New: The U.S. has moved up on international test score rankings — generally by falling less swiftly than other countries. I don't think that means oh nothing to worry about. But it does make me question U.S.-specific explanations for these trends. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/09/08/p...

U.S. students score above average in reading. Here’s why that’s not good news.

PISA international test results show concerning global declines in student learning. U.S. students posted some of their lowest scores ever in math and reading, but other countries are doing worse.

chalkbeat.org

A blast from the past but still relevant today. I wonder how technology is changing student effort in these assessments explaining part of the trend…

VoxEU @ CEPR@voxeu.org · 13h ago

A VoxEU column from 2018 describes how differences in student effort on standardised testing can explain 32-38% of the cross-country variation in #PISA scores. By: @gzamarro.bsky.social, Sally Sadoff, Collin Hitt, @proflivingston.bsky.social, and Francesca Borgonovi cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Yup

Why does it feel like AI assistants can suddenly do... everything right now? Lesson 3 of my fully-free AI Academy is out: the biggest buzzwords of 2026 (agents, tools, harnesses, context engineering) demystified in plain English, in 18 minutes flat! openaugments.org/academy#l1-05

Open Augments AI Academy - A Free, Interactive AI Course for Everyone

A fully-free, interactive course on using AI responsibly and effectively. Short weekly video lessons and hands-on demos -- no jargon and no experience required.

openaugments.org

Teacher compensation matters. We can design much better teacher compensation systems with the information we already have--systems that would raise overall pay and create incentives to help raise teacher quality, especially for kids who need it most.

AEA Journals@aeajournals.bsky.social · last wk.

Large stipends to attract educators to low-performing schools increased test scores, but the gains held only while the pay continued, say researchers at SDSU, Ball State, Stanford, and UIC. #econsky www.aeaweb.org/research/cha...

Large stipends to attract educators to low-performing schools increased test scores, but the gains held only while the pay continued, say researchers at SDSU, Ball State, Stanford, and UIC. #econsky www.aeaweb.org/research/cha...

Teacher pay and student achievement

Large stipends drew effective educators into Dallas's lowest-performing schools.

aeaweb.org

💔

We’re hiring! The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform is seeking a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Education Policy. Come and work with us! uasys.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UAF_Ex...

Final version of a paper finally sent for publication after acceptance. First version of the same paper submitted to the journal in 2024!

Old Lady: 'It's Been 84 Years' Meme

ALT: Old Lady: 'It's Been 84 Years' Meme

static.klipy.com

These results are from a nice paper presented during this summer's @nber.org SI joint Education & Labor Studies meetings! Link here: conference.nber.org/conf_papers/...

In a recent study, pupils using AI saw their average homework score rise by 18% across all subjects after six months. But come exam time, the same students scored 20% below their classmates who had not called on AI’s help. We analyse the data: bit.ly/4xQYpQt

www.nctq.org/research-ins...

Amid budget and staffing battles, can four-day school weeks save the day? - National Council on Teacher Quality

Research shows four-day school weeks offer modest cost savings but fail to improve teacher retention and risk harming student achievement. What district leaders need to know.

nctq.org

And so we are back at it. Wishing everyone an awesome 2026-27 academic year. Cheers to my 12th academic year at the UofA 🥂

Happy to report I survived the annual 10,000 seatbacks installation around the Razorback stadium 🥵 to raise money for the Fayetteville High School Band

The fall meeting of the @nber.org Education Program is soliciting papers. Deadline to submit is September 28. Details below. Submission link is here: www.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

I'm enthusiastic about new career path models for K12 teachers as I think the "egg-crate" teaching model (long ago described by Dan Lortie!) does not work well. We find mixed results, but this seems an important 1st step in learning what works w/ team teaching.

Mary Laski@marylaski.com · 4w ago

🚨⬇️🚨 New working paper out!!! 🚨⬇️🚨 caldercenter.org/publications... Pleased to share this paper with Calen Clifton and @cedr.bsky.social on the impact of Next Education Workforce team-based teaching models in Arizona. We find interesting variation in impacts across grades and subjects... (1/6)

How it started Vs How it is going. 12th academic year at the University of Arkansas. In my multifocals era! 🤓

Forthcoming in the AER: "Difference-in-Differences with a Continuous Treatment" by Brantly Callaway, Andrew Goodman-Bacon, and Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna.

Difference-in-Differences with a Continuous Treatment

(Forthcoming Article) - This paper analyzes difference-in-differences designs with a continuous treatment. We show that treatment-on-the-treated-type parameters are identified under a parallel trends assumption analogous to the binary treatment case. However, comparing these parameters across treatments is challenging because parallel trends does not rule out selection bias. We discuss alternative, typically stronger, assumptions that eliminate selection bias. We further show that popular two-way fixed effects estimands admit multiple interpretations, depending on the underlying causal building block, all having important limitations as meaningful summaries of treatment effects. Finally, we introduce alternative estimation procedures that avoid these drawbacks and demonstrate them in an empirical application.

aeaweb.org

Nice @nctq.bsky.social article about my paper with Taylor Wilson, @andrewmcamp.com and @jbmcgee.bsky.social www.nctq.org/research-ins...

Are potential teachers hidden in plain sight? Findings from Arkansas - National Council on Teacher Quality

New Arkansas research examines teacher prep completers who never entered the classroom, revealing a smaller hidden teaching bench than Washington state.

nctq.org

I sometimes think about the gender disparities that became apparent among academics amid the COVID Public Health Emergency. Men who weren't caregiving / had lower advising, teaching, and service loads were able to "focus" on research, while women were more likely to see slowed research productivity

On top of their outsized caregiving responsibilities at home, women academics were also playing an outsized role in caring (eg, emotionally/logistically) for students and colleagues who needed extra support in the context of Covid, and in volunteering for related institutional efforts, as well.

Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA@arrianna-planey.bsky.social · last mo.

I sometimes think about the gender disparities that became apparent among academics amid the COVID Public Health Emergency. Men who weren't caregiving / had lower advising, teaching, and service loads were able to "focus" on research, while women were more likely to see slowed research productivity

Preparing for those Friday night lights. We got a preview of the marching band show. It’s going to be amazing! 🤩 #bandmomlife

As a long-time member of the demography community, I'm hoping that some non-economists will be interested in my new book as well.

As Arkansas teachers prepare to welcome students back to school, we wondered: Which subjects are most likely to see teachers return to the classroom this fall? Check out my new blog post with @jbmcgee.bsky.social and Roy McKenzie here: oep.uark.edu/arkansas-tea...

Arkansas Teacher Retention by Subject: Different Subjects, Different Stories

by: Josh McGee, Roy McKenzie, and Gema Zamarro

oep.uark.edu

Consider volunteering for @aefpweb.bsky.social. We would love it if you would sign up to volunteer to review our papers or policy briefs. Thanks!

AEFP@aefpweb.bsky.social · last mo.

Want to get more involved with AEFP? Review proposals, chair a session, mentor a member, and more. And to everyone who's already given their time to AEFP: thank you! The 26-27 AEFP Volunteer Survey closes Monday, August 17. Learn more and sign up here: aefpweb.org/volunteer

I hope state & district leaders will find the guidance in @joshbleiberg.bsky.social & my policy brief helpful for minimizing the harm of teacher layoffs "The Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs: What We Know and Can Do" @aefpweb.bsky.social @efpjournal.bsky.social direct.mit.edu/edfp/article...

Exciting to see my work with @olgastoddard.bsky.social @kbuzard7.bsky.social featured outside the hallowed halls of academia 😴😴😴 Thanks so much to @theconversation.com for highlighting the downsides of being the “default parent” as many return to school this month theconversation.com/better-call-...

10/ Anyway, this is why I put all the data out there. I hope other people will dig into it and come to their own conclusions, even if they differ from mine. Here's another nice response to the findings. bsky.app/profile/andr...

Andrew Camp@andrewmcamp.com · last mo.

Everyone's talking about teacher turnover after a webinar + article this week. Is it too high? What happened with COVID? Matt Barnum collects state-level average teacher turnover rates from 21 states and finds that turnover remains elevated compared to pre-COVID: www.chalkbeat.org/2026/07/30/t...

1/ From 2021 through 2022, I was skeptical of the emerging narrative that there was a teacher shortage/exodus crisis. I just didn’t see much data to support it. And I wrote as much. www.chalkbeat.org/2022/3/9/229... But then, to my surprise, the data started to change.

Everyone's talking about teacher turnover after a webinar + article this week. Is it too high? What happened with COVID? Matt Barnum collects state-level average teacher turnover rates from 21 states and finds that turnover remains elevated compared to pre-COVID: www.chalkbeat.org/2026/07/30/t...

A ‘lost generation’ of teachers left the classroom. Schools are still dealing with the consequences.

Veteran teachers left, principals cycled through too, and high-poverty schools likely faced the greatest strain. Here’s what years of churn did to classrooms.

chalkbeat.org