This study provides a descriptive analysis of police intervention as a response to student behavior in New York City public schools. We find that between the 2016/17 and 2021/22 academic years, arrests and juvenile referrals decreased while non-detainment-based and psychiatric police interventions increased. However, Black students, especially…

This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function modeling, on several specific states and in an earlier…

Dual enrollment (DE) is one of the fastest growing programs that support the high school-to-college transition. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence about its impact on either students' college application choices or admission outcomes. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach on data from two cohorts of ninth-grade students in one…

We examine the impact of local labor market shocks and state unemployment insurance (UI) policies on student discipline in U.S. public schools. Analyzing school-level discipline data and firm-level layoffs in 23 states, we find that layoffs have little effect on discipline rates on average. However, effects differ across the UI benefit…

Teachers' attitudes and classroom management practices critically affect students' academic and behavioral outcomes, contributing to the persistent issue of racial disparities in school discipline. Yet, identifying and improving classroom management at scale is challenging, as existing methods require expensive classroom observations by experts.…

Sociology of education scholars have positioned punitive discipline practices as factors that work to "push" unwanted students to drop out of school before graduating. However, limited research examines how punitive discipline practices may push students to transfer to another schools--potentially acting as a critical step in the process…

Racial equity in education is often framed around "closing the achievement gap," but many scholars argue this frame perpetuates deficit mindsets. The "opportunity gap" (OG) frame has been offered as an alternative to focus attention on structural injustices. In a preregistered survey experiment, I estimate the effects of…

Although numerous studies document different forms of discrimination in the U.S. public education system, very few provide plausibly causal estimates. Thus, it is unclear to what extent public school principals discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities. Moreover, no studies test for heterogeneity in racial/ethnic discrimination by…

Workers learn on the job from both repetition and peers. Less understood is how "specific" types of experience and peer characteristics affect on-the-job learning. This likely differs by context (e.g., occupation, tasks, or roles). Absent such knowledge, it is unclear how to optimally assign workers to tasks and peers. We examine…

Despite consistent evidence on the benefits of same-race instructor matching in K-12 settings and developing work in higher education, research has yet to conceptualize and document the incidence of same-race matching. That is, even if same-race matching produces positive effects, how likely are racially minoritized students to ever experience an…

Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding the exact start and end…

As states incorporate measures of college readiness into their accountability systems, school and district leaders need effective strategies to identify and support students at risk of not enrolling in college. Although there is an abundant literature on early warning indicators for high school dropout, fewer studies focus on indicators for…

This paper investigates patterns of racial/ethnic and gender gaps in post-secondary degree attainment trajectories by the levels of students' pre-college academic preparation. We follow four cohorts of Missouri public high school freshmen for five years beyond on-time graduation among White, Black, and Hispanic male and female students. A…

The role of racial diversity at college campuses has been debated for over a half a century with limited quasi-experimental evidence from classrooms. To fill this void, I estimate the extent that classmate racial compositions affect Hispanic and African-American students at a large and over-subscribed California community college where they are…

During the 2020-21 school year, Black and Hispanic students were less likely to attend school in-person than white students. Prior research indicated multiple factors helped explain this gap. In this study, we revise these observed racial gaps in in-person learning to examine whether the relationship between these gaps and explanatory factors…