Passive Investment: The Political Dynamics of Charter Expansion in Los Angeles’ Portfolio District
Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (2023) with Susan Bush-Mecenas and Jonathan Schweig
The Kids on the Bus: The Academic Consequences of Diversity-Driven School Reassignments
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (2021) with Thurston Domina, Deven Carlson, James Carter III, Matthew Lenard, and Andrew McEachin
Also available as EdWorkingPaper No. 21-410
Economics of Education Review (2020) with Andrew McEachin, Douglas Lauen, and Sarah Crittenden Fuller
Also available as EdWorking Paper No. 19-90
Structured Choice: School Segregation at the Intersection of Policy and Preferences
Available as EdWorkingPaper No. 23-753 with Deven Carlson, Thurston Domina, James Carter III, Andrew McEachin, and Vitaly Radsky
Abstract: This paper conceptualizes segregation as a phenomenon that emerges from the intersection of public policy and individual decision-making. Contemporary scholarship on complex decision-making describes a two-step process—1) Editing and 2) Selection— and has emphasized the individual decision-maker’s agency in both steps. We build on this work by exploring, both theoretically and empirically, how policy can structure the choices individuals face at each step. We conduct this exploration within the empirical context of enrollment decisions among families in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), which used a controlled school choice system to help achieve diversity aims. We first investigate the schooling choice sets that WCPSS constructed for families and then examine families’ schooling selections. We find that families were offered choice sets containing schools varying racial compositions, but that the racial makeup of schools in families’ choice set systematically varied by schooling type and student race/ethnicity. We further show that a majority of families enrolled in their district-assigned default school, with Black and Hispanic families more likely than white or Asian families to attend this option. Finally, we demonstrate that white or Asian families enroll in their default school at lower rates as the share of Black students increases.
A Promise Unfulfilled? How Modern Federal Civil Rights Enforcement is Used to Address Racial Discrimination in School Discipline
Available as EdWorkingPaper No. 21-413
Abstract: Using newly available data on all civil rights complaints submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights related to racial discrimination in discipline between 1999 and 2018, I provide the first systematic evidence on how modern federal civil rights enforcement is used to address racial discrimination in discipline. I find that less than 50 percent of complaints received each year result in a federal investigation. I also find that 70 to 80 percent of investigations are closed due to insufficient evidence of a civil rights violation. Results also suggest that districts with higher shares of minoritized students, higher levels of segregation, and districts with larger racial educational gaps are more likely to receive a civil rights complaint after controlling for other district factors.
Understanding the Geographic Composition of Racial Inequalities in School Discipline
Abstract: Prior evidence exploring whether racial disparities in school discipline outcomes arise primarily across or within districts and schools is inconclusive. Using data from North Carolina and nationwide data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and several decomposition exercises, I find that Black-White disparities are largely driven by within school differences in discipline rates whereas Latinx-White disparities are driven by both across district and within school differences. However, I also document significant variation in the geographic shape of discipline disparities across U.S. states. Findings from this project indicate that decomposition results are sensitive to researcher methodological choices and approaches that rely on more complex statistical methods may be inappropriate for the study of geographic drivers of discipline disparities.
When the Feds Come Knocking: The Impact of Federal Civil Rights Investigations on Racial Disparities.
Abstract: Despite decades of literature highlighting racial disparities in exclusionary discipline and a flurry of recent policy efforts aimed at narrowing gaps, racial disparities in discipline remain. One understudied policy lever that aims to reduce racial disparities is the use of federal enforcement of anti- discrimination laws through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In this paper, I leverage a new dataset with information on all OCR civil rights investigations related to racial discrimination in school discipline initiated between 1999 and 2019 to study the impact of this type of civil rights oversight on racial disparities in suspension rates. Using an event study design with a doubly robust estimation approach, I compare changes in outcomes among students in districts where OCR initiated an investigation to those in comparison districts that have either not yet been investigated or will not be investigated during the study time frame. To summarize my main results, I do not find evidence that the initiation of a civil rights investigation by OCR leads to meaningful reductions in racial suspension gaps. My results thus provide causal evidence indicating that modern civil rights oversight of this form may be an ineffective approach to improve racial equality in schools.