ERC Current Projects

Project Number	Project Name	Researchers	Proposal Abstract	Citation 1
UTD090	An Evaluation of Principal and Teacher Evaluation and Pay Programs in the Dallas Independent School District	Eric Hanushek, Steven Rivkin, Andrew Morgan	Recently Dallas ISD dramatically altered the evaluation and compensation of both teachers and principals in an effort to raise the quality of instruction throughout the district. Not only do they eliminate salary schedules based primarily upon experience and degree earned, but also they introduce comprehensive evaluation systems that draw information from a number of sources. We have established a partnership with Dallas ISD to evaluate the teacher and principal excellence initiatives, and the state administrative data will enable us to analyze the effects of these initiatives on the flows of teachers and principals into and out of Dallas ISD, changes over time in teacher and principal effectiveness, and the distribution of mathematics and reading achievement. This project will involve the use of supplemental data provided by Dallas ISD, and we propose to divide the work into two stages to expedite the work. In Stage 1 we will use only ERC administrative data, and in Stage 2 we will ask Dallas ISD to provide the data from the teacher and principal excellence initiatives to the Texas Education Agency so that these data can be merged with the state administrative data.	Hanushek, E. A., Luo, J., Morgan, A. J., Nguyen, M., Ost, B., Rivkin, S. G., & Shakeel, A. (2023). The effects of comprehensive educator evaluation and pay reform on achievement (Working Paper No. 31073). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w31073
UTD109	Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students in Texas: An Evaluation of Co-Requisite Developmental Education Reform	Toby Park, Christine Mokher	Texas House Bill 2223 required all public colleges to implement co-requisite developmental education, where under-prepared students enroll directly in gateway courses and receive developmental education support at the same time. We plan to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of HB 2223, asking: How have student outcomes changed following the implementation of HB 2223, overall and by student subgroups? And, does this impact vary by institution or implementation technique? An evaluation of Texas’ policy will inform future policy decisions in Texas, and will also further develop the relationships we have established with the THECB. This type of partnership is supported explicitly by the U.S. Department of Education through a multi-year, multimillion-dollar grant program, to which we intend to apply this summer.	Park-Gaghan, T., Mokher, C., Daniels, H., McCoy, K., Henning, H., & Moran, A. (2022). Exploring Corequisite Developmental Education Models in the Lone Star State: A First Report on Student Success and Corequisite Implementation. Retrieved from https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/diginole/research_repository_submission-797dc447-dad9-4104-8c52-6bc39040a6a3
UTD116	Elementary and Middle School Principal and School Effects on Academic, Behavioral and Labor-Market Outcomes	Greg Branch, Eric Hanushek, Andrew Morgan, Greg Phelan, Steven Rivkin, Jeffrey Schiman	Evidence that teacher effects on both cognitive and non-cognitive skills contribute to longer-term academic, social, and labor-market outcomes highlights potential limitations of a singular focus on achievement and the importance of measuring and identifying educator and school effects on the development of a range of skills. This likely holds even more for school leaders than for teachers, but the challenges of separating principal effects from the influences of school factors outside the control of the principal present a serious challenge. In fact, our early research on principal effectiveness lay fallow for several years, as we struggled to produce convincing estimates of the contributions of principals. However, the work by several of us on the Chicago Public Schools and research by others on principals in other states provides additional types of information with which to tackle this challenge, and we propose to combine research on Texas with research on Chicago Public Schools and research on other states to disentangle the contributions of principals and other school factors to the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills and the effects on longer-term academic, social, and labor-force outcomes. CPS data contain information on high school course grades and annual and bi-annual surveys of students, teachers, and principals administered by the Chicago Public Schools, which supplements the quantitative data. The surveys contain responses to questions about principal performance and various dimensions of the school climate that can be merged with the quantitative data to enrich our understanding of the channels that underlie the quantitative relationships. In addition, the Kindergarten to 8th grade structure of Chicago elementary schools differs from the typical elementary-middle school structure used in Texas, and comparisons can illuminate the extent to which quantitative relationships differ by institutional structure. Finally, cross-state comparisons of pathways to the principalship and value-added differences by pathway illuminate the effects of state differences in policies and practices.	Cullen, J. B., Hanushek, E. A., Phelan, G., & Rivkin, S. G. (2021). Performance information and personnel decisions in the public sector: The case of school principals. Journal of Human Resources.
UTD117	How Do Public Health Policies Impact Educational Outcomes?	Briana Ballis	This project examines the link between a public health policy change and student outcomes. Specifically, I focus on a change in public health insurance that impacted infant health in Texas. Beginning in 1993, there was a county-by-county transition from Medicaid fee-for-service to Medicaid Managed Care (MMC). This change introduced capitation payment for Medicaid services (a set payment per enrollee per year) to physicians rather than payments for the actual services that were provided. Previous research (Kuziemko, Meckel, and Rossin-Slater; 2017) finds that this change increased existing disparities in infant health between high-cost (black) and low-cost (Hispanic) infants. The goal of this project is to identify whether this public health policy change that impacted infant health also impacted academic, college, and labor market outcomes.
UTD119	How Do Public Health Interventions Impact Educational Outcomes?	Briana Ballis	This project examines how early life public health interventions affect student outcomes. Specifically, I focus on how early childhood access to the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) affects children’s later academic achievement, designation as a special needs student, and eventual college and labor market outcomes. In Texas, potential WIC clients must apply in person at local WIC clinics, whose existence and location is, in turn, determined by local WIC agencies. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of WIC clinics in Texas decreased from 614 to 564. Previous research (Rossin-Slater, 2013) finds that having access to a WIC clinic at birth improves infant health. The goal of this project is to identify whether having access to a WIC clinic at birth also has persistent effects on Texas students’ success, and determine the benefits and costs to the Texas school system.
UTD120	A Proposed Study of Academic Mobility in Texas and Comparison with Other States	Eric Hanushek, Steven Rivkin	Widely cited recent research on intergenerational mobility of income by Chetty et al. (2014) [CHKS, 2014] and Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter (2018) [CHJP, 2018] finds substantial variation across geographic areas, consistent with the possibility that school quality is an important determinant of the probability that children born into low-income families escape poverty in adulthood. Although they show that some indicators of school success and resources including average achievement, rate of high school graduation and the teacher-student ratio are positively associated with the mobility rate, the analysis of school factors does little to account for sorting of families into districts and schools. Their work, however, focuses on geographical areas that generally combine significant numbers of separate school districts. We propose a study of geographic variation at the district level in school quality in Texas as measured by achievement mobility, educational attainment, labor-market and social outcomes, where mobility is defined as the difference between the average position in the third-grade achievement distribution and in the distributions of the future outcomes. Identical average positions in the third grade and future outcome distributions for schools, districts or other geographic areas would be consistent with little or no role for schools in fostering income mobility, while significant variation across schools, districts or wider geographic areas in the positions in the distributions of future outcomes would be consistent with an important role for schools. By including not only achievement but also educational attainment, income and potentially interactions with the criminal justice system, we consider an expanded set of outcomes that schools may affect. This analysis is one part of a larger research effort. Similar studies will be conducted in other states (by other researchers), and one of the analyses to come out of this work will be a comparison of patterns of academic mobility among these states.	Austin, W., Figlio, D., Goldhaber, D., Hanushek, E., Kilbride, T., Koedel, C., Lee, J. S., Lou, J., Ozek, U., Parsons, E., Rivkin, S. G., Sass, T., & Strunk, K. (2023). Academic Mobility in U.S. Public Schools: Evidence from Nearly 3 Million Students. CALDER Working Paper.
UTD124	CREDO – Study of School Quality in Texas: A Proposal to the University of Texas at Dallas Education	Eric Hanushek, Margaret Raymond	A key indicator of school system quality is its ability to enhance student growth and achievement throughout the K-12 experience. Charter schools are often regarded as significant drivers of student achievement, yet further research is needed to assess their performance, quality, and distribution. This study will employ multiple approaches to examine school quality in both traditional public and charter schools, how schools support students across K-12, and the impact of charter school presence on traditional schools. Additionally, the research will offer direct policy recommendations to promote the success of both traditional and charter school sectors.	CREDO at Stanford University. (2017). Charter School Performance in Texas. Stanford University.
UTD126	Returns to Graduate Education	Altonji, Joseph Dr., Zhengren Zhu	We will estimate causal effects of specific graduate degrees, such as an MBA or an MS in Engineering, on labor market outcomes. Moreover, we will study how characteristics of colleges, graduate programs, and students influence the payoff to graduate education. We plan to use fixed effect regression models to control for endogenous selection into graduate programs. The richness of the TSP data, and its ability to track students from high school, college, graduate school, to the labor market, makes it the ideal dataset for our project. The results of this project will benefit the state of Texas in multiple dimensions. Most importantly, they will provide both policymakers and students with causal estimates of the potential returns to investing in graduate studies.
UTD138	The Efficacy of Accelerated Developmental Education Reforms in Texas	Trey Miller, Lindsay Daugherty, Paco Martorell	Under the Texas Success Initiative, Texas rolled out a series of developmental education reforms that aimed to accelerate students through developmental education and into college-level coursework. These reforms included corequisite remediation and integrated reading and writing. Yet relatively little is known about the efficacy of these reforms, and more evidence is needed to understand whether and how these reforms impact student success. We propose to conduct three different sets of analyses to examine the impacts of these reforms: (1) a randomized control trial comparing assignment to corequisite remediation versus traditional developmental education; (2) a quasi-experimental analysis comparing corequisite remediation (college course + academic support) to a standalone college course; and (3) quasi-experimental analysis comparing integrated reading and writing coursework to separate reading and writing developmental education courses. These analyses will provide new and more systematic evidence on developmental education reform for students in Texas, using linked secondary and postsecondary data from the Texas P-20/Workforce Data Repository, Texas’ clearinghouse of de-identified public education data.
UTD139	The Predictive Power of Value-Added on Academic Outcomes	Kurt Beron, Dan O’Brien, Taylor	Texas uses a testing program for assessing student learning based on a state-mandated curriculum. Value-added measures, often based on these tests but constructed in different ways, are also used to assess student achievement. The focus of this project is to investigate whether state-mandated tests provide, in value-added form, useful measures of school effectiveness over, and above, existing measures. Do they add predictive information about academic achievement beyond usually available administrative data measures and can we identify indicators associated with effective campus valueadded measures? An additional objective is to provide ongoing campus and district value-added scores to the Texas Smart Schools Initiative, which provides Texas campuses and school districts with information to help achieve high academic outcomes at the lowest cost.
UTD140	Promise Neighborhoods: (Dis)investment and Academic Outcomes	Alexandra Cooperstock	There has been a substantial place-based turn in federal policymaking over the past quarter century, and the largest of the education policies is the Promise Neighborhood program. The U.S. Department of Education has granted 74 Promise Neighborhood awards and nearly 700 million dollars to underperforming schools and their surrounding ecologies over the past decade. I analyze the characteristics predictive of Promise Neighborhood grant acquisition and the association between the saturation of additional funding and support with subsequent student outcomes. Because place-based policies have the potential to transform neighborhood conditions, in both favorable and unfavorable ways, they have important implications for durable spatial inequalities in Texas which are congruent with academic achievement gaps and are partly the result of policy action or inaction.
UTD142	Exploring Student and Institutional Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic	Trey Miller, Holly Kosiewicz, Rodney Andrews	Recent national studies demonstrate that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused massive disruption in the higher education sector including an unprecedented decrease in enrollment, particularly for freshmen students, first generation students, and students of color; a hurried shift toward online and hybrid modes of instruction; and increased stress and other challenges as students, faculty and staff deal with a myriad of life challenges posed by the pandemic. These challenges threaten recent progress towards increasing higher education enrollment and success, particularly for traditionally underserved students. This mixed methods study will identify shifts in student enrollment, course modality and student success in Texas higher education institutions (HEIs) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings will inform a qualitative analysis that explores both how Texas HEIs have responded to the pandemic and the strategies that they have found promising in addressing the challenges that they face. We will focus particular attention on how Texas institutions have sought to link students with support services (i.e. academic counseling, tutoring), build community, and provide support to faculty who are teaching online courses.
UTD146	The Relationship Between Diversifying the Professoriate, Student Academic Outcomes, and Persistent Postsecondary Achievement Gaps Across Race and Ethnicity?	Michael Gottfried, Rodney Andrews, Trey Miller, Taylor Odle	Teachers of color increase school success for students, particularly those of color – this has been well established in the K-12 schooling sector. Researchers have posited that teachers often serve as role models for students of color, helping them to develop a racial identity and navigate the complexities of college. The underlying mechanisms for the observed relationship between student-instructor race/ethnicity – matching are likely to continue to hold for students in the postsecondary education sector, yet no study of which we are aware has formally investigated this issue in higher education. This study will leverage data from the UT Dallas Education Research Center to explore the relationship between student-instructor race matching in key college courses and postsecondary outcomes. If the results from similar research from the K12 sector translate to the postsecondary sector, this study may serve to amplify calls to diversify the professorate by connecting such calls to the larger agenda to improve student success and reduce gaps in postsecondary attainment by race and ethnicity.
UTD147	Estimating Value Added and Match Effects in Higher Education: UTD-ERC	Jack Mountjoy, Brent Hickman	Students who attend different colleges end up with vastly different outcomes. We aim to estimate relative value-added of individual colleges to disentangle college impacts from student sorting in producing these outcome disparities. The ERC data are well-suited to this task, as they link high school records, college applications and admissions, enrollments and degree completions, and earnings for a large population of college-goers who attend a wide variety of institutions. Our proposed methodology, building on prior work, compares the outcomes of students who enroll at different colleges but share the same portfolio of applications and admissions, which helps isolate comparisons of similar students. We also plan to investigate match effects by allowing value-added to potentially vary with student characteristics.
UTD149	A Proposed Study of School Accountability Effects on Skill Development and longer-term Academic, Labor Market and Social Outcomes	Julie Cullen, Eric Hanushek, Steven Rivkin, Gregory Phelan, Steven Rivkin,	The complex structure of the Texas State accountability system potentially introduces multiple incentives based on both the risk and the realization of a lower accountability rating for a school or district. To date research has focused on one or the other of these channels and thus painted a partial picture of accountability effects. We propose to study the combined effects of the risk and realization of a low rating for elementary and middle schools on student acquisition of cognitive and noncognitive skills and post-secondary academic, labor-market and social success. We will investigate heterogeneity by accountability rating and by student characteristics including achievement and subgroup membership. We will then investigate district and school responses that potentially contribute to outcome effects. These will include but are not limited to turnover of teachers, principals and superintendents, reallocation of principals to at-risk schools, changes in resources including class size, changes in the probability of classification as special education, and reallocation of resources including teacher experience to subgroups and students most at risk of failing to meet a rating standard. Methodologically, we will utilize regression discontinuity design methods to identify the effects of realized ratings and investigate the sensitivity of results to various approaches to the measurement of student influence on the risk of a lower rating.	Cullen, J. B., Hanushek, E. A., Phelan, G., & Rivkin, S. G. (2021). Performance information and personnel decisions in the public sector: The case of school principals. Journal of Human Resources.
UTD150	Research Proposal to Identify High Performing Institutions in the State of Texas: An Effort to Build Better Pathways of Success for Low-Income and Underrepresented Minorities	Ashwina Kirpalani, Nicole Cavazos, Alex O’Donnell	As an organization, The Commit Partnership aims to identify what makes a school district in the state of Texas successful, as it relates specifically to the success of their underrepresented minority and lower-income students. While there is research that looks into college readiness and standardized testing scores, Commit Partnership is seeking a more thorough look at not just college readiness, but also retention, graduation rates, and employment. This mixed-method research intends to celebrate the accomplishments of high performing school districts, while learning from them on what separates their district from the rest. With that information, Commit Partnership is interested in scaling those best practices to lower performing school districts in an attempt to create new and equitable pathways for lower-income and underrepresented minority students.
UTD151	Evaluation of the Networks for School Improvement Initiative	Matthew Johnson, Jeffrey Max, Naihobe Gonzalez	The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Networks for School Improvement (NSI) initiative supports school networks across 24 school districts in Texas that are using continuous improvement to improve high school graduation and college enrollment rates, particularly for students who are Black, Latino, or experiencing poverty. The national evaluation will examine the effectiveness of the initiative and provide valuable evidence for states, districts, and the broader education field on how schools can use continuous improvement to advance high school graduation and college success rates. We are requesting data from the University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center to measure the effect of the NSI initiative on student outcomes, and understand which aspects of the grants are related to any impacts.
UTD153	Community College and the Great Recession: Evidence from Texas	Karl Schulze	Using the enrollment surges at community colleges during the Great Recession as a lens through which to examine the interaction of higher education and the labor market, this project seeks to contribute to our understanding of how adult workers adjust their skills in response to economic shocks. By combining data on worker wages and industry with higher education records on field of study, I will use regression-based methods and a dynamic discrete choice model to understand the frictions older workers face in upgrading their skills and assess how higher education can be better designed to address workers’ needs.
UTD154	Part-time College Students in Texas: Characterizing Enrollment Patterns, Understanding the Issues they Face, and Identifying Areas for Reform to Promote Their Success	Trey Miller, Holly Koziewicz, Rodney Andrews, Melissa Martinez, Mark Lu,	Research demonstrates that part-time college students have significantly poorer academic outcomes than full-time students (Bombardieri, Hatton, & Slatter, 2017). Familial responsibilities and child-care needs, limited access to on-campus resources, and failure to gain early credit momentum are some of the reasons researchers cite to explain these differences (Bombardieri, 2017; Jenkins & Bailey, 2017; Le, Pisacreta, Ward, Margolis, & Booth, 2020). Yet, despite these diverse explanations, the principal policy solution to this problem is to encourage students to enroll full time. Numerous federal and state policies and evidence-based student success strategies, including the federal Pell program and CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associates Programs (ASAP) require students to enroll full-time to receive benefits. We argue that this policy prescription is shortsighted and may work against its intended goal by making it harder for students to pursue and complete college. This mixed-methods study proposes to describe the characteristics, the challenges and the needs of the part-time student population enrolled in Texas community colleges in order to spur and support the development of datadriven interventions to improve the academic outcomes of this student population. Specifically, this study will leverage rich administrative data collected through the ERC program to quantify both the dynamics and determinants of part-time enrollment behavior in conjunction with a qualitative component that investigates the factors that motivate students to enroll part time, the barriers they face, and the supports they need to complete college.
UTD157	School District Consolidations and Their Effects on Student Outcomes	Sharada Dharmasankar	This project studies the impact of changes in school district organization and financing, due mainly to district consolidation, on short and long-run student outcomes. Leveraging the panel structure of the ERC data and combining information on K-12 attendance and performance, higher education attainment, and labor force participation and earnings, I will use a variety of approaches, including descriptive analyses and an event study design, to estimate the effects of district restructuring on individual outcomes. These analyses will investigate the determinants of mergers and shed light on the types of school districts involved in mergers. I will follow this up with a model of school choice to understand the mechanisms explaining impacts on student achievement, studying channels like residential choice, student body composition at schools, and staff and faculty employment.
UTD158	The Effects of Changes in Resources on Outcomes for Students in Texas	Rodney Andrews, Gregory Phelan, Krishna Regmi, Benjamin Scafidi, John Thompson,	The effects of exogenous changes and interventions that change the resources that are available in early childhood have both have large effects on students’ educational and labor market outcomes and are well documented in the economics of education literature. Throughout its history, the state of Texas has implemented many interventions with the intent of improving the outcomes of students enrolled in its K-12 system and Texas students have experienced shocks that affect educational and labor market outcomes. In this project, we propose to examine the effects of both policies and exogenous changes that affect the availability of resources on academic achievement, college matriculation and performance, and labor market outcomes on K-12 students in Texas.
UTD159	[resubmitted] Effects of Special Education on Crime	Briana Ballis, Katelyn Heath	This project examines the link between special education participation and interactions with the criminal justice system. Specifically, we focus on a 2004 Texas policy change which led to reductions in special education participation. We will determine whether students more exposed to this policy change (with less access to special education) had different experiences interacting with the criminal justice system relative to students less exposed (with more access to special education). Previous research (Ballis & Heath, 2021b, 2021a) focuses on the same policy change and finds that special education access has a strong influence on whether students complete high school and enroll in college. The goal of this project is to identify whether special education programs also impact juvenile and adult crime. While one of the primary goals of special education programs is to prepare students for adulthood, there is limited evidence on whether the impacts of special education extend beyond educational outcomes. This study will provide new evidence on the link between special education participation and crime, an important marker of adult well-being. Moreover, documenting the potential impacts of special education participation on crime is critical to accurate cost/benefit analyses of special education programs.
UTD160	The Effect of Bilingual Education: Non-Test Score and Long- Term Outcomes	Kevin Hunt, Hyunkyeong Lim	A large and growing share of US students have limited English proficiency (LEP), and federal law requires that schools provide additional assistance to these students. In this project, we will investigate the impact of bilingual education programs in Texas elementary schools on non-test score and long-run student outcomes as well as explore mechanisms generating these effects. Bilingual education involves teaching LEP and non-LEP students in separate classrooms, with LEP students receiving instruction in their native language. Our research approach leverages a regression discontinuity design and classroom peer effects model.
UTD161	Education and the Future of the Texas Labor Force	Ryan Mather, Andrew Smith	The choices that students make during high school, college, and degree programs are important in shaping the skills that they will be able to bring to employers after graduating. Particularly in light of the 60X30TX plan’s goal to dramatically increase certificate and degree attainment rates, then, these choices and the factors that influence them will have important implications for the skills of the broader Texas labor force. This proposal aims at providing policymakers with a deeper understanding in this area by examining the ways in which students decide between postsecondary options, have been influenced in these decisions by past policy, and could potentially be influenced by future policy interventions. To do so, we will use a mixture of multivariate regression and economic modeling techniques.
UTD162	Teacher Shortages in Texas	Carolyn Tsao	The primary goals of this project are to gain a deeper understanding of why there are fewer individuals becoming teachers, especially in specialty areas such as languages, special education, and STEM, and to shed light on how these shortages are affecting student outcomes. With fewer teacher certificates being awarded in the U.S. each year, as well as increased turnover rates and consistent shortages of specialty area teachers, it is important to carefully examine ways in which the school environment and outside career options may be affecting teacher labor supply decisions and, consequentially, student outcomes. I propose using event study, difference-in-difference, and regression designs to analyze educational policy changes that affected licensing requirements and teachers’ workplace characteristics in Texas public schools to study the potential causes and consequences of teacher shortages. The knowledge gained from these analyses may be used to inform policy on ways to attract and retain high-quality educators into our schools.
UTD165	Longitudinal Analysis of Dallas-Area High School Graduates	David Mahan, Navi Dhaliwal, Sayeeda Jamilah, McKenna Griffin, Trey Miller, Holly Kosiewicz; Rodney Andrews	The proposed longitudinal study (8 years post-high school graduation) of Dallas-area students will identify, along students’ high school-to-workforce pathways, where practice and policy interventions would most improve academic and workforce outcomes. A focus on key transition points and intermediate outcomes along that pathway (e.g., dual-credit participation, postsecondary completion) will enable holistic analysis of factors associated with academic success and high return on investment (ROI) from a Dallas College education. Using Texas Education Resource Center (ERC) data holdings, the Research Institute at Dallas College will analyze five cohorts of graduating high school seniors (classes of 2008-2012) from 23 local school districts. The study will apply an equity lens, analyzing outcomes down to the program level across race, ethnicity, gender, and economic status. Descriptive statistics will be used to identify problematic transition points which need a more robust statistical analysis such as inferential modeling. A survey component will complement statistical results with direct student feedback. Results will inform Dallas College’s strategic decisions on topics like expanding dual-credit opportunities, improving college readiness among high school graduates, increasing direct enrollment in higher education from high school, and expanding academic programs that exhibit equitably high earnings. Findings will also serve to inform policy and practice for other education leaders, state decision-makers, and workforce partners.
UTD167	The Effect of Long-term Teacher Turnover on Student Achievement in Texas Public Schools	Arslan Khalid	The consensus among researchers who are interested in education theory is that teachers have a strong effect on student learning outcomes. Many researchers believe that it is the most important in-school factor that affects student learning. Despite its impact on learning, schools across the United States are struggling with teacher shortages – a situation made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Current research on the effects of teacher turnover on student and school performance shows mixed results leaving room for quantitative research with implications for education policy. This study uses a rigorous methodology coupled with robust data to analyze the effects of different levels of teacher turnover on students in grade-categories within schools (elementary school and middle school). By analyzing the effects at the student level this study adds a unique perspective to education policy discussion which o en proposes school-level reforms based on the performance of schools and individual teachers.
UTD168	Examining Sibling Spillovers on Short and Long-Run Outcomes	Jose Rosa Guardado, Briana Ballis	This project examines the impact of siblings on academic achievement and longer-run outcomes. Given the close relationship siblings have, and the strong influence they are likely to have on important life outcomes such as educational investments, understanding the impacts siblings have on one another is critical. The results of this study provide important evidence that help identify the extent to which school policies spillover to siblings, and highlight the true costs and benefits of educational changes. Given that educational policy changes can alter parental behavior and investment to different siblings, this is critical information for educators and policy makers to know so that resources can also be targeted to children who might also be impacted by changes to their siblings’ educational experiences.
UTD169	Spatial Distribution with Constraints: Talent, College Enrollment, and Economic Activity	Wenhua Di, Devaki Ghose, Wookun Kim, Han Xia	The barriers to college education for students are multifaceted and shaped by family financial constraints, mobility costs, and institution-specific tuition and financial aid programs (de Oliver, 1998; Hoxby, 2009; McLendon and Perna, 2014; Hillman, 2016; Blagg and Blom, 2018). These barriers interactively affect student college enrollment and future labor outcomes. Furthermore, the extents of these costs are likely to differ substantially by student characteristics and their interactions with their family socioeconomic background and institutional factors. In this research, we propose a theoretically tractable quantitative framework and apply it to the Texas Education Research Center (ERC) data to unpack the financial, institutional, and geographical barriers to college enrollment and characterize how they affect the Texas student population differentially by their socioeconomic characteristics. Ultimately, we quantify the consequences of these barriers in terms of individual earnings, social welfare, and inequality.
UTD170	[164 resubmitted] Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Short-Run Academic and Long-Run Outcomes of US-Born Students	Briana Ballis, Derek Rury, Che Sun	The peer composition of a classroom is an important feature of a child’s learning environment. Recent work has shown that exposure to students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants has positive effects on the educational outcomes of their classmates (Figlio et al., 2021). We plan to expand on this research by studying how the presence of immigrant children in Texas schools has influenced the success of their peers in school and into adulthood.
UTD172	The Effect of Pensions and Retirement on Teacher Retention and Student Achievement	Andrew Johnston, Jonah Rockoff, James Harrington	Research demonstrates that state pensions are significantly underfunded relative to their obligations to teachers and other public employees (Hanif et al. 2016; Mitchell 2020). The pressure of financing public pensions in the presence of falling interest rates and slowing growth has led to a wave of reforms whittling down benefits and eligibility. Of concern is that these benefit reductions will affect the quality of public services. Because schools form one of the most robust avenues for human capital formation and upward mobility, some are especially concerned that pension cuts may reduce the quality of public education by increasing teacher turnover and reducing teacher effort. In this study, we leverage a representative reform that took place in Texas (SB 1691 by Rep Eiland and Sen Duncan), which cut pension benefits for employees of public schools, going into effect September 1, 2005. The cut grandfathered workers near retirement using a cutoff, and the cutoff allows us to compare the outcomes of similar workers that only differ in their exposure to the reform. The context allows us to quantify the effects of the reform on teacher retention and student achievement using regression-discontinuity and difference-in-differences designs.
UTD173	The Academic Outcomes of English Language Learners Affected by Community College Placement Policies	Holly Kosiewicz, Camila Morales	In Texas, community colleges have discretion in assessing and placing English language learners (ELLs) into prerequisite and credit-bearing college-level courses when they enroll. However, policymakers and researchers have limited knowledge about how community colleges place ELLs into different pathways and how these placement decisions affect their educational experiences and outcomes. Research indicates that ELLs significantly underperform compared to non-ELLs, and some suggest that the disproportionate placement of ELLs into prerequisite coursework may contribute to this achievement gap (Flores & Drake, 2014; Hodara, 2015). This mixed-methods research study will document the placement policies used to assign ELLs to prerequisite and credit-bearing college-level coursework at five Texas community colleges and quantify how these enrollment decisions influence ELL collegiate experiences and trajectories.
UTD174	Breaking Down Changes in Texas Higher Education Enrollment in the Past 20 Years	Nadav Kunievsky	Between 2000 and 2019, Texas experienced drastic changes in the share of high school graduates who choose to enroll in a higher education institution. These changes did not take place uniformly across racial and gender groups; while some groups experienced a steady enrollment increase, others underwent f luctuations. This project explores how changes in labor market returns, costs, and information quality contributed to the overall shifts in enrollment. Texas ERC linked student-level administrative data is suited to answer this question since they provide detailed and reliable information on enrollment choices, students’ characteristics, eventual educational attainment, and labor market outcomes within Texas.
UTD179	Major-Specific Admissions Restrictions in Texas	Amy Kim	In this research project, I will use the unique policy setting and high-quality administrative data of Texas to study the effects of major-specific admissions restrictions (MSARs) at higher education institutions. Despite the prevalence of these policies, both in Texas and nationwide, their effects on student behavior and student outcomes are not well understood. In addition to requesting ERC data, I will also be constructing a novel dataset of MSARs over time across higher education institutions in Texas. With these two sources of data, I propose using event study and regression discontinuity designs to analyze the effects of MSARs, both on student application and enrollment behavior in the short run, and student academic and labor market outcomes in the long run. Additionally, I will use event study and difference-in-difference designs to study the interactions between MSARs and institution-wide admissions policies (in the form of the Texas Top Ten Percent Rule) and institution-wide financial aid and outreach programs (in the form of the Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship and the Century Scholars Program). Understanding the effects of MSARs, particularly in the context of other institution-wide policies, will inform policymakers and institutions when deciding whether MSARs are the appropriate tool to restrict major-specific enrollment.
UTD180	Heterogeneous Returns and Characterizing the Roles of Choice of Major and Course Selection	Scott Imberman, Rodney Andrews, Michael F. Lovenheim, Scott A. Imberman, Kevin Stange,	The first two targets for Texas’s strategic plan, Building A Talent Strong Texas focus on credentials. The first target is that, by 2030, 60% of Texans between the ages of 25 and 64 will receive a degree, certificate, or other postsecondary credential of value by the year 2030. The second target is that the credentials offered by Texas’s institutions of higher education must propel graduates into lasting, successful careers; the careers must equip them for continued learning and greater earning potential, with low or manageable debt. Moreover, the strategic plan directly calls for these goals to be met equitably so that all Texans have an opportunity to succeed. The value associated with credentials and the availability of labor market opportunities are associated with the decisions students make such as choice of college, choice of major, and selection of classes. To better inform the decisions made students, families, and policymakers this proposal seeks to provide a comprehensive examination and description of the patterns of postsecondary choices made by students and the earnings returns associated with those decisions along various dimensions.
UTD181	Exploring the Influence of Parental Deployment on Educational Outcomes	Trey Miller, Mike Kofoed , Rich Patterson , Andrew Johnston, Kyle Greenberg,	This study will merge Army personnel records on members stationed in Texas with information on the dates and nature of their deployments with ERC data on the educational and behavioral outcomes of the school-age dependents of those members to significantly advance our understanding of the implications of parental deployment for student outcomes over the lifecycle. The research will identify the types of deployments that are most detrimental to students and pinpoint areas and times when student and family supports and other interventions may be particularly beneficial. This research will be particularly useful for Texas schools near the state’s large Army bases, which serve a large number of dependents of Army members. The research will also advance our understanding of the broader question of implications of parental absence on student educational and behavioral outcomes.
UTD184	Estimating the Labor Market Returns to Completion of High School Career and Technical Education	Trey Miller, Brian A. Jacob, Michael Ricks, Mengyang Cao	There has been a resurgence of interest in high school career and technical education (CTE) programs over the past 10 years, driven in part by growing income inequality. Despite a long history of study, there is no clear evidence about the typical effects of different CTE programs. We propose to estimate the effects of participating in CTE on educational and labor-market outcomes, allowing effects to vary by the type of CTE program as well as by student characteristics. Using decades of data on CTE participation in Texas will provide stronger external validity than many prior studies. We will use descriptive, experimental, and quasi-experimental research methods such as changes in CTE availability across high schools, travel time, application lotteries, and teacher availability to estimate the effects of CTE participation on a number of subsequent academic and labor market outcomes.
UTD186	Understanding the long-term outcomes of students who received higher-order executive function training in Middle and High School	Jacquelyn Gamino, Sandra Bond Chapman, Jeffery Spence, Rohit De	The University of Texas at Dallas’s Center for BrainHealth has conducted Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training (SMART) with teachers at Texas public schools since 2008. The SMART training program is designed to improve complex reasoning and innovative thinking through relevant instruction and practice of meta-cognitive processes. It consists of 10, 45-min classroom sessions delivered over a 1-month period. Research conducted by the Center for BrainHealth has demonstrated immediate positive effects of receiving the training on classroom-level passing rates for the 8th grade reading and mathematics STAAR examinations, in addition to other cognitive outcomes. However, little is known currently about the long-term impacts of SMART training in the classroom. This study will merge classroom-level information on treatment status with the long term academic, behavioral, and employment outcomes of students in those classrooms. Understanding these outcomes will help determine the efficacy of the short-term intervention and advance our understanding of the effect of executive function training on educational and behavioral outcomes. This research will benefit the state of Texas by providing an understanding of the long-term academic and economic consequences of cognitive training.
UTD188	The efficacy of training and certification requirements for Texas teachers	Evan Riehl, Christa Deneault, Jian Zou	In Texas, there are two key steps for college graduates who wish to become a teacher: complete an Educator Preparation Program (EPP), and pass TExES certification tests. These policies are intended to provide training and screening to ensure that only well-qualified individuals enter the teaching profession. Yet they also serve as barriers to entry at a time when Texas is facing teacher shortages, particularly in rural areas. We propose to use data from the Education Research Center to evaluate the impacts of training and certification requirements on the quantity and quality of Texas teachers. Our empirical strategy will exploit the growth of for-profit EPPs and changes in the structure of the TExES exams over the past two decades. This will help policymakers understand whether changes in EPP regulation and certification standards can help to increase the number of high-quality teachers in Texas public schools.
UTD190	Long-term Outcomes Associated with Participation in Dual Language Education	Trey Miller, Camila Morales, Gema Zamarro	Dual language immersion (DLI) programs, which provide English Language Learners (ELLs) and native English speakers with general academic instruction in two languages from kindergarten through at least sixth grade and often into middle or high school, have seen significant expansion in recent years. A growing body of evidence from rigorous studies including randomized trials demonstrates that, while the Math and ELA test scores of participants in DLI programs typically lag behind their peers in general education programs or other programs for ELLs in the early elementary grades, DLI students typically catch up and often surpass the achievement levels of their counterparts later on in their educational careers. At the same time, the majority of DLI participants become proficient speakers in two languages, including English. Capitalizing on ERC data that tracks DLI participation from 2008 onward, this study will be the first of which we are aware to examine the relationship between DLI participation and long term outcomes like high school completion, postsecondary enrollment and completion, and labor market outcomes. Moreover, by tracking DLI participants through K12 schools, teacher training programs, and into the Texas teaching workforce, this study will also be the first of which we are aware to examine the extent to which DLI programs can help fill the pipeline of high quality ELL instructors. Texas has a large and growing number of ELL students accompanied by a dearth of qualified ELL instructors to serve them. This study has the potential to provide evidence on the extent to which DLI programs can play a role in addressing these issues.
UTD191	Short and Long-run Impacts of School District Closures on Displaced Students and Receiving Schools	Soo Yeon Kim, Greg C. Wright	To comply with Federal accountability standards, Texas has adopted a strategy of closing schools and transferring students to higher-performing schools (Richards, Stroub, & Guthery, 2020; Stroub & Richards, 2016). These closures have disrupted the educational experiences of numerous public schoolchildren. However, most previous research has primarily focused on changes in average cohort academic results of displaced students, leaving policymakers and researchers with limited knowledge about how school closures impact groups with varying academic performance and, furthermore, how these effects extend to college educational outcomes and labor market results in the long term (Larsen, 2020; Mullins, 2011; Rumberger, 2015). To fill this gap, this study will examine how school closures due to low academic achievement impact academic performance (i.e., K-12 test scores, high school graduation, college attendance, choice of major) and labor market earnings of displaced students. In particular, it examines how these effects differ based on the student’s academic achievement in the origin school.
UTD192	Educational Decisions and Outcomes with Transfer Options	Zhengren Zhu, Joseph Altonji	The proposed study will build a comprehensive framework for understanding students’ educational decisions and outcomes throughout the higher education pipeline, while emphasizing the existence of both vertical and reverse transfer options between 2-year and 4-year colleges. This framework would allow policymakers to study how a broad range of policy levers affect students’ schooling decisions and, eventually, their educational outcomes. Examples of policies that can be studied under this framework include free or reduced tuition in 2-year and/or 4-year colleges, improved credit transfer process, and improved academic advising in 2-year colleges that aims to reduce excess credit and transfer credit loss. Indeed, the central policy goal of this proposed study is to improve the educational outcomes of students who start their college education in 2-year colleges. The method of the study will be a combination of regression analyses and the indirect inference method, a simulation-based econometric technique that facilitates the estimation of structural economic models. These methods are based on previous work done in UTD Project 108, which successfully estimated a prototype model using the ERC dataset. The proposed study will make substantial extensions to the previous model to make the framework more realistic and suitable for use by policymakers and practitioners. In addition, I also plan to leverage the fully developed framework to directly answer several policy-relevant questions. How would improving the academic preparedness of high school graduates affect their school choices and outcomes? Would better academic guidance in community college to prepare students for four-year colleges improve student outcomes? What are the potential impacts of providing reduced fees or even free community college? Additionally, how do these policy levers interact?	Altonji, J. G., & Zhu, Z. (2025). Returns to specific graduate degrees: Estimates using Texas administrative records. Unpublished working paper.
UTD193	The Impact of Opt-Out Policies on Closing Gaps in Advanced Course-taking and Subsequent Student Outcomes	Dareem Antoine, Daniel Vargas-Castano, Trey Miller	While there is general consensus that taking advanced coursework in high school is strongly related to subsequent academic outcomes, well-qualified Students of Color are less likely than White students to take advanced high school courses. With this in mind, K12 schools have sought out strategies to encourage more qualified Students of Color to take advanced courses in middle and high school. One policy that has gained traction is the “opt-out” policy. Traditionally, qualified students must opt-in to enrolling in advanced coursework, and many qualified students – particularly those of color – fail to do so. Under an “opt-out” policy, qualified students are automatically enrolled in advanced coursework and must have their guardian sign off to get permission to enroll in less advanced courses. Emerging research in a limited number of settings has begun to document that opt-out policies can increase participation in advanced coursework for all students, and close participation gaps by race and ethnicity. However, more research is needed to understand the effects of these policies on participation in advanced courses and subsequent student outcomes in a wide variety of settings, particularly those with large numbers of students from diverse backgrounds. We will examine the causal effect of an opt-out policy first implemented in 2018-19 in Dallas ISD, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the nation, on advanced course enrollment and student outcomes using quasi-experimental methods including regression discontinuity design and differences-in-differences methods. The findings of this study will provide valuable information to policymakers and educators about the effectiveness of opt-out policies as a means to improve access to advanced coursework and student outcomes.
UTD195	Distance to Opportunity: Higher Education Deserts and Community College Enrollment	Camila Morales, Kalena Cortes, Riley Acton	In the United States, the economic returns to attending college and completing a postsecondary degree are substantial and tend to increase over one’s lifetime. However, significant disparities persist among socioeconomic and racial groups when it comes to college enrollment and persistence. Indeed, students from low-income backgrounds and underrepresented minorities (URM) are less likely to pursue a post-secondary education, and when they do enroll in college, they are disproportionately more likely to enroll in community colleges as opposed to more selective, four-year institutions. Consequently, a large body of academic research has explored the myriad of factors that contribute to low-income and URM students’ low rates of college enrollment and completion. Capitalizing on administrative education records from Texas, the state with the second-largest community college sector, our study investigates the extent to which racial and socioeconomic disparities in college enrollment can be explained by differences in students’ geographic access to colleges as well as differences in students’ sensitivity to distance. This project builds on the analyses conducted on behalf of the THECB Commissioner Directed Community College Finance Research Project, and findings aim to inform the financing of higher education in both Texas and the country by providing insights into the tradeoff between the geographic diffusion of college campuses and the racial and ethnic composition of the student population. Results can further inform policy decisions on where new college campuses should be located, or where existing ones should be expanded, to best close racial and socioeconomic gaps in college enrollment and attainment.	Acton, R., Cortes, K. E., & Morales, C. (2024). Distance to opportunity: Higher education deserts and college enrollment choices. In J. Y. Campbell & K. Husbands Fealing (Eds.), Financing institutions of higher education (preliminary draft). University of Chicago Press. National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financing-institutions-higher-education/distance-opportunity-higher-education-deserts-and-college-enrollment-choices
UTD196	Impact of labor demand on enrollment cohort composition, major choice, and college completion	Hanna Han, Jesse Gregory	One influence on the postsecondary decisions of an individual is labor demand: postsecondary enrollments rise during economic downturns but fall when economic times are good. Students also choose majors that lead to better employment prospects during economic downturns. Missing from past work, however, is how the relationship between labor demand and individual postsecondary decisions has an impact at the aggregate level—specifically, how it shapes the makeup of enrollment cohorts by demographic groups (gender, race/ethnicity, low-income status, non-traditional status) and by ability, both within the institution and within specific majors. This study examines changes in the demographic and ability composition of enrollment cohorts across enrollment years. Furthermore, this study investigates whether labor demand impacts cohort-level outcomes such as persistence rates, major switching rate (i.e. proportion of students who switch majors at least once), and the completion rate and what mechanisms are driving these impacts. The results can help policymakers and practitioners develop strategies and initiatives to reduce barriers to degree completion. Information about demographic and ability compositions can also help them tailor initiatives to specific groups of students, which may increase their effectiveness.
UTD197	Understanding Cost Variation in Texas Community College Completion	Jesse Levin, Adam Hearn	Existing literature highlights the crucial role of community colleges in fueling social and economic progress through the provision of accessible and affordable education (Marcotte et al., 2005; Chetty et al., 2017). However, evidence suggests that disparities in funding and resource allocation may hinder their potential to effectively serve underrepresented student populations (Derochers and Hulbert, 2016; Goldrick-Rab, 2010; Mayfield et al., 2021; Baker and Levin, 2017). Addressing these issues requires a clear understanding of the financial implications of differing student pathways toward achieving common degrees and certificates. This study aims to evaluate these costs, drawing on analytical frameworks first proposed by Morphew and Baker (2007) and later applied by Levin et al. (2022) and Levin, Baker & Lee (2022). We propose to conduct a comprehensive study assessing the costs associated with successful student pathways leading to specific degree and certificate programs at Texas community colleges. Building upon THECB Commissioner-directed research conducted by Levin, Baker & Lee, (2022), we plan to leverage administrative data collected by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and data available at the UT-Dallas Education Research Center (ERC) to create a dataset linking student transcript and financial data, thus providing insights on the resource requirements of distinct degree and certificate program pathways. In addition, we aim to identify potential areas of inequity by exploring the variance in cost by program, student demographics, and institutional characteristics. This research has a significant potential to contribute to policy debates on resource allocation and financial efficiency at Texas community colleges, thereby enhancing their capacity to promote social and economic mobility.
UTD198	Returns to Postsecondary Choices	Jeffrey Smith, Rafeh Qureshi, Heather Little	Post-secondary investment is a crucial way individuals make investments in their future and states make investments in their workforce. It has thus received a large amount of attention in both academia and public policy, but there remain important dimensions in how these returns vary for different people that have been under-explored in the literature and could hold important insights to inform policy decisions. One dimension we intend to investigate is how earnings are affected by the strength of the local labor market of the college individuals attend. We also intend to investigate how the variability in returns to college across people is itself affected by people’s major choice. This work can better inform policymakers about students’ potential earnings and might be useful to policymakers concerned with where to make investments in post-secondary programs and how student debt can be structured in a manner that is more sensitive to the context of students’ post-secondary returns.
UTD199	Long-Run Impacts of Charter Schools	Joshua Angrist, Jack Mountjoy, Parag Pathak	We aim to estimate causal impacts of Texas charter schools on long-run student outcomes. Previous research has explored charter impacts on short-run academic outcomes like test scores, and medium-run educational outcomes like high school graduation and initial college enrollment. The evidence base is thin, however, on whether charter schools affect the longer-run socioeconomic trajectories of their students. We aim to produce new knowledge on this frontier by combining random variation in charter school attendance, generated by admission lotteries we have collected, with administrative data on student outcomes internal and external to the ERC such as educational attainment, earnings, crime, teenage childbearing, household formation, voting, and geographic migration.
UTD200	A Proposed Study of The Geography of Educational Opportunity in Texas	Steven Rivkin, Samuel Mosley, Eric Hanushek, Benjamin Feigenberg	Widely cited recent work identifies school quality as measured by high school completion rates and test scores as an important correlate of intergenerational mobility including the probability that a child from a low-income family is not low income as an adult. Chetty and Hendren (2018a, 2018b) leverage differences in the timing of child moves to estimate the impacts of neighborhoods. We propose to use the Texas administrative data to follow children from elementary school to adulthood and extend that work in several important ways by clarifying the importance of schools as a determinant of intergenerational mobility. The Texas data enable the consideration of different levels of geography, the use of value-added methods to measure the effects of schools on the acquisition of cognitive and behavioral skills, the examination of multiple post-secondary educational, labor market and criminal justice outcomes, and the extension of the neighborhood-mover analytical structure to separate the effects of school quality from other community factors and identify the contribution of teacher quality differences.
UTD201	The Causal Effects of Rapid Demographic Shifts on Student and Teacher Outcomes	Teka Luke Lenahan, Sara Ji	Well-documented large and persistent gaps in student achievement and discipline by race, particularly for Black students, challenge the meritocratic promise of education. Decades of research show teachers systematically struggle to accurately assess Black students’ academic ability (Elhoweris et al., 2005; Gershenson et al., 2016) and behavior (Shi and Zhu, 2022; Barrett et al., 2021), further contributing to these gaps. As the minority student population in Texas public schools continues to grow rapidly (The Texas Demographic Center, 2022), addressing these disparities is increasingly essential. Greater exposure to Black students has demonstrated consistent, sizable effects on reducing teacher bias, leading to improved Black student outcomes (Mo and Conn, 2018; Gershenson et al., 2023; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). This proposed study leverages an unexpected increase in the Black student population from the displacement of predominately Black communities following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We then aim to estimate the effect of greater contact with Black students on student achievement and discipline, teacher retention rates, and teacher efficacy in teaching Black students.
UTD202	The Effect of The Opioid Epidemic on Education: Evidence from Texas	Sofia Shchukina	The opioid epidemic has been one of the most devastating public health crises in the U.S. over the past century, amassing over 640,000 deaths due to drug overdoses alone. In addition to its direct effects on health, addiction, and mortality rates, studies have shown that the opioid epidemic has had important second-order effects on many aspects of society, from children’s living arrangements and child maltreatment to labor market participation and voting patterns. Given its multi-faceted effects on communities, it is plausible to suggest that the opioid epidemic may also have affected educational outcomes for children and young adults. For instance, many children were exposed to the opioid epidemic indirectly through parental or community opioid usage, or directly through neonatal exposure or even direct usage by young adults. Such exposure to opioids likely had an effect on children’s health, home environment, and mental state, which are all important correlates of educational outcomes. The question of how the opioid epidemic affected education is thus an important one, given how profoundly the epidemic affected virtually all areas of the U.S. However, this question has not received much attention in academic literature. Utilizing data on education outcomes from the ERC, this proposed study would be among the first to investigate the effect of the opioid epidemic on educational outcomes at the student level, considering both academic and behavioral outcomes. To do so, I propose to utilize exogenous differences in the volumes of opioids dispensed near schools, and analyze the differences in student outcomes between schools located in areas with high volumes of opioid distribution versus low volumes of opioid distribution. Results can further inform the efficient allocation of counseling and mental health resources across schools, as well as providing useful context about the specific challenges posed by the opioid epidemic for educators and counselors who interact with and support students.
UTD203	College Enrollment Among Justice-Involved Texans	Holly Heard, Luis Soberon	A long history of research has consistently shown that education in prison is positively correlated with better post-incarceration outcomes, generally through lower recidivism and better employment outcomes. Unfortunately, there is a severe lack of data and basic information surrounding postsecondary education in Texas prisons from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). This systemic lack of information stands in contrast to the systemic opportunities to expand access to postsecondary education in Texas prisons, through the recent expansion of Second Chance Pell Grants for inmates and recent changes to community college finance system that rewards institutions that educate disadvantaged and adult students, for which prison inmates are likely to qualify. In response to these historic opportunities and the lack of public information on incarcerated higher education enrollment, this study will conduct a descriptive analysis of higher education enrollment by prison inmates, a cohort analysis among those enrolled while incarcerated to predict post-incarceration education and workforce outcomes while controlling for pre-incarceration characteristics, and a funding analysis of recent funding streams that may impact future higher education enrollment among inmates. Results will provide a basic landscape of educational opportunities in prison that would benefit researchers, policymakers, and leaders of higher education institutions.
UTD205	College and Career Access and Its Impacts on Postsecondary and Workforce Outcomes	Holly Heard, Mary Lynn Pruneda	This research effort aims to provide a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of Texas public high school programs and course offerings related to college, career, and military readiness. We will investigate the effectiveness of current high school coursework in preparing students for postsecondary education and careers. Part 1 of the study consists of a landscape analysis of college and career-focused coursework offered in Texas public high schools. Part 2 is a longitudinal analysis looking at student 9th grade cohorts, their high school academic experience, and subsequent outcomes in postsecondary and beyond. Part 3 will explore current college and career preparation taking place in public middle schools. The project aims to identify areas for improvement in course and program offerings to ensure all students graduate with the skills and credentials needed for success in college or the workforce.
UTD206	The Post-Secondary Returns to AP and Dual Credit Coursework	Vansa Shewakramani Hanson	In the College For All age, there is little dispute that taking rigorous coursework in high school will increase the likelihood that students will be more likely to both enroll in and succeed in college (Klopfenstein & Thomas 2009; Roderick, Nagaoka, & Coca 2009). Rigorous coursework is generally conceptualized as either advanced placement or dual credit coursework, but due to data limitations and non-random selection into either course-taking regime, we are unable to speak to the causality of participating in these types of courses. Furthermore, the returns are only framed within the context of college. The present study takes advantage of statewide data linking K-12 student-level data with postsecondary and labor market outcomes, enabling us to assess the returns of both advanced placement and dual credit coursework for students regardless of whether they enroll in college. Furthermore, with access to student-level course-taking data, we will be able to differentiate between academic- versus CTE- dual credit coursework. Given the rising costs of college and inequality in the perceived opportunity to attend college, it is particularly important that we understand the postsecondary returns of advanced coursework for students either enrolling in two-year programs or entering the labor market full-time immediately after high school graduation. These findings will be particularly salient for guidance counselors, students, and their families since the passing of House Bill 5.
UTD207	The Impact of College Double Majors on Labor Market Outcomes and Labor Market Resiliency through Economic Instability	Greg Argueta, Trey Miller	Research examining the link between double majoring behavior and economic returns is sparse, but some national studies have indicated that approximately twenty to twenty-five percent of undergraduates in United States (US) choose to double major. Labor market benefits have been shown within double major combinations that include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and business majors. Combination of art and social science majors have not shown labor market benefits, and art/social science combinations with STEM or business majors did not show benefits above single STEM or business majors. Similar work utilizing different survey data estimated an initial earning penalty for double majoring that disappeared four years after graduation, although double majoring students were more likely to be employed. Longitudinal administrative data from the Education Research Center (ERC) and the large population of Texas students will bring clarity to several current gaps in the literature. This research will illuminate trends in double majoring behavior, major combinations, student characteristics, and how these behaviors impact student debt levels and time to degree. ERC data will improve estimate viability surrounding labor market outcomes across major combinations. In addition, the data will contribute to understanding labor market resiliency that may add value to double majors through the rarely considered lens of employment risk mitigation. Addressing these questions will inform Texas and higher education institutional policies by providing quantitative evidence of this potentially significant part of Texas’ undergraduate population.
UTD208	Impacts of Funding School Districts for College and Career Outcomes	Clara Kyung, Haruka Uchida	Scholars and policymakers continue to debate when and how to provide incentives for educators. Policy attention has begun to shift towards accountability systems that directly target student outcomes of import, such as educational attainment or labor market preparedness. However, due to the newness of these types of incentives, little is known about their efficacy. We propose to use Texas’ College, Career, or Military Readiness (CCMR) Outcomes Bonus (OB) policy, which allocates additional state funding to school districts based on graduates’ outcomes, to understand how outcomes-based incentives affect school districts, schools, and students. Our methodology disentangles the impact of the incentives created by this policy from the impact of additional funding awarded from the policy. The ERC data are well-suited for this analysis, as they link pre-high school records with eventual CCMR outcomes, allowing us to understand how students at similar starting points fared differently due to the implementation of the policy. Moreover, the ERC data allow us to study longer-term impacts of the CCMR OB policy on college applications, college admissions, college graduation, and employment-related outcomes such as later-life earnings.
UTD209	Economic Outcomes of Community College Students in Texas	David Mahan, Emily Sharma, Dillon Lu, Sayeeda Jamilah, McKenna Griffin, Navi Dhaliwal	This proposed project will compile descriptive data on the wage outcomes of enrollees in community college in Texas, which serve diverse learner populations with varying amounts of employment experience. The main objective is to describe, compare, and report statistics summarizing these students’ earnings trajectories over time and disentangle how outcomes associated with community college enrollment vary with age and experience among groups who cannot be tracked without administrative records, including part-time students, students pursuing transfer pathways, and adult learners. We also seek to explore whether and how earnings vary longitudinally up to ten years after enrollment by students’ demographic, institutional, and program/field of study characteristics. Beyond reporting earnings, we will consider multiple measures of economic mobility when describing students’ outcomes, including wage thresholds (living wages), debt-to-earnings ratios, and comparisons to pre-college earnings (for students with prior labor market experience) or parental income (for students who complete financial aid applications as dependents). By establishing a historical baseline of community college enrollees’ economic outcomes—one disaggregated by learner profile and inclusive of nontraditional students—the study will enrich our understanding of students’ heterogeneous pathways through the Texas postsecondary ecosystem and produce actionable findings for public two-year colleges like Dallas College and their transfer partners.
UTD210	The Impacts of School Neighborhoods on the Academic and Labor Market Outcomes of Students with Disabilities	Pyung Kim	Extensive research shows that neighborhood characteristics impact children’s educational achievements and income prospects. However, less attention has been given to how neighborhoods affect the academic and labor market outcomes of students with disabilities. This study aims to: (1) investigate how school neighborhoods impact the academic and labor market outcomes of students with disabilities, and (2) analyze how school neighborhoods moderate the impacts of Texas Education Code, §7.028 on the academic and labor market outcomes of students with disabilities. Utilizing publicly available geospatial data and the Education Research Center (ERC) data, this study examines variables such as access to disability services, segregation, school quality, social capital, and family structure at the census tract level. The research will identify key neighborhood features that enhance the academic and labor outcomes for students with disabilities and assess the extent to which these features support efforts to mainstream students. The findings from this study are intended to support the development of targeted and localized educational policies in Texas, thereby improving support systems for students with disabilities.
UTD211	School Quality and Parental Responsiveness in School Choice	Chirag Yadav, Javaeria Qureshi	The leading school reform policy in the United States has centered around strengthening the accountability of schools. The movement led by Texas and many states on test-based accountability ratings was reinforced at the federal level with the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. School ratings, which are a key part of the accountability system, are aimed at showcasing school quality and incentivizing competition among schools to improve school choice. Using student-level data from Texas schools and leveraging their categorical rating system, this study proposes to investigate the causal impact of school rating on parental responsiveness as reflected by entry and exit of students, the heterogeneity in these responses, and the long-term impact of these school choice responses.