Faculty & Research Published Research Research Economics Social Psychology Health Policy Social Entrepreneurship Environmental Policy Ethics Leadership Racial Justice and Equity National Security Political Science Advocacy Domestic Policy & Politics International and Global Affairs Democracy Social Equity International Development Research and Commentary (-) Education Facet Area of Focus - Research Benjamin Castleman Daniel W. Player Daphna Bassok Sarah Turner Christopher J. Ruhm Isaac Mbiti Leora Friedberg Bala Mulloth Benjamin Converse Charles Holt James H. Wyckoff John Pepper Facet People - Research EdPolicyWorks: Center for Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness Facet UVA Partner - Research Published Research Education Hard-to-staff centers: Exploring center-level variation in the persistence of child care teacher turnover Authors: Daphna Bassok, Justin B. Doromal, Laura Bellows, Anna J. Markowitz High rates of teacher turnover in child care settings have negative implications for young children's learning experiences and for efforts to improve child care quality. Prior research has explored the prevalence and predictors of turnover at the individual teacher level, but less is known about turnover at the center level––specifically, how turnover varies across child care centers or whether staffing challenges persist year after year for some centers. This study tracks annual turnover rates for all publicly funded child care centers that were continuously operating in Louisiana from the 2015-16 to 2018-19 school years. Learn more Working Paper Education Waivers for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program: Who Would Benefit from Takeup? Authors: Sarah Turner, Diego A. Briones, Nathaniel Ruby This research identifies more than $100 billion in loan forgiveness available to as many as 3.5 million borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) waiver program. Potential beneficiaries of this initiative are disproportionately employed in occupations like teaching and health care. However, the distribution of potential benefits of the PSLF waiver depends critically on the extent to which those with high income or advanced degrees are differentially likely to take-up benefits conditional on eligibility. Learn more Working Paper Education International Development Can Education Be Standardized? Evidence from Kenya Authors: Isaac Mbiti, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Michael Kremer, Owen W. Ozier Isaac Mbiti and co-authors examine the impact of enrolling in schools that employ a highly-standardized approach to education, using random variation from a large nationwide scholarship program. Learn more Working Paper Education Progressivity of Pricing at US Public Universities Authors: Sarah Turner, Emily E. Cook New research describes recent shifts in net tuition by family income and institution type and assesses the role of changes in state funding in generating these shifts. Learn more Published Research Education Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults With Substantial College Credits But No Degree Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Kelli Bird, Brett Fischer, Benjamin T. Skinner Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this case provides the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population and how these compare with VCCS graduates. The scholars show that the share of SCND students who are academically ready to re-enroll and would benefit from doing so may be substantially lower than policy makers anticipate. Learn more Published Research Education Limited Supply and Lagging Enrollment: Production Technologies and Enrollment Changes at Community Colleges during the Pandemic Authors: Sarah Turner, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach Weak labor markets typically lead young workers to invest in skills. High unemployment during COVID diverged from prior downturns: enrollment at community colleges dropped by 9.5 percent between 2019 and 2020, with the drop larger among men. Learn more Published Research Education New Case - ReadWrite Digital: Improving Student Outcomes Through Educational Innovation Authors: Bala Mulloth, William Carden, Elizabeth Carden ReadWrite Digital is an education technology startup that offers software to K–12 schools in the United States to provide education analytics and personalized education planning. Founded in 2012 by Rob Simms, the current President and CTO, ReadWrite Digital built, developed, and launched two unique products, Integrator and Analytics, providing an end-to-end solution for data collection from disparate systems creating rich analytics for student performance in one place. Learn more Working Paper Education Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Authors: Katharine Meyer, Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults. Learn more Working Paper Education Pushing College Advising Forward: Experimental Evidence on Intensive Advising and College Success Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Denise Deutschlander, Gabrielle Lohner Growing experimental evidence demonstrates that low-touch informational, nudge, and virtual advising interventions are ineffective at improving postsecondary educational outcomes for economically-disadvantaged students at scale. Intensive in-person college advising programs are a considerably higher-touch and more resource intensive strategy; some programs provide students with dozen of hours of individualized assistance starting in high school and continuing through college, and can cost thousands of dollars per student served. Learn more Working Paper Education Nudges Don’t Work When the Benefits Are Ambiguous: Evidence from a High-Stakes Education Program Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Francis X. Murphy, Richard W. Patterson, William L. Skimmyhorn The Post-9/11 GI Bill allows service members to transfer generous education benefits to a dependent. We run a large scale experiment that encourages service members to consider the transfer option among a population that includes individuals for whom the transfer benefits are clear and individuals for whom the net-benefits are significantly more ambiguous. We find no impact of a one-time email about benefits transfer among service members for whom we predict considerable ambiguity in the action, but sizeable impacts among service members for whom education benefits transfer is far less ambiguous. Learn more Working Paper Education Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System Authors: Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman, Gabrielle Lohner The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. Using a difference-in-differences framework that leverages within-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online, we estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. We find that the shift to virtual instruction resulted in a 6.7 percentage point decrease in course completion, driven by increases in both course withdrawal and failure. Faculty experience teaching a course online did not mitigate the negative effects of moving to virtual instruction. Learn more Working Paper Education Who Should Re-enroll in College? The Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree Authors: Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman, Brett Fischer, Benjamin T. Skinner Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and a sizable share of these job losses may be permanent. Unemployment rates are particularly high among adults without a college degree. Recent state policy efforts h Learn more Pagination Current page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Next page Next ›
Published Research Education Hard-to-staff centers: Exploring center-level variation in the persistence of child care teacher turnover Authors: Daphna Bassok, Justin B. Doromal, Laura Bellows, Anna J. Markowitz High rates of teacher turnover in child care settings have negative implications for young children's learning experiences and for efforts to improve child care quality. Prior research has explored the prevalence and predictors of turnover at the individual teacher level, but less is known about turnover at the center level––specifically, how turnover varies across child care centers or whether staffing challenges persist year after year for some centers. This study tracks annual turnover rates for all publicly funded child care centers that were continuously operating in Louisiana from the 2015-16 to 2018-19 school years. Learn more
Working Paper Education Waivers for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program: Who Would Benefit from Takeup? Authors: Sarah Turner, Diego A. Briones, Nathaniel Ruby This research identifies more than $100 billion in loan forgiveness available to as many as 3.5 million borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) waiver program. Potential beneficiaries of this initiative are disproportionately employed in occupations like teaching and health care. However, the distribution of potential benefits of the PSLF waiver depends critically on the extent to which those with high income or advanced degrees are differentially likely to take-up benefits conditional on eligibility. Learn more
Working Paper Education International Development Can Education Be Standardized? Evidence from Kenya Authors: Isaac Mbiti, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Michael Kremer, Owen W. Ozier Isaac Mbiti and co-authors examine the impact of enrolling in schools that employ a highly-standardized approach to education, using random variation from a large nationwide scholarship program. Learn more
Working Paper Education Progressivity of Pricing at US Public Universities Authors: Sarah Turner, Emily E. Cook New research describes recent shifts in net tuition by family income and institution type and assesses the role of changes in state funding in generating these shifts. Learn more
Published Research Education Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults With Substantial College Credits But No Degree Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Kelli Bird, Brett Fischer, Benjamin T. Skinner Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this case provides the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population and how these compare with VCCS graduates. The scholars show that the share of SCND students who are academically ready to re-enroll and would benefit from doing so may be substantially lower than policy makers anticipate. Learn more
Published Research Education Limited Supply and Lagging Enrollment: Production Technologies and Enrollment Changes at Community Colleges during the Pandemic Authors: Sarah Turner, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach Weak labor markets typically lead young workers to invest in skills. High unemployment during COVID diverged from prior downturns: enrollment at community colleges dropped by 9.5 percent between 2019 and 2020, with the drop larger among men. Learn more
Published Research Education New Case - ReadWrite Digital: Improving Student Outcomes Through Educational Innovation Authors: Bala Mulloth, William Carden, Elizabeth Carden ReadWrite Digital is an education technology startup that offers software to K–12 schools in the United States to provide education analytics and personalized education planning. Founded in 2012 by Rob Simms, the current President and CTO, ReadWrite Digital built, developed, and launched two unique products, Integrator and Analytics, providing an end-to-end solution for data collection from disparate systems creating rich analytics for student performance in one place. Learn more
Working Paper Education Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Authors: Katharine Meyer, Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults. Learn more
Working Paper Education Pushing College Advising Forward: Experimental Evidence on Intensive Advising and College Success Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Denise Deutschlander, Gabrielle Lohner Growing experimental evidence demonstrates that low-touch informational, nudge, and virtual advising interventions are ineffective at improving postsecondary educational outcomes for economically-disadvantaged students at scale. Intensive in-person college advising programs are a considerably higher-touch and more resource intensive strategy; some programs provide students with dozen of hours of individualized assistance starting in high school and continuing through college, and can cost thousands of dollars per student served. Learn more
Working Paper Education Nudges Don’t Work When the Benefits Are Ambiguous: Evidence from a High-Stakes Education Program Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Francis X. Murphy, Richard W. Patterson, William L. Skimmyhorn The Post-9/11 GI Bill allows service members to transfer generous education benefits to a dependent. We run a large scale experiment that encourages service members to consider the transfer option among a population that includes individuals for whom the transfer benefits are clear and individuals for whom the net-benefits are significantly more ambiguous. We find no impact of a one-time email about benefits transfer among service members for whom we predict considerable ambiguity in the action, but sizeable impacts among service members for whom education benefits transfer is far less ambiguous. Learn more
Working Paper Education Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System Authors: Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman, Gabrielle Lohner The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. Using a difference-in-differences framework that leverages within-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online, we estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. We find that the shift to virtual instruction resulted in a 6.7 percentage point decrease in course completion, driven by increases in both course withdrawal and failure. Faculty experience teaching a course online did not mitigate the negative effects of moving to virtual instruction. Learn more
Working Paper Education Who Should Re-enroll in College? The Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree Authors: Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin Castleman, Brett Fischer, Benjamin T. Skinner Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and a sizable share of these job losses may be permanent. Unemployment rates are particularly high among adults without a college degree. Recent state policy efforts h Learn more