Explains how states can use ESSA's district waiver provision to let high-capacity districts innovate and test new accountability approaches.

Exploits the timing of 19th-century compulsory schooling laws across states to estimate the causal effect of education on intergenerational occupational mobility.

Assesses the mixed legacy of ESEA Title I, which established a federal priority for disadvantaged students and expanded government responsibility for schooling.

Examines Title I's legacy as a vehicle for successive reform agendas and the challenge of developing the capability to support instruction.

Argues that micropolitics shape how teachers and students are assigned to classrooms, a key source of inequity in access to high-quality teachers.

Uses 1940 census data to examine how early U.S. compulsory schooling laws changed educational assortative mating.

Traces how Chicago's 1960s school integration debate shifted from demands for equality for Black students to concerns about keeping white families in the city.

Lays out a framework for distributive decisions in education, balancing competing goals under real-world feasibility constraints.

Asks whether early U.S. compulsory schooling laws, passed 1852 to 1918, improved equality of school attendance and attainment by class, nativity, and race.

Analyzes racial differences in climate change attitudes and what they imply for building public support for sustainability policy.

Uses Georgia and Oklahoma's universal preschool programs to examine whether state provision crowds out private childcare providers.

Uses 41 million Danish savings observations to show that retirement subsidies mostly shift assets between accounts, raising total saving by only one cent per dollar.

Analyzes the relationship between local political dynamics and the persistence of underperforming urban schools.

Finds that mid-career teachers become more productive after evaluation, with the largest gains among those who were performing relatively poorly beforehand.

Considers the limitations of data-driven decision making for the many consequential choices made in classrooms, schools, districts, and legislatures.

Compares seniority-based teacher layoffs with layoffs based on measures of effectiveness, as districts confront cuts after the financial crisis.

Surveys education reforms in the United States, where governments spend over $550 billion annually on a system with the potential to transform students' opportunities.

Summarizes states' policy approaches to teacher professional development and education across the stages of teachers' careers.

Reviews the state role in K-12 teacher compensation and how salary levels and schedule structures shape who enters and stays in teaching.

Summarizes Getting Down to Facts, the largest independent investigation of how California governs and funds public education.

Summarizes the work of eleven scholars on the problems with state school finance systems and how to transform them to support student learning.

Uses data from Brazil to assess how a program decentralizing school management changed school practices and whether it improved student outcomes.

Asks whether school accountability policies are more or less effective at improving student outcomes in states with stronger local control over revenue and resources.

Builds a 50-state index of accountability strength and relates it to NAEP math gains, ninth grade retention, and high school completion from 1996 to 2000.

Evaluates Michigan's Proposal A, the 1995 reform that shifted school funding from local property taxes to centralized state sales taxes.