📢 For all my fellow education politics and policy people: Josh Almes and I now have an @annenberginstitute.bsky.social working paper out detailing our new dataset of school district partisanship for all 13,000+ districts for the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections. edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1600

A National Measure of School District Partisanship for the 2016 to 2024 Presidential Elections

Scholars increasingly interested in the governance of local school districts, which invites curiosity about the partisanship of their voting constituencies. Presently, researchers have to translate pr...

edworkingpapers.com

For those who follow elite high school admissions in #nyc @mdarisse.bsky.social (on the job market!) has written the most rigorous analysis to date of the Discovery Program which sets aside seats for low-income students who missed the test cutoff for admission: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1607

The Impact of Exam Schools on Disadvantaged Students: Evidence from NYC’s Discovery Program

This paper studies the New York City Department of Education's Discovery Program, an affirmative action policy implemented to increase access to some of New York City’s most elite public high schools....

edworkingpapers.com

Join us on Oct 1 at 1pm ET at @annenberginstitute.bsky.social's Ed Policy Workshop! I'm co-presenting with Silvia Robles, Anjali Pai & @annaliesep.bsky.social on how colleges use MacKenzie Scott's unrestricted gifts, a rare natural experiment in philanthropy. events.brown.edu/event/338077...

What actually makes students “life-long learners”? ✔️Motivation ✔️Metacognition ✔️Applied learning We just released a new online repository of surveys to measure these self-directed learning skills. buff.ly/C0AXUfQ @srieducation.bsky.socia

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: Yu Hung Yaow, Seth Gershenson, @david_blazar, & Ethan Hutt find absences continue to negatively affect student achievement, although their impact on test scores was modestly smaller in 2022–23 than before Covid-19. 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1490

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: Can schools sustain effective literacy tutoring across multiple years, at scale, and on a real budget? A 4-year RCT says yes. 🔍 @jilli-jung.bsky.social, @carlyrobinson.bsky.social, T. Ripma, K. Cortes, K. Kortecamp & @susanna-loeb.bsky.social 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1548

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: @micahybaum.bsky.social, @jendara.bsky.social, & @annaliesep.bsky.social find that despite fears of political indoctrination, Democratic college professors have no causal effect on their students' partisan identity. 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1538

Neat new paper by Bruce Sacerdote & colleagues showing test-optional policies harm admission chances for high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

How Test-Optional Policies in College Admissions Disproportionately Harm High-Achieving Applicants from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

(September 2026) - We analyze data from one elite institution and find that test score-optional policies harm the likelihood of admission for high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. ...

aeaweb.org

A new study by @ellenbryer.bsky.social, @aizatnurshat.bsky.social & @linzpage.bsky.social finds that data availability & local priorities shaped how colleges identified students, leading to very different approaches under the same policy. 🔗 buff.ly/YnMOo2G

Equity in Context: Institutional Agency in Targeting Student Supports in Massachusetts Community Colleges

How do related, but independent community colleges operationalize and implement an equity-oriented initiative? In 2021, Massachusetts established the SUCCESS initiative to provide nonfinancial…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: In a randomized trial, Kelli A. Bird & Benjamin L. Castleman find that embedding tutoring and advising in community college courses substantially increases service use and improves student success. 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1485

Exposure to frontier knowledge through college courses increases educational attainment and earnings, by keeping students engaged and by building labor-market skills, from Barbara Biasi and Song Ma www.nber.org/papers/w35269

I'm excited to share our latest EdWorking paper, "The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information" (w/ @lindseykaler.bsky.social and co-authors). edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1447 #SpecialEducation #EdResearch @annenberginstitute.bsky.social

The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information

What political and administrative resources contribute to the realization of rights in the United States? We examine this puzzle in the context of rights to education for students with disabilities by measuring the administrative ease of accessing local special education information: the extent to which governments actively reduce learning costs and make information accessible.

edworkingpapers.com

New working paper alert! Our team developed a web crawler to study the accessibility of information related to special education on school district websites in four states (MA, RI, IN, and FL). Read the full WP here: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1447 And check out Cam's thread below for more detail!

Cam Arnzen@camarnzen.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I'm excited to share our latest EdWorking paper, "The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information" (w/ @lindseykaler.bsky.social and co-authors). edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1447 #SpecialEducation #EdResearch @annenberginstitute.bsky.social

NEW PAPER: We study the effects of immigration policy on student attendance in 2025. Students born outside the U.S. were 2.2pp more likely to be absent after Jan 2025 (a 37% increase). That's ~2 extra missed days per semester. LINK: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1453 @annenberginstitute.bsky.social

There is in fact a lot of very high-quality education research out there. Just peruse one of the biggest repositories of empirical evidence here: edworkingpapers.com. The typical paper does *not* look anything like Jo Boaler's work.

Cheapskin Effects? The Heterogeneous Value of Industry-Recognized Certificates Earned by High School Student Looks like @joshua-goodman.com has competition for best titles! edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1412

Cheapskin Effects? The Heterogeneous Value of Industry-Recognized Certificates Earned by High School Students

Human capital theory and signaling models posit that educational credentials convey information about workers’ skills, producing discrete labor market returns beyond years of schooling. While extensiv...

edworkingpapers.com

New paper looks at the effects of merit-based free community college in Chicago Unsurprisingly, students were diverted from universities to community colleges. But, surprisingly, they were just as likely to earn a bachelor's degree within six years. edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1426

The Effect of Merit-Based Free Community College

Free community college is often promoted as a way to expand access and reduce student debt, but may have unintended consequences if it reduces bachelor’s degree completion for students diverted from b...

edworkingpapers.com

Cited in PR Newswire, an #EdWorkingPaper by @linzpage.bsky.social and Catherine Mata at the Annenberg Institute shows that when paired with human-centered outreach, AI tools can meaningfully improve student outcomes. buff.ly/XPjEt9D

Public Charity Acquires Pioneering Developer of AI for Higher Education

/PRNewswire/ -- Lemnis, a public charity investing in solutions that expand educational opportunity, today announced the acquisition of Mainstay, creator of...

buff.ly

Out today, a short and accessible policy and practice summary of our new working paper "Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable?" Via the @annenberginstitute.bsky.social edworkingpapers.com/policy-pract...

New report by @mmilleradams.bsky.social and Jennifer Iriti on Promise scholarships that looks at how communities redesign Promise programs when funding and local conditions change. Useful lessons for anyone studying place-based financial aid. research.upjohn.org/reports/321/

Flex, Pivot, Sustain: Adaptive Design of Promise Programs

The design of a Promise program or place-based college scholarship requires community partners to make three key decisions: 1) Which students are eligible, 2) Where can students use the scholarship?, ...

research.upjohn.org

Are Work-Based Professional Skills Associated with Postsecondary Entrance and Persistence? Novel Evidence from the Cristo Rey Network edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1419

Are Work-Based Professional Skills Associated with Postsecondary Entrance and Persistence? Novel Evidence from the Cristo Rey Network

Professional skills such as initiative, communication, and adaptability are thought to shape postsecondary success, but most evidence comes from self- or teacher-reported measures collected in school ...

edworkingpapers.com

Very much enjoying this new paper showing that: 1) Massachusetts high schools differ dramatically in their impacts on students' earnings 2) More effective high schools are those that tend to raise test scores the most www.nber.org/papers/w34913

Excited to share a new EdWorkingPaper on the relationship between family income and disability ID. 🧵 TLDR: Low-income students are much more likely to receive SPED services while high-income students are more likely to get 504 plan accommodations. edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1374

School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income

Currently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets ...

edworkingpapers.com

Working paper #4 Across Head Start RCT clusters, we observed 40% persistence for cog skills, 20% for soc-emo skills @ 1yr follow-up. We found some (but not stat sig) support for transfer processes from effects on cog skills to effects on soc skills. edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1369

Using experimental variation to examine the (co-)development of cognitive and social-emotional skills in early childhood

Questions about the stability of psychological constructs, skill generalization, and transfer have long motivated psychological research. Despite a proliferation of theory, the field has rarely establ...

edworkingpapers.com

Working paper #3 Using cluster RCTs of a math intervention, we tested whether student characteristics, fidelity, & elementary contexts affected persistence. 40% persistence at 1yr follow-up. Impacts faded faster in elementary contexts where students learned more. edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1365

Predicting Persistence and Fadeout Across Multi-Site RCTs of an Early Childhood Mathematics Curriculum Intervention

This study examined predictors of persistence and fadeout across multiple cluster RCTs that evaluated a preschool mathematics curriculum. We used meta-analytic methods to explore how impacts on studen...

edworkingpapers.com

Working paper #2 We set out to find all RCTs reporting initial & adult effects, and found 29. Fadeout didn't preclude adult effects. On average, adult impacts were similar in size to faded child impacts (~.05 SD). Some, but weak, links b/w initial & adult effects. edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1367

Childhood Interventions and Life Course Development

A paradox has perplexed researchers studying childhood interventions: although program impacts on children’s skills often fade, some interventions have nonetheless produced long-run impacts on adult o...

edworkingpapers.com

Working paper #1 Across 87 RCTs, we found that fadeout was fairly ubiquitous. Though there was variation in persistence, fadeout was observed across 12 theoretically salient intervention dimensions (e.g., age, breadth, duration). ~46% persistence @ 6-12mo follow-up. edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1366

How General is Educational Intervention Fadeout? A Meta-Analysis of Educational RCTs with Follow-Up

Researchers and policymakers pursue educational interventions with the goal of altering children’s long-term trajectories. However, many effects fade quickly after interventions end. Researchers have ...

edworkingpapers.com

Happy to share this new paper co-authored with many of my colleagues We study how college enrollment changed in 2024 after SCOTUS's ruling in SFFA v. Harvard using data on millions of SAT/PSAT/AP exam takers linked to college enrollment records 👇 Check it out! edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1392

College Enrollment Patterns After SFFA v. Harvard

We study how U.S. high school students’ patterns of college entry changed in the first year after the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard ruling. Drawing on a rich dataset linking more than 12 millio...

edworkingpapers.com

Annenberg Institute@annenberginstitute.bsky.social · 8mo ago

How did college enrollment change after SFFA v. Harvard? Michael Bloem & coauthors find that in the first year after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, high-achieving URM students were substantially less likely to enroll in highly selective colleges. #EdWorkingPapers 📄https://bit.ly/4tgdSIt

Stunning work: "Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education ... Under 4 percent of students in the lowest income percentile are identified as gifted, compared with 20 percent of those in the top income percentile." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1375

Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income

Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced dif...

edworkingpapers.com

Check out this great overview in @the74.bsky.social of our recent paper examining the scale and scope of students' potential exposure to industrial pollution and toxic sites while at school. #SustainableED @AnnenbergInst WP: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1384 www.the74million.org/article/mill...

Millions of U.S. Students Attend Schools Near Environmentally Hazardous Sites

Students of color are far more likely than their white peers to be taught in these classrooms, according to a new report.

the74million.org