The Annenberg Institute will host Elly Field for a Half-Baked Research Seminar on how the availability of school choice shapes school and neighborhood demographic change. The talk will explore empirical research examining the relationship between school choice options, enrollment patterns, and changes in the demographic composition of schools and communities.
The Annenberg Institute will host Richard O. Welsh for a Rethinking Race and Education Seminar on disrupting inequities in school discipline. The talk will explore research on racial disparities in disciplinary practices, the systems and policies that shape student experiences, and strategies for advancing more equitable approaches to school discipline.
Richard O. Welsh is an Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Welsh’s research focuses on understanding and transforming inequality in K-12 education, and his scholarship interests include urban education, the economics of education, school discipline, student mobility, the politics of education and research-practice partnerships. He employs a combination of quantitative and mixed methods and leverages frameworks from economics, political science, and sociology to better understand the mechanisms of inequality such as suspensions and the policies, practices, and processes intended to enhance educational equity such as coalitions and their influence in educational policymaking. Dr. Welsh is the founding director of The School Discipline Lab. Dr. Welsh’s book, Suspended Futures: Transforming Racial Inequities in School Discipline (Harvard Education Press), is an incisive examination of the school discipline crisis and a strategic, evidence-driven playbook for educational decision-makers who aim to resolve disciplinary disparities. Before joining Vanderbilt, Dr. Welsh served as Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at New York University (2019-2022) and an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Policy at University of Georgia (2015-2019). He also served as district-wide professor in residence for Clarke County School District. He received his Ph.D. in urban education policy and M.A. in economics from the University of Southern California in 2015 and 2013, respectively. He also holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a B.A. in economics from Stanford University.
The Annenberg Institute will host Greer Mellon for an Education Policy Workshop Series seminar on school district superintendents’ beliefs about achievement inequality and preferences for resource allocation. The talk will explore research examining how district leaders understand educational disparities and how leadership perspectives may influence decisions about allocating resources to support students and schools.
The Annenberg Institute will host Chinyere Odim for a Half-Baked Research Seminar on how Black elite parents negotiate cultural transmission. The talk will explore research examining how families with significant social, cultural, and economic resources make educational decisions and shape understandings of identity, opportunity, and belonging across generations.
Thomas S. Dee is the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, the Robert and Marion Oster Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Faculty Director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, and a Research Associate with the programs on education, children, and health at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on using the modern tools of causal inference to provide novel and credible evidence on important innovations and controversies in public policy. Recent examples include studies of the impact of innovative school curricula and pedagogy, studies of changing patterns of school enrollment and academic engagement in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluations of emerging local initiatives to field mental-health specialists as first responders on targeted emergency calls.
In 2024, Professor Dee received both the Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Peter Rossi Award for contributions to program evaluation from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). His collaborative research also received APPAM’s Raymond Vernon Memorial Award in 2015 and again in 2019. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Education Finance and Policy.
Join us for our next EdWorkingPapers Webinar, where we’ll bring timely, policy-relevant research to life through live conversation. Our fall session on Thursday, November 13 at 3:00pm ET will focus on long-term trends in student enrollment and achievement.
Hear directly from the authors as they share insights and discuss implications for research and policy, and come with your questions!
Whether you’re a longtime reader of EdWorkingPapers or just curious about the latest in education research, this webinar offers an engaging, accessible way to connect with the work and the people behind it. All are welcome—no prior reading required.
During this interactive session, you hear from:
James H. Wyckoff, presenting Puzzling Over Declining Academic Achievement
Abigail Francis, presenting School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
Joshua Goodman, presenting School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic
Susanna Loeb (EdWorkingPapers Review Board member) facilitating the conversation and Q&A
Diamond, J. B., & Huguley, J. P. (2014). Testing the Oppositional Culture Explanation in Desegregated Schools: The Impact of Racial Differences in Academic Orientations on School Performance. Social Forces, 93(2), 747-777. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou093
In this paper, we discuss the fundamental whiteness of educational spaces and detail the historical and contemporary mechanisms through which these spaces are created and perpetuate. We draw on Charles Tilly’s concept of opportunity hoarding to detail how white racial actors and white-dominated institutions create and defend “white” spaces within education. We expand current educational scholarship in this area by theorizing connections between opportunity hoarding and sociological work on racial boundaries, institutional theory, and organizational routines and point the way toward more nuanced examinations of opportunity hoarding in education.
Diamond, J. B., & Lewis, A. E. (2022). Opportunity Hoarding and the Maintenance of “White” Educational Space. American Behavioral Scientist, 66(11), 1470-1489. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211066048
Diamond, J. B., & Posey-Maddox, L. (2020). The Changing Terrain of the Suburbs: Examining Race, Class, and Place in Suburban Schools and Communities. Equity & Excellence in Education, 53(1-2), 7-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2020.1758975
Most students in the United States attend suburban schools. However, most education research focuses on urban school districts. This may be in part because many of the core issues that currently drive education research—issues of race and class inequities, social mobility, immigration, English learning—are believed to be “urban” challenges. In this article, we argue that the changing nature of suburban schools and communities, and the history of their creation as education spaces, make them advantageous locations for education researchers to study many pressing issues and expand the ways we understand the intersections of race, place and inequality. We argue that education scholarship across multiple disciplinary orientations, theoretical foci, and substantive concerns can benefit from a deeper engagement with suburban education spaces and the issues and opportunities associated with them.
Diamond, J. B., Posey-Maddox, L., & Velázquez, M. D. (2020). Reframing Suburbs: Race, Place, and Opportunity in Suburban Educational Spaces. Educational Researcher, 50(4), 249-255. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x20972676