Working papers

Academic version - Working paper (with Samuel Nitkin)

Summary version - Policy brief

Abstract - Private tutoring chains like Kumon and Sylvan have expanded rapidly in recent decades. Combining data on business locations, household spending, and district test scores, we study who uses these centers and how they affect academic skills. Nearly half of users are from the top income decile, with Asian and White households five and two times as likely to purchase tutoring as Black and Hispanic households. A staggered differences-in-differences design shows the opening of a district's first chain center raises district-wide math and reading scores, at a lower cost than public spending typically producing similar gains. Math effects are driven by White and Asian students, so that center entry widens racial achievement gaps, though less so in more racially integrated districts. These private investments help their users, deepen educational inequality, and shape outcomes by which state accountability systems and families judge schools.

Academic version - Working paper (with Stephanie Coffey, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel, Marcus Winters, and Yunee Yoon)

Summary version - Policy brief

Media highlights - Chalkbeat

Academic version - NBER working paper (with Joseph Winkelmann)

Abstract - Declining U.S. college enrollments over the past 15 years have triggered questions about the health of the postsecondary sector. Using institution-level data, we make four points. First, such declines are driven not by the four-year sector but by two-year community colleges, which have apparently shrunk by over 30% since the peak of the Great Recession. Second, over one-third of this apparent decline is an artifact of some community colleges being reclassified as offering four-year degrees. Third, pre-Great Recession data shows a 1 percentage point increase in the local unemployment rate increases first-time community college enrollment by 2 percent, suggesting many students are on the margin between community college and job opportunities. For-profit college enrollments are similarly countercyclical, while public and private four-year college enrollments appear acyclical. Our estimates suggest that strengthening labor markets explain about 60% of the post-Great Recession decline in first-time community college enrollment. Fourth, students whose enrollment decisions are most sensitive to labor market conditions appear unlikely to have completed a degree. Though declining community college enrollments are a challenge for postsecondary institutions, it is less clear whether they signal a problem for students on the margin of enrollment.

Media highlights - Chalkbeat, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, Education Next (podcast)

Academic version - NBER Working Paper 20221

Summary version - Education Next

Media highlights - Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Slate, The Atlantic, Vox, Weather Channel, WGBH, Brian Lehrer, WBUR, WNYC, Chalkbeat