Students from high income families get more 504 supports, while students from low income families are more likely to be in special education. Working paper is available at:

In a new working paper, my collaborators and I show that which students are identified as gifted and talented varies substantially by family income, and that these differences remain even after accounting for students’ test scores.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.”

Yet one more way that we are failing children.

New episode of @haveyouheard.bsky.social, featuring research by @t-h-a-d.bsky.social, @emilykpenner.bsky.social, and Andrew Penner.

Baby’s first data visualization—was reading a book about the Banff wildlife crossings and wanted to understand the preferences of different animals.

Fascinating work by Deven Carlson, @t-h-a-d.bsky.social, James Carter, @rachelmarisa.bsky.social, Vitali Radsky, and Andrew McEachin on both the potential of school choice for the purpose of desegregation and the disappointing reality that most school choice systems tend to exacerbate segregation

The Power of Attorney flourished when more Americans saw incarcerated people as more than their crimes. Their career would be unthinkable today: Leaving prison under armed guards to play hundreds of concerts and record in major studios.

It was such an honor to receive this award from @isa-rc28.bsky.social on behalf of @oliviergodechot.bsky.social and other coauthors.

So excited to receive this award on behalf of @oliviergodechot.bsky.social and 27 other coauthors!

Every jailhouse lawyer knows Dee Farmer’s name, even if they don’t know who she is. What most of them don’t know is that the person who paved the road for them was a transgender woman who filed her suit from a federal prison cell, in an era when her gender identity was considered a mental illness.

Short piece about our @nature.com paper on the immigrant-native pay gap in The Conversation! Also broad coverage in (so far) German, Dutch, and Spanish central news outlets today!

IN OTHER NEWS: check out our new COIN paper on immigrant--native pay gaps in advanced economies published in @nature.com this afternoon! Specifically, we study the relative contribution of within-job unequal pay vs between-job segregation to earnings disparities across immigrant generations. 1/9

Very excited for the latest paper from the international administrative data network I am a part of! Led by @aresherman.bsky.social we show that 75% of pay differences between immigrants and native-born workers arise because of sorting into different jobs, with 25% due to unequal pay within jobs.

Universal school masking reduced weekly COVID-19 deaths by 0.57 per 100k people. 50 percent of districts removed mask requirements by spring 2022 contributing to 9 percent of COVID deaths that year, from Guzman, Imberman, Filosa, Kilbride, and Malkus https://www.nber.org/papers/w33849

AERA: I'm looking forward to sharing a paper co-authored with @alexfreidus.bsky.social and @ericaoturner.bsky.social on how families of disabled children made school choices during the pandemic. Should be a stellar symposium on school choice for marginalized families! 8am Sunday in Meeting Room 712.

I love this assignment so much and can’t wait to use it (with attribution) the next time I teach Sociology of Education!

So excited to present some great undergrad honors theses from UCI LIFTED students at #psa2025 Thanks to everyone who came for the great questions, and to the session organizers who helped make this happen!

A very old Soviet joke, from an especially dark time: Foxes are fleeing the USSR in droves. Q: Why are you running away? Fox: The Soviets passed a new law that they’re going to arrest all camels. Q: But you’re foxes! Fox: Yeah, why don’t *you* try proving to the NKVD that you’re not a camel.

Allow me to nerd out a bit about the stats in our recent PNAS paper... To make this graph, we calculated a 100-by-100 grid of the average proportion of peers in each income percentile for students in each percentile (i.e., average peer income distributions for each student percentile). [1/n]

What I keep turning over at 3am: How do we design an education system that cultivates people to have the courage to stand up, and stand together, for something greater than themselves?

What California needs now is a little bit of hope and a whole lot of grit. That's why I'm running for Governor. katieporter.com

Great job alert: ProPublica is hiring a computational journalist, "someone who will use technology and data to identify and unlock stories that would otherwise be out of reach." Salary: $120K-$140K Remote: ✅ Come join us!

Hey! What are you doing Friday morning? Attending the Schooled and Sorted "Author Meets Critics "session, obviously. 8AM, Boston Park Plaza, Brookline conference room. #ESS2025 www.russellsage.org/publications...

Francis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...

Things I am excited to fly across the country and wake up at 8am EST for : ) #ESS2025

Come hang out with us and this dream team of critics at #ESS2025 next Friday. There’s still time to get a copy of the book before hand. www.russellsage.org/publications...

Attending #ESS2025 & interesting in donuts, education, and/ inequality? Join us next Friday, 8AM for an author (me, @emilykpenner.bsky.social , @andrewpenner.bsky.social) meets critics (@rachelefish.bsky.social, @johndiamondphd.bsky.social, @jenjennings.bsky.social) discussion!

We're living through a highly polarized time, both economically and politically. Schools have the potential to bring us together, but are contributing to our separation. In a new @pnas.org article, my colleagues and I document students' exposure to economically diverse school and classroom peers. 📄:

Roses are red, Violets are blue, When we abandon the common school ideal, Our society turns to poo.

Students in the top 1% of the income distribution are highly isolated in affluent school enclaves. 💥6%💥 of these top 1% percentile kids’ peers are ALSO in the top income percentile. 💥20%💥 are in the top 5 income percentiles. 💥Nearly 50%💥come from the top 20 income percentiles.

When students from the top 1% of the family income distribution have as many classmates from from the top 10% as from the bottom 60% they are deprived of opportunities to learn with and from classmates who aren’t similarly high income.

Economic integration within schools is limited, @ucirvine.bsky.social-led study finds | Research, published in PNAS, highlights disproportionate isolation of students from families in highest income brackets   @uofcalifornia.bsky.social @andrewpenner.bsky.social @stanforduniversity.bsky.social

Hmm, could be bad news for all the Narratives out there.

Happy holiday sweater season!

Long Covid hit me after my second infection Lasted six months Doing my best to avoid getting Covid again while still living a full life

Chicago knows what's up.

When we turn our communities into our competition, we set our schools up for failure.

Happy decorative gourd season (aka, feed the local rodent population season) to those who celebrate!

President Biden has nominated Adam Gamoran (current William T. Grant Foundation president and former Wisconsin professor) to lead the Institute of Education Sciences. Adam was on my dissertation committee and is a wonderful person. Bravo!

I hope that you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoy working together! My tldr summary: Top earners are increasingly isolated from other earners at work.

It’s there ! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... . With a little work (9 years), some data points (1 billion +) from a handful of OECD countries (12) during a couple of years (30) and a few coauthors (28: 1/n

Very excited about this working paper with @nick-ainsworth.bsky.social and @christocleve.bsky.social! Tldr: RTI adoption lowered SPED identification rates & raised reading achievement among Black students. It did not lower achievement (in either reading or math) for any student subgroups.

Seems like a good time to note that universal free school meals -- which Walz achieved in Minnesota and Project 2025 absolutely hates -- is not only the right thing to do; it's also solid educational policy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3...

A thing I found myself thinking about this week: We live in a world that thinks about how much care we need to provide to maximize productivity, but I want to live in a world where we think about how much productivity we need to maximize care.

Many US educational policies aim to get supplementary resources to kids from low income families. Remarkably, though, we do a terrible job at measuring poverty in schools. We can do better! New from @michspieg.bsky.social, @andrewpenner.bsky.social, and me. edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/why...

Woohoo another new paper posted! Schools that take-up universal free lunch see reductions in their suspension rates! We use a DiD design, and--in a subsample that permits the use of student FEs--find the largest effects among kids previously eligible for FRPL. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...

Measuring School Economic Disadvantage journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3... "direct certification provides the best widely available measure, both over time and across the distribution of school economic disadvantage. By contrast, neighborhood-based measures consistently perform poorly"

Trying to measure economic disadvantage in US schools but concerned about the quality of free and reduced-price lunch based measures? Check out this new paper by Michelle Spiegel, @t-h-a-d.bsky.social and team! TLDR: direct certification tracks closely w/ measures based on students’ family income.