New: Under-the-radar tidbits from the big new study on U.S. test scores: —High- + low-poverty districts have fared the best of late —Results would probably be worse absent federal Covid aid —Low attendance is dragging down results, but only a bit And more... www.chalkbeat.org/2026/05/21/t...

Lots of good ideas: 1) track and respond to reasons for absences (not just attendance rates) 2) address out-of-school barriers like transportation, conflicting work/school schedules, etc. 3) address in-school factors like engagement, belonging, suspensions 4) address student mental health needs

To solve chronic absenteeism, let’s make school a place where students really want to be // hechingerreport.org/opinion-to-s...

Detroit’s transit bus schedules are often out of sync with school bus schedules, resulting in long commute times for many students, an Outlier Media analysis found.

Our SEDA/EOP team released new trend data today! edopportunity.org/trends/ @upshot.nytimes.com has a nice lookup tool for districts (with apologies to AK, CO, ME, MT, NY, NV, & OR). I like the comparisons to similar districts and hope they encourage peer learning. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Education research often rivals economics for the title of "the dismal science" But that second graph is one of the most liberating, inspiring things I encounter in my job Students' backgrounds are *not* predictive of how much they can learn and grow It's right there. In the data. For all to see.

The Educational Opportunity Project now has updated data for school years 2022-2025. It’s a powerful illustration of why it’s important to look at growth, and not just achievement, to understand how schools are doing. edopportunity.org/trends/explo...

At one Detroit school, students are gaining confidence and learning to read. District leaders are encouraged by their progress but know it could be fragile.

This past semester's Future Teacher Academy brought together professionals and future educators for a day of professional development and networking. Here's a recap!

Four DPSCD schools are closing at the end of this school year. A Detroit charter school might also close. We’re looking to talk to affected parents.

The lawsuit claims the state is responsible for poor building and academic conditions in the Detroit school district, and it seeks increased funding for the district.

Students who rode the bus frequently dropped chronic absenteeism rates by 8.5 percentage points. Vitti said it’s worth exploring the idea at some other schools.

"Education isn't like giving people a pill. You can design the best policy or the best intervention there is and if people don't implement it — then it doesn't matter."

Democrats and Republicans agree on how much per-pupil funding Michigan schools should receive, but they don’t agree on a multi-year plan to provide additional funding for some of the most needy students.

A lot of folks were approvingly sharing Kelsey Piper's post about the problems of educational research. Here's my take. // Ill-Informed Essays About Education Research are Weak and Sloppy. Why? edpolicyhub.substack.com/p/ill-inform...

Alright, so after many many drafts, my NEPC education “policy review” covering Year I of Trump II is out. A “Not great, Bob!” gif might have served as well. I end up arguing that doing the life-giving work of good education requires intensely local effort in a newly obvious kind of way.

The extra funding Detroit is receiving can be spent on everything from mental health training to firearms detection. The district has not said how it will spend the $10.3 million in additional funding.

New school district structure just dropped in Indianapolis. Seems like a combo of receivership and ‘recovery zone’ à la NOLA. www.governing.com/policy/india...

J.E. Clark Preparatory Academy, Ann Arbor Trail Magnet School, Catherine Blackwell Institute, and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School will all permanently close in June. What does that mean for students?

My first post here and I'm excited to share some recent work. A team of UMD researchers and I track investments in children to understand who gets left out and when. 1️⃣ Gaps exceed 50% before kindergarten 2️⃣ Public schooling narrows them at age 5 3️⃣ But disparities persist in type of services received

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

🎉🏫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

Nice new resource from EdFund for researchers, policymakers, and advocates in education finance! Lots of information on school funding formulas, with attention to special populations ed-fund.org/learning-hub/ #EdResearch #EdPolicy

Mayor Sheffield proposed a new initiative that will provide free bus service to city students. The Detroit City Council approved it Tuesday and students can begin riding for free on Wednesday..

We are excited to announce that applications for JEP 2026 are now open! If you are a current doctoral student or post-doc in education policy working on racial justice, this Institute shows how, in community, to develop your research agenda. Apply here through 6/1: www.justeducationpolicy.org/apply

So, I built a little BETA "Tinder meets ESA" application in which you can swipe left and right on Arizona ESA purchases that were part of the state's recent sample, and see if they were allowed or unallowed. Enjoy! You can play two rounds right now. Comments welcome.

Lots of great work! You can read ours here: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1390

I chaired an awesome session on understanding + responding to student absenteeism this morning. The panel highlighted findings from qual + quant studies from 5 states, underscoring the role of policy + practice, sense making + discretion, and the need for resources in promoting attendance #AEFP2026

POSTDOC OPENING! We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow for a mixed-methods project aimed at supporting and researching implementation of high-quality preschool curricula. The position is 1-2 years and can be in person or remote. More details here: edpolicy.umich.edu/what-we-do/j...

Excited to share a new research brief on absenteeism in NC through 2024-25! This mixed methods work shows that absence rates did not change much between '23-24 and '24-25, and describes key possible reasons why based on interviews with educators, parents, and students. epic.unc.edu/wp-content/u...

SAIPE, or, if I want data for non-geographic LEAs, school-level MEPS from the Urban Institute, aggregated to district level. www.urban.org/projects/mod...

It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Calling all graduate students doing research on K-12 or higher education...

And for more detail on that inequality piece in Michigan

Michigan has made progress in the past few years thanks to increased education spending, but we have a long way to go to achieve adequate funding for high-poverty schools and districts.

New/Update for 2026 www.schoolfinancedata.org/the-adequacy...

Revisiting Evidence on the Role of Funding Adequacy in School Reopening During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Response to Weber and Baker journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... "controlling for partisanship & union strength substantively attenuated...the association b/w funding adequacy & school reopening"

Just released: The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public-School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment bit.ly/4rhKWO4

This truly is an important new report from Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza at @uscrossier.bsky.social!

“sweeping failure claims erode public support and fuel a cycle of disinvestment—reduced funding and enrollment that weaken schools and invite further criticism—advancing privatization and deepening inequality at a moment of heightened political and fiscal threats” nepc.colorado.edu/publication/...

Love this (Short version: the original finding still holds, but less dramatic after replication with key additional variables accounted for)

Love to see this type of replication and iterative process

The moment many of us in #edresearch have been waiting for... Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences has been released. ies.ed.gov/ies/2026/02/...

I replicated and extended @jerseyjazzman.bsky.social and @schoolfinance101.bsky.social's study on funding adequacy and school reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their original study did not incorporate measures of local partisanship. I found... journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The Detroit district’s board shared their ideas to help kids get to school despite systemic barriers. Administrators also revealed what policies could soon roll out.

The district’s rate was 83% in 2025, which was nearly 5 percentage points higher compared to the year before.

This is a great study, and I think the longitudinal analysis (schools with declining perceptions of climate see declines in attendance) is especially useful. Still, I struggle with causation/correlation here. This relationship between absenteeism and climate is very well. But which causes which?

Creating Welcoming Schools: The Role of Positive Climates in Reducing Absenteeism journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3...

VERSION 2.0 of the Segregation Tracking Project is here! New data on racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and schools over the last 30+ years for every school district, metro area, state, county, congressional district (new!), and more! edopportunity.org/segregation/

Today, I’m launching DAAF, the Data Analyst Augmentation Framework: an open-source, extensible workflow for Claude Code that allows skilled researchers to rapidly scale their expertise and accelerate data analysis by 5-10x -- *without* sacrificing the transparency... github.com/brhkim/daaf/...

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: What are schools actually doing to improve attendance? @jeremylsinger.bsky.social & coauthors find that in Michigan and Georgia, schools rely on communication-based strategies while efforts to remove barriers or improve student experiences are less common. bit.ly/4abAWPG