PUBLICATIONS
Heterogeneity in the Educational Impacts of Natural Disasters: Evidence from Hurricane Florence (with Melinda Morrill)
Accepted at Economics of Education Review
Link to Working Paper
Previously circulated under the title: "Which Students Are Most Impacted by Extended School Closures?"
High School Start Times and Student Achievement: Looking Beyond Test Scores
(with Matthew Lenard and Melinda Morrill)
Economics of Education Review, Volume 76, June 2020
The Role of Social Security in Retirement Timing: Evidence from a National Sample of Teachers
(with Melinda Morrill)
Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, October 2019, 18(Special Issue 4) , 549-564.
WORKING PAPERS
The Effects of Early Literacy Policies on Student Achievement
(with Amy Cummings)
Under Review
Link to Working Paper
Given the importance of early literacy to long-term student success, by 2021, 41 states and the District of Columbia had adopted an early literacy policy to improve student literacy by the end of third grade. Using an event study approach, we examine the impacts of these policies on high- and low-stakes test scores. We find that adopting an early literacy policy improves elementary students’ reading achievement on high-stakes assessments. The largest gains occur in third grade and states with comprehensive early literacy policies, particularly those with third-grade retention requirements. However, we find little evidence of significant gains in low-stakes test scores except in states with comprehensive policies. Our results provide compelling evidence that early literacy policies improve achievement on high-stakes assessments, and these gains are equitably distributed. However, these high-stakes test-score gains may not necessarily lead to increased literacy learning, as evidenced by limited effects on low-stakes tests.
The Labor Market Consequences of Principal Performance Pay
Under Review
Link to Working Paper
This paper studies whether test score-based performance pay for public-school principals affects principals' labor market decisions. I leverage the introduction of a principal performance pay system in North Carolina in July 2017. The new compensation system removed experience and education as determinants of principal salaries; now, principal pay is determined by school test-score growth. I provide evidence that performance pay's financial incentives induce the sorting of principals within and exit from the principalship and the traditional public school labor force. One year after the introduction of performance pay, principals financially rewarded by the new compensation system were more likely to continue working as principals at a different school. Principals not financially rewarded, whose wages stagnate under the new performance pay system, were more likely to leave the principalship and exit or move into other positions. These labor market responses created compositional and distributional changes in the principal labor force. Performance pay induced exits from experienced principals but also principals managing persistently low-performing schools. At the same time, it attracted different principals to persistently low-performing schools. My results demonstrate that principal performance pay can push potentially ineffective principals out of their positions and attract principals to harder-to-staff, low-performing schools.
Following the Letter of the Law: Retention Outcomes Under Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law(with Andrew Utter and Katharine O. Strunk)
Under Review
Link to Working Paper
Link to Policy Brief
Early literacy skills are critical to the educational outcomes of young students. Accordingly, 19 states have early literacy policies that require grade retention for underperforming readers at the end of third grade. However, there is mixed evidence about retention’s effectiveness and concerns that retention may disproportionately impact traditionally disadvantaged student groups. Using regressions and a regression discontinuity design, we examine retention outcomes under Michigan's early literacy law, the Read by Grade Three Law. We find that Black and economically disadvantaged students are more frequently eligible for retention and retained than their peers. While controlling for students’ test performance, particularly their math scores, eliminates this disparity for Black students, it persists for economically disadvantaged students. We show that differences in average math performance, exemption characteristics, district characteristics, and eligibility-induced student mobility across districts do not explain the disparities in the implementation of retention by economic disadvantage status.