"In another filing with the Office of Management and Budget, the administration disclosed that none of the five remaining career Education Department officials with statistical experience had reviewed the proposal, including Matt Soldner, the acting commissioner of [NCES]."

If you're hoping to show students evidence to support your tech rules/interactive pedagogical approach, here's what I use. Decidedly not comprehensive, but makes the key points.

I'd like to convince my students to go laptop-less in class based on their preferences. I recall @justinwolfers.bsky.social showing his students the research on laptops in classroom to prove to them why it's a bad idea. Anyone have any good examples they could share?

Everyone talks about the "credibility revolution", but I think one of the most valuable shifts in econ over the last decade has been the rise of rigorous descriptive historical work like this in top journals:

This is VERY bad news for #mapoli Red Line riders and another example of why it is not good policy to experiment with procurements like this, or use them as political talking points for creating local jobs. www.masslive.com/business/202...

I did not know that the BLS Commissioner does not have 'for cause' removal protections until Trump began firing the heads of independent agencies and I looked up the 140-year-old statute establishing the position. It just says: 'he shall hold his office for four years, unless sooner removed'.

#QJE Feb 2026, #8, “Marginal Returns to Public Universities,” by Jack Mountjoy: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

#QJE Feb 2026, #2, “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/...

#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/...

Overall enrollment in higher ed is back to pre-pandemic levels, but international graduate students and private colleges were notable weak spots this fall.

⚡Key takeaways from the #EdWorkingPapers Policy and Practice Series! A summary of “Labor Market Strength and Declining Community College Enrollment” by @joshua-goodman.com and Joseph Winkelmann 📄 edworkingpapers.com/policy-pract... #AnnenbergEdExchange

Proud to be on the list and to have so many @buwheelock.bsky.social colleagues who also engage deeply and publicly with issues of serious importance to education policy! www.bu.edu/wheelock/new...

US higher education was a crown jewel, generating knowledge, wealth, prestige, and power unrivaled by anyone. And the US is throwing it away, because Americans elected a govt ideologically opposed to truth, science, merit, and racial/gender equality, preferring to weaken the country to reduce that.

🚨New RFP Alert!🚨 @Arnold_Ventures Evidence & Evaluation team released just two new RFPs to support research evaluating the causal impacts of U.S. social programs and policies: bit.ly/4aXA43k A short 🧵on what we're prioritizing and what's new this cycle (1/n)

🚨📢 Call for papers - IV Workshop on Economics of Education, Valle Nevado 🇨🇱⛷️ 📅 August 18-21 📍Valle Nevado, Chile Keynotes by Josh Goodman ( @buwheelock.bsky.social ) and Chris Neilson (Yale) Submit by March 6 👇 bit.ly/49QSsd3 @joshua-goodman.com @christopherneilson.bsky.social

Applications for the Economic History Association Graduate Dissertation Fellowships are due in two days (January 14) eh.net/graduate-dis...

In Massachusetts, you can build a single-family home, by-right, on 96% of all residential land. A building with 4-units+ is allowed on just 3%.

This is encouraging. Signs of a Senate with a spine.

NEW from me: Job growth has been functionally zero over the last five months, as the US sinks from a “low hire, low fire” labor market to a “no hire” one. That slowdown is hitting young & low income workers the hardest 🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/the-no-hir...

I have been hearing recently that many people don't know about the ability to submit to AEJ-Policy (or any of the other AEJs) after submitting to AER-Insights (following the same process that existed going from the AER to the AEJs) More details and instructions here: www.aeaweb.org/journals/pol...

Mississippi’s largest synagogue was set on fire before dawn Saturday. Fire department ruled it arson, and a suspect has been arrested. It is the same synagogue that the Ku Klux Klan bombed in 1967 because the rabbi supported civil rights. mississippitoday.org/2026/01/10/f...

After the White House called for billions of dollars in funding reductions, senators and representatives are rescinding the proposed cuts and even boosting funds for basic research. From NYT Science: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

IES is the federal agency with the second largest reduction in staff this year, narrowly behind USAID

The NYT has numbers on the cuts at the Dept of Education. Almost 800 people have been cut at Federal Student Aid. That's a lot larger than I expected. And IES has been gutted.

New: A look at what we know and don't know about the last decade of test score declines. –They've been remarkably pervasive and started before the pandemic. –Other countries have been hit too. –Experts (and everyone else) have theories, but not definitive answers. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/01/08/w...

Economists are facing a recession (My column this week) 1st 300 clicks free to read... as.ft.com/r/6d67877e-4...

someone probably made a lot of money off of this. the reason these numbers are kept under seal until 8:30am sharp is that they move markets www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Soooo, we now have more followers on BlueSky after 2-3 years than we did on Twitter in the 9-10ish years we were there. First of all: THANK YOU!!!! Second, that's a long time to be a bookstore on social media, so seeing this is something of a milestone, just a couple of thoughts...

My understanding is that this is a very serious rebuke to Trump & Vought insofar as science funding remains basically at 2024 levels. NASA in particular was ready for a bloodbath. A ways to go yet but a tremendous win for scientists who have been working their asses off to lobby for their jobs.

To ring in the new year, I'm excited to announce the launch of the Politics of Education Lab (PEdL) at the Stanford GSE. The goal is to advance understanding of the political dimensions of education policymaking to help policymakers and practitioners strengthen school systems. pedl.stanford.edu

"Falling Enrollment Most Extreme in Wealthy Districts" Great writeup @the74.bsky.social on trends in public school enrollment. Public schools will have to work to re-engage the families that no longer see them as offering rigorous learning environments. www.the74million.org/article/fall...

There's an @apnews.com reporter named Joshua Goodman who writes on the economics of Latin America, and Venezuela in particular. RIP my Google News alerts.

My JMP is forthcoming at AEJ:EconPolicy! Grateful to my diss. cmttee and many who read drafts—@imbernomics.bsky.social @erzoluttmer.bsky.social @joshua-goodman.com @erickaweathers.bsky.social @asheassa.bsky.social @kirabojackson.bsky.social @stephenlross.bsky.social Excited for upcoming projects!

For all their (self-admitted) flaws, if RHSU rankings nudge top scholars toward improving public communication, that's a net win to me. I described my own early communication stumbles in my @ncme38.bsky.social Presidential Address: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDQx... www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

Jordan Matsudaira, Director of Postsecondary Education & Economics Research (PEER) Center, tells Inside Higher Ed that the impending graduate student loan caps will mean a rough transition period for students in 2026 and a decline in graduate enrollment. Read more here: https://bit.ly/4jqbhqB

This was a great panel, and if you care about economic data, you should definitely listen to the whole thing. But for those of you who would rather get some highlights, here's what I found most interesting: 🧵

A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration. doi.org/10.1126/scia... 🧵 Thread—>

A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.

Test-based accountability has always fascinated me. When and how do we make test scores *really* matter, and for better or for worse? It was great to dive deep with @mpolikoff.bsky.social, in our chapter on pages 1113-1188 in "the handbook of our field," EM5! fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

Many public schools are losing students, but some are gaining. Great data crunching from Burbio showing "winners" and "losers". My hot take: several unrelated trends happening at once. Declining birthrates. Shifting migration within US. Some exodus from public schools.

Really appreciated Joshua Gans' postmortem on an experiment in vibe researching joshuagans.substack.com/p/reflection... Taste is still paramount and the models are instruction-tuned to sycophancy to all hell

We @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social are hiring a director for our Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Buildling Lab (PARABL), to help education system leaders build research roadmaps to effect change in a particular area. More info here: wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/u...

We @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social are hiring a director for our Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Buildling Lab (PARABL), to help education system leaders build research roadmaps to effect change in a particular area. More info here: wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/u...

That's a straight up Biden policy

Nothing makes a journal editor happier than peer reviewers who reach similar conclusions about a paper.

More people are saying... bsky.app/profile/josh...

"The College Backlash Is a Mirage" Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the value of a degree—but enrollment keeps going up. By @rosehorowitch.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions" by Rene A. Crespin. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

“…U.S. markets have been laggard since Trump took office…non-U.S. markets grew by nearly twice as much as U.S. markets last year. By other metrics…the dollar is slumping…its biggest decline since 2017 (first year of Trump’s prior term) - every major currency appreciated against the dollar in 2025.”