We use administrative panel data from seven states covering nearly 3 million students to document and explore variation in "academic mobility," a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their public schooling careers. On average, we show that student ranks are…

Families' abilities to participate in public school choice programs may be constrained by residential and school location. We provide some of the first evidence of the role that residential mobility and commute time to school in entry into and exit from inter-district and charter school choice. Using a unique panel of student enrollment and…

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…

This report is the first in a series of annual reports the Michigan legislature mandated in December 2020. The purpose of this report is to summarize available state administrative data to begin to quantify the teacher shortage, provide a baseline from which future comprehensive data analysis can begin, and most critically, to provide…

Annually, ACT provides each state with "The Condition of College & Career Readiness," a report that details the college readiness of students who took the ACT[R] test. This report is a companion to "The Condition of College & Career Readiness." This paper traces the college enrollment, retention, re-enrollment, and…

Educational achievement of students can be negatively affected by their changing schools often. The recent economic downturn, with foreclosures and homelessness, may be increasing student mobility. To inform Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) reauthorization, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked: (1) What are…