New "don't mistake correlation for causation" example is about to drop:

👀👀👀 https://www.azfamily.com/2025/07/24/dysart-schools-defends-500k-vegas-trip-students-lose-bus-service/

When you have limited $, how do you decide how to spend it? A lot of districts are grappling with this question right now, and this story is a great window into those decisions. https://www.azfamily.com/2025/07/24/dysart-schools-defends-500k-vegas-trip-students-lose-bus-service/

New working paper from me and a great group of coauthors: The Effects of the Four-Day School Week on Teacher Recruitment and Retention caldercenter.org/publications... Read on to see what's different about this vs. some of my prior work 🧵⬇️

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

Curious what conferences will be like once they have AI review the obviously AI-generated submissions. Will presenters just hit play and let ChatGPT talk about how OLS can identify causal effects from observational data by controlling for 3 variables?

Facts are very 20th Century. To be successful in today's interconnected world LLMs need 21st Century skills like creativity.

If you're a grad student or an undergrad interested in research I need to you listen to me very carefully. You cannot learn to write good research papers if you do not read good research papers. Stop asking LLMs to summarize papers for you.

This! 👇

🚨Organizing a paper swap for early career edu policy researchers.🚨 Share a nearly-complete draft, exchange feedback, and connect with peers. Great if you’ve got a lingering project or diss chapter that could use feedback and soft deadlines to move it forward this summer. Sign up & learn more here:

This is Gunner. He is a big strong dog who happens to not be able to sleep until he's tucked into bed with two pillows and his Eeyore stuffy. 13/10

I thought exactly the same many, many times. Reviewers entirely ignore the methodological part of the paper and take its results at face value, but they will debate the "framing" of it in every little detail.

Would love to see more critiques in this style for ed policy research. Not only do we have a professional duty to enforce quality standards, but the ways the original article was used highlights how bad science can be used to justify positions that are otherwise indefensible on empirical grounds.

When I taught, I tried to encourage my students while also pushing them to be realistic. I'd remind them the odds of becoming a pro athlete weren't in their favor. Happy to have been proven wrong today as one of my former students was drafted to the Bucs!

{new} Call me crazy, but I think policymakers should try to expand popular, successful school choice programs like Boston's METCO: www.chadaldeman.com/p/expand-pop...

Every time someone asks me if I've checked the news lately:

Fun fact: if you preregister classified attack plans on OSF you can embargo them until after you lose your job.

New comment! We clarify the difference between two types of confidence intervals for individual scores: standard error of measurement intervals centered around the observed score, and standard error of estimation intervals centered around an estimated true score. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

One resource Josh forgot to mention: fantastic collaborators! Great job opportunity ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Abrego Garcia's wife: "I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive. Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn't forgotten about you. Our children are asking when you will come home ... they miss their dad so much."

Veep writers kicking themselves for not thinking of this bit

For your enjoyment: here is Secretary of Education Linda McMahon talking about implementing AI in schools, but pronouncing it "A1," as in "A1 Steak Sauce" www.youtube.com/live/lxrg28z...

“They were careless people... they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness... and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Looking to form/join a panel at #2025APPAM with my JMP! I estimate teacher value added on ACT scores, then look at impacts on college enrollment & college performance. Message me if you have a related paper on teacher/school VA or predictors of college enrollment/ performance! #EconSky #EconConf

AEFP and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Demolition of IES. www.citizen.org/news/lawsuit...

Linda McMahon Abruptly Tells States Their Time to Spend COVID Relief Has Passed - and a critically important part of the story that remains unanswered. **States have been floating district costs for the Feds.** Now what? @marklieberman.bsky.social w/more context here: www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

I don't how many times I've explained that immigrants actually help create jobs for US-born workers in the last couple months but it's a lot. And I'm not stopping now!

Interview w/ Doug Harris about the new @aefpweb.bsky.social Live Handbook (the Wikipedia of education research): www.the74million.org/article/scho...

Apropos of nothing involving Signal or classified information being shared with a journalist, I'm reminded of The Second Coming by Yeats www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/...

Jack contemplates what it means to live a good life and how to estimate teacher value-add in co-teaching environments. He'd appreciate guidance on either.

Good article to read and then reflect on the meaning of "external validity" www.educationnext.org/every-kid-in...

This is such a great resource for teaching why we need to be (a) critical in consuming analyses and (b) judicious in how we use statistics

When you unintentionally highlight how efficient the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office is

“This is why we should not talk about teacher staffing challenges in a generic way" (me from last week). I'm pretty sure this is what will be written on my tombstone. Read more about post-pandemic teacher staffing challenges in this @edweek.bsky.social article. www.edweek.org/leadership/t...

5 years ago, schools closed for in-person learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic. My new chapter with @andrewmcamp.com at the @aefpweb.bsky.social Live handbook discusses the unprecedented impact the pandemic had and the road to recovery still ahead of us livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...

"Dad, what's happening to the world? Why does it seem so scary and why are so many good people being hurt?" I don't know buddy...

Another piece of evidence for my "I won the advisor lottery" argument. I'm proud of the work I've done. I'm also so appreciative of @gzamarro.bsky.social. I hope that I can support and encourage others half as much as she does for so many people.

This resource, and the massive amount of research it is built upon, is a timely reminder that evidence and logic allow us to understand and improve education for students. At a time when civil society can feel so fragile, I'm happy to have contributed a small part to it. ⬇️🚨⬇️ Check it out ⬇️🚨⬇️

If you're an academic job market candidate studying causal questions related to crime/CJ policy, and you're still looking for a job for next year, could you email me? I'm trying to keep track/would love to help if I can.

In the DC area? This is the last day to register for the annual CALDER Conference! We are close to capacity, so please register soon if you want to join us.

Smaller conferences have a lot of advantages, especially this one. Crystal Bridges has an exceptional collection of American art and is surrounded by miles of trails and nature. It's worth a trip by itself, but seeing (or presenting) quality research at this conference is a cherry on top.

👀🚨Sarah Chung, Jing Liu and I have a new NBER WP! We use daily wind direction as an instrument for air pollution, paired with daily data from a large school district in CA to estimate the effects of daily air pollution on students and teachers. 1/ www.nber.org/papers/w33549

⬇️⬇️⬇️ Alex does some *really* interesting research and I've been looking forward to seeing this presented for a while. Don't miss out - all the cool kids are going to be in 2.01 - Teacher Supply

Heading to @aefpweb.bsky.social this week? So am I! Here are a few of the sessions that I'm particularly excited about, and you might be too. Starting out strong on Thursday with two great (and complementary) sessions focusing on teacher licensure & supply.

Fellow AEFP-attending pollen allergy sufferers: Start your Zyrtec now! In fact, start it two weeks ago. This week's pollen forecast for DC is bleak. #aefp2025

New pub (open-access)! School absence rates have been above pre-pandemic levels for multiple years. We show how this is adding up for students over time, revealing that some students are experiencing especially deep and persistent levels of absenteeism. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...

🫠

Terrific new WP that I'm proud to have made a small contribution to. I sometimes refer to myself as an anxious empiricist bc doing applied research requires us to chose from a large set of equally reasonable choices at each step. How can we be sure our results would hold if different reasonable...

Great post. I'll highlight this point: "Pulling the plug now means that all the millions spent to date are wasted" The top line # is the total cost of these contracts, not what is being "saved." Stopping these programs saves a fraction of that $ and wastes a huge amount of $ already spent.