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…

This study assesses the impact of involuntary job loss on college persistence by leveraging different job-loss timings relative to a student's college enrollment decision. We find that job loss increases the probability that a working college student leaves college before attaining a degree, but access to short-term credit through credit card…

A few months ago, the largest school district in Texas announced plans to close twenty-eight elementary and middle school libraries, claiming it was part of an effort to combat low test scores and discipline problems. Unfortunately, this troubling trend seems to be spreading. According to the author, multiple studies have shown that effective…

After decades of consistent growth, California transitional kindergarten (TK) through grade 12 public school enrollment has been declining and is expected to continue to do so for at least the next two decades. This report provides guidance on how districts in California and elsewhere can respond to declining enrollment in ways that strengthen…

This article studies a sample of displaced workers during the deep 1990s recession in Sweden and estimates the effect of secondary-level adult education on tertiary-level educational attainment. Plant closures and mass layoffs are used to identify job separations unrelated to individual productivity. Results indicate a large positive effect of…

Deciding which field to study is one of the most consequential decisions college students make, but most research on the topic focuses on students attending four-year colleges. To understand how students attending community colleges make field of study decisions, I link administrative educational records of recent high school graduates with local…

This study investigated the factors that pushed and pulled social justice educators out of urban elementary and secondary (K-12) schools and into teacher education. The authors utilized an autoethnography and counternarrative methodology to examine the systemic and distinct factors that impacted four social justice educators' decisions to leave…

One consequence of the Great Recession is that teacher layoffs occurred at a scale previously unseen. In this article, we assess the effects of receiving a layoff notice on teacher mobility using data from Los Angeles and Washington State. Our analyses are based on 6-year panels of data in each site, including 4 years of layoffs. We find that the…

One consequence of the Great Recession is that teacher layoffs occurred at a scale previously unseen. In this paper we assess the effects of receiving a layoff notice on teacher mobility using data from Los Angeles and Washington State. We find strong evidence that the receipt of a layoff notice increases the likelihood that teachers leave their…

Teach For America (TFA) began in 1990 as an organization purportedly interested in working towards ameliorating a national teacher shortage by sending its corps members into urban and rural schools. In the decades that followed, especially during and immediately following a nationwide onslaught of teacher layoffs instigated by the 2008 Great…

This qualitative study examines the effects of multiple years of layoff notices on first- or second-year, K-12 teachers employed in a Northern California, suburban school district in 2008-2009. During years of budget crisis in California, teachers new to the profession experienced ongoing employment uncertainty. This study endeavored to understand…

Due to budget shortfalls, teacher furloughs were imposed in 2009 in Hawaii Public Schools. The furloughs resulted in a 2009-2010 school year of 167 days as opposed to the regular school year of 180 days. The purpose of this causal-comparative study with a pretest-posttest design was to examine the found effects of those furloughs on academic…

This report serves as a quick reference guide for elected officials to compare key education policies and data in their states to the rest of the nation. The first section highlights major state policies for all 50 states in both table and chart formats (see Summary Charts ). The second section provides key state data, such as per-student spending…

Youth with disabilities face significant barriers in achieving positive post-high school outcomes, particularly when transitioning out of high school and entering the workforce, a problem that has been documented and studied by many researchers. The impact of previous work experience has long been viewed as related to positive outcomes when youth…

While many schools and boards of education are currently forming viable partnerships with queer community organizations in an effort to build upon existing anti-homophobia initiatives, there has been an erosion of such programs in Ontario, Canada. The education system has felt the effects of almost a decade of a conservative government, including…