital—in ways that can impede school improvement efforts. We found that teacher turnover depletes organizational social capital by disrupting networks and relationships between teachers working in teams, weakening shared meanings and goals in schools, and impeding teachers’ ability to collectively engage in problem-solving and learning. We illuminate the hidden ways in which instability undermines improvement efforts and strains organizations.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
We study the impact of a bonus policy in Hawai‘i Public Schools that raised the salaries of all special education teachers by $10,000. We estimate that this policy reduced the proportion of vacant special education teaching positions relative to general education positions by 32% and the proportion of special education positions that were vacant or filled by an unlicensed teacher by 35%. These impacts were largest in historically hard-to-staff schools in which all teachers received additional bonuses. The policy did not have significant effects on special education teacher retention; instead, the impacts of the policy were driven almost entirely by an increase in the number of general education teachers in the state who moved into open special education teaching positions.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
This study provides key empirical evidence of how school principals manage crises, an important but understudied component of their role. Specifically, this paper explores the perspectives of school principals who served as hurricane emergency evacuation shelter managers to understand how they managed the crises that arose during shelter operations and the contextual factors, such as the lack of policies governing shelter management, that facilitated or impeded their ability to succeed in doing so. Our analyses established an ecological framework that blends principals’ managerial knowledge, skills, and training with the larger organizational systems in which crises occurred. Our findings demonstrate the need for improved alignment between the organizations principals serve and what is asked of them as civic leaders during crises.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Increased public scrutiny has thrust school superintendents into the spotlight, possibly exacerbating their turnover. To better understand how superintendent turnover is associated with student achievement, we collected data on school superintendent turnover in Florida and Texas spanning 2009–10 to 2017–18 school years. We conducted an event study difference-in-differences analysis to examine the dynamic relationship between superintendent turnover and student achievement. Student achievement decreases in the years after a superintendent turns over, though this relationship is small in magnitude (−0.015 standard deviation units). Superintendent turnover is most detrimental in urban school districts, districts enrolling more students, and districts with more concentrated student poverty, though these negative relationships can be partially explained by instability in the district that led to the superintendent’s departure.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
As education researchers continue to investigate policies at scale and across diverse contexts, scholars must develop a better understanding of mechanisms shaping policy effects. In this study, we use the case of a federal initiative allowing high school students to use the Pell Grant for dual enrollment to investigate how institutions’ capacities shaped policy efficacy. We find that colleges’ capacities for policy implementation depended on their pre-existing resources (“foundational capacity”), the resources to execute the policy given policy-induced constraints (“execution capacity”), and the resources to provide the target population with access to the policy (“provision capacity”). We contend that institutions that may benefit the most from equitable policies also have the least capacity to implement them.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
In recent years, debates surrounding instruction related to Critical Race Theory (CRT) have proliferated across the United States, flamed by political actors and media pundits who ushered a heretofore largely academic concentration into the public sphere. In this study, we examine opinions of voters and parents of school-aged children regarding racism-related instruction in Missouri, a locus of anti-CRT legislative debate. We find that though voters and parents are less likely to support allowing CRT-related instruction in schools, both groups support the permissibility of institutional and systemic racism-focused instruction, despite overlap between the two curricular emphases. Conversely, voter preferences are predicted much more strongly by political ideology than are parent preferences. Together, these findings question the role of anti-CRT legislative aims.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
States and colleges nationwide are adopting corequisite reforms, where students concurrently enroll in developmental and college-level coursework. Leveraging the concept of collective sensemaking and interviews with 54 actors at 16 community colleges implementing a statewide corequisite mandate, we examine the policy signals actors received, how personnel in different roles interacted to create an implementation plan, and how institutional supports and constraints shaped collective responses to policy. We find that actors within the same institutions—and even the same position—received different types of policy signals, often shaped by gatekeeping behavior among administrators over which actors should inhabit core implementation roles. Actors with peripheral roles were detached from the early deliberation of policy signals, minimizing their influence over implementation.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
We evaluate the effects of an online self-assessment tool on teachers’ competencies and beliefs about information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education. The causal impact of the tool is evaluated through a randomized encouragement design involving 7,391 lower secondary teachers across 11 European countries. Short-run impact estimates show that the use of the tool led teachers to critically revise their technology-enhanced teaching competencies (−0.14 standard deviations [SD]) and their beliefs about the use of ICT in education (−0.35 SD), while no impact on teachers’ ICT training is found. The effects are concentrated among teachers in the top-end tail of the distribution of pre-treatment outcomes. We provide suggestive evidence that the feedback score provided by the tool triggered such results by providing a negative information shock.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Novice teachers improve substantially in their first years on the job, but we know remarkably little about the nature of this skill development. Using data from Tennessee, we leverage a feature of the classroom observation protocol that asks school administrators to identify an item on which the teacher should focus their improvement efforts. This “area of refinement” overcomes a key measurement challenge endemic to inferring from classroom observation scores the development of specific teaching skills. We show that administrators disproportionately identify two skills when observing novice teachers: classroom management and presenting content. Struggling with classroom management, in particular, is associated with early career attrition. Using a returns to experience framework, we observe improvement in these skills among teachers who remain.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Retention of teachers of color remains a persistent educational concern, yet little research explores whether teachers of color are less likely to turnover when teaching in schools with principals and peer teaching staff of the same race/ethnicity. This study explores whether principal and peer teacher demographics predict teacher turnover in New York City, and whether they do so differently for teachers of color. We find that Black teachers are less likely to turnover when working in schools with a principal and a higher share of peer teachers of the same race/ethnicity. Results show similar and more consistent patterns for White teachers but no significant difference for Hispanic teachers. We conclude by discussing implications for educational policy, practice, and research.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Addressing the educational needs of students in math early on is critical given that early gaps in math skills widen further over the course of schooling. This study examines the effectiveness and costs 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. The program is found to improve not only math achievement, but also reading test scores and non-test outcomes including student attendance and disciplinary incidents. The benefits exist across students from various socioeconomic backgrounds, and they are slightly higher for racial minorities.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Preschool has direct effects on attendees, but less is known about how public preschool expansions targeted to low-income children affect early educational experiences and school readiness in a broader community. We use Virginia administrative data (~630,000 students) and a discrete increase in targeted public pre-K (Virginia Preschool Initiative Plus [VPI+]) to estimate the effects of means-tested pre-K expansion on preschool participation patterns and school readiness. VPI+ expansion decreased the probability that children spend no time in licensed settings (6–7 percentage points), increasing the probability for public pre-K and private centers (5–8 and 2–3 percentage points, respectively). Kindergarten literacy skills improve (5%–6% of SD). Effects are larger among the target population but shared broadly (perhaps through private centers). These previously unmeasured benefits inform future policy and research.

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Ahead of Print.
Teacher evaluation systems and their associated incentives have produced fairly mixed results. Our analyses are motivated by theory and descriptive evidence that accountability systems are highly racialized, and that individuals are less likely to respond to incentives when they have low expectations of success (and vice versa). Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that Black novices in the District of Columbia Public Schools faced the most negative consequences (dismissal threats) and the least benefits (salary incentives), without responding to either. White novices, in contrast, exhibited high expectations of success and large behavior changes, particularly in response to dismissal threats (0.6 SD). We also find some evidence of heterogeneity in effects by task difficulty, often used as a proxy for expectancy, though these differences are less stark.