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

Increased access to high school accounts for a ~third of the increase in women’s labor force participation between 1870 and 1930!

🎉🏫New paper! 🏫🎉 "High Schools and the Uneven Rise in American Opportunity" by myself, Alison Doxey, and Ezra Karger (@ezrakarger.bsky.social) www.peternencka.com/assets/high_... www.nber.org/papers/w35068

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!

Alarming drops in working conditions for teachers during and after the pandemic www.brookings.edu/articles/sur...

🚨New working paper alert! 🚨 The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective? Today we released a working paper suggesting it is. "Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States" Let me explain...

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The “big beautiful bill” greatly expanded SNAP work requirements for parents In my paper with @jasonbcook.bsky.social, forthcoming at JPUBE, we ask what similar, existing requirements do SNAP work requirements for parents deny vulnerable parents SNAP benefits and do not increase their employment

Rising #studentloan debt and delinquencies are worsening Americans’ concerns about #affordability and the cost of living. Explore Urban’s Debt in America map with state-level #data on young adults’ credit card, medical, student loan, and auto/retail debt. https://urbn.is/47QG7EP

Many school discipline reforms aimed to reduce racial disparities, but we find they worked unevenly. Black–White gaps declined mainly in urban neighborhoods and persisted or grew elsewhere. Check out the article here: doi.org/10.1126/scia...

New Science Advances paper w/ Jennifer Candipan: Racial change doesn’t just reshape neighborhoods, it reshapes school punishment. We show Black–White suspension disparities grow in places where Black populations are changing, especially in majority White, suburban, & rural areas.

Very cool opportunity for early career researchers interested in special education research: Apply for access to at least one statewide longitudinal dataset with support from SPARC researchers to conduct a co-developed study on the special education workforce. sparccenter.org/sparc-center...

🚨New research looks at early impacts of MA’s free community college policies. Early evidence suggests expanded access & a reshaping of who shows up on campus. Full brief ➡️ bit.ly/wepcmassreco... @joshua-goodman.com, @doughesm.bsky.social, Morgan Fleming, Yunee H. Yoon @buwheelock.bsky.social

What happens when you shrink salary differences between districts, increase beginning teacher pay by over $10,000, and compress salary schedules? @gzamarro.bsky.social, @jbmcgee.bsky.social, @taylornwilson.bsky.social, Miranda Vernon, and I find out in our new CALDER working paper: bit.ly/4l4b5hO

Great new read on school climate and chronic absenteeism from Jerome Graham, Yi-Chih Chiang, Su-Yon Choi: shorturl.at/ZF5Lg

me and @cmulhern.bsky.social's paper on school counselors is out in econ of ed review We find more funding for counselors in California in the 2000s increased grad rates, college enrollment & school climate in short: counselors improve student outcomes and we should invest more in them!

I’m really glad to see that our paper is now out at Ed Researcher! We examine turnover among the half of school employees who are not teachers to understand how their turnover compares. Using Oregon data (2007-23) for all public school employees, there are 3 new patterns that we document: A 🧵

Compelling new evidence on the positive impact of the community schools model from @oppinsights.bsky.social. Substantial positive impact on academic outcomes and later-in-life earnings, especially for lower-income/higher-risk students. opportunityinsights.org/paper/cis/

Some carnage going on with US official statistics ‘The hardest hit agency was the National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, which lost 95% of its staff.’ apnews.com/article/cens...

We provide early evidence on the impact of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks on learning opportunities, and the schooling disruptions that the growing number of low-coverage communities could face if outbreaks continue to spread. See working paper: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1358

ProPublica identified 20 segregation academies in Mississippi that received almost $10 million over six years through a state-funded program. At least eight opened with an early boost from state-funded vouchers in the 1960s. (Published Nov. 2024)

Fascinating / dark paper: www.nber.org/papers/w34747

"In St. Paul, at least one-fourth of students from Spanish-speaking homes have missed every day of school since Dec. 12."

#QJE Feb 2026, #1, “Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes,” by Barwick, Chen, Fu, and Li: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

"The sweeping study... found that using AI in education can 'undermine children's foundational development' and that 'the damages it has already caused are daunting.'" They include limiting kids' cognitive, social, and emotional developmen, and increasing inequity. www.npr.org/2026/01/14/n...

This new paper shows that shortening the length of parole supervision from 12 months to 6 months reduced prison readmissions within a year by ~45%, driven by reductions in technical revocations. This decrease in incarceration was achieved with no increase in new crime. ⬇️ www.nber.org/papers/w34663

The Department of Education's negotiated rulemaking session on higher ed accountability starts today. Here is my first look at new program-level data that ED released, which also highlights the 30 percent of graduate and professional programs where average borrowing exceeds the new federal caps.

AEFP is expanding our conference subsidies program to offer financial assistance to a broader membership base so that more researchers, policymakers & practitioners have the opportunity to connect at the conference. The deadline to apply is January 5, 2026 aefpweb.org/conferen...

Experienced teachers help other teachers improve more quickly, through collaboration ⬇️

I appeared on American Campus podcast to discuss my new book, High School Students Unite!, with historian @llassabe.bsky.social. Check it out: americancampuspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

A tough read for everybody who loves kids: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/o...

DEADLINE TODAY: The NBER Race and Stratification Working Group will have its annual meeting on Friday, March 27, 2026. @franciscaantman.bsky.social, Bocar Ba, Robynn Cox and I are organizing the program. Submit your paper today! @nber.org #Econsky www.nber.org/conferences/...

Hey #econsky! I'm organizing a workshop at Brown this Spring in partnership with Eric Nielsen and Viviana Rodriguez. The topic is educational measurement. Please submit a paper/extended abstract! We'd love to consider your work. And please help us spread the word to folks who aren't on bluesky!

Nationwide, the supply of infant and toddler #ECE does not meet demand, and the costs of care are #unaffordable for many #families. Curious about the status in your state? Check out our new @urbaninstitute.bsky.social snapshots! www.urban.org/data-tools/s...

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: Carycruz Bueno, Za Eng Mawi, @linzpage.bsky.social, and Jonathan Smith show that Achieve Atlanta scholarship recipients take out fewer loans, borrow less, earn more credits, and achieve higher GPAs in their first semester of college. 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1337

🚨We analyzed 138 million geocoded property tax records to quantify how municipal boundaries spatially overlap onto economic segregation in every US metro area—creating disparities in localities’ ability to fund public goods. And we made an interactive map of our results! [1/16]

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,” by Chetty (@Oppinsights), Deming, and Friedman: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Hadley Wickham made a GenZ version of dplyr 😂 hadley.github.io/genzplyr/

Amazing study showing that deactivating social media improved mental health. [It has so many coauthors that the sample size was sufficient to run the RCT on themselves.]

Civic engagement rises among LGBTQ youth, but so do mental health challenges. @bethhawkins.bsky.social reports

✨What does the #SpecialEducation teacher workforce look like within and across states? Our new interactive data visualizer tool looks at the composition, stability, and distribution of the workforce in our seven partner states. Explore the tool: sparccenter.org/data-explore...

📝 #EconSky I'm excited to announce that I am on the market this year! In my JMP, I (and Jose Montalban) study affirmative action in the context of school choice at age 3 —when skills are most malleable and returns are the highest! 👶🏫

Going to #APPAM2025? Come to our panel where @bertabartoli.bsky.social will present our paper on the impact of sleep and time policy on student disciplinary outcomes. Paper draft (with a title we are very proud of) linked ⏰Friday, November 14, 3:30 to 5:00pm 📍Room: 504 - Foss tinyurl.com/3earym6n

Nice summary of our paper and related work by @tomdee.bsky.social and @kslungaardmumma.bsky.social here. www.chalkbeat.org/2025/11/10/i...

School (in)Security: A Tennessee retiree was jailed as a would-be school shooter after trolling Trump. @markkeierleber.bsky.social reports

I am excited to announce I am on the #EconJobMarket this year! 🎉 My research explores economic barriers for people with disabilities at the intersection of labor, public, and health economics. My #EconJMP examines how reliable transportation transforms outcomes for this population. 🧵1/6

I'm on the job market! My JMP studies the role of high school teachers in preparing students for college success I find significant positive effects of high school teachers on 🔹College admissions test scores 🔹College enrollment 🔹College performance 🧵(1/10)

New study on student cellphone bans finds short-term increases in discipline issues but ultimately improvements in both attendance and student achievement. www.nber.org/papers/w3438...