New working paper alert! Our team developed a web crawler to study the accessibility of information related to special education on school district websites in four states (MA, RI, IN, and FL).
Read the full WP here: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1447
And check out Cam's thread below for more detail!
🚨New working paper alert! 🚨
The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective?
Today we released a working paper suggesting it is.
"Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States"
Let me explain...
Lunch at #AEFP2026 with not one, not two, but THREE of my star former students! @jo-r-king.bsky.social @emmajlag.bsky.social & Brittany Lowe
Truly an honor to play a small role in their journeys to becoming stellar researchers & wonderful humans 🥹
GRANDMENTOR
Dig into Arizona LEGO spending with this data vis! And yes, every item below was purchased with taxpayer $ - and entirely allowed by the program.
Excited to release this policy brief exploring the college enrollment impacts of Massachusetts' recent dramatic expansions of free community college.
TLDR: The clear messaging and simple design of MassReconnect & MassEducate sparked substantial increases in community college enrollment.
blizzard = wfh = cat on keyboard = no work accomplished
"In St. Paul, at least one-fourth of students from Spanish-speaking homes have missed every day of school since Dec. 12."
Paddington in Carol (2015)
I Photoshop Paddington into a movie, TV show, or pop culture until I forget: Day 1729
Trump Admin. Pulls Student Mental Health Grants, Restores Them a Day Later
www.edweek.org/leadership/t...
Anyways. Small acts of resistance and all.
Prison Book Program is purely volunteer run and they fulfill nearly 20,000 requests each year, amounting to tens of thousands of books. Donate your time and resources if you're in the Boston area!
prisonbookprogram.org
Each request would be subject to restrictions implemented by the facility. One of the most common that I saw was "no calendars" or "no composition books" which seemed odd.
Turns out, facilities sold these items at commissary-- why let inmates have access to them for free?
Prison libraries don't necessarily have a wide selection. I remember fulfilling a range of requests-- some folks wanted to learn about solar cells, others wanted to learn how to write poetry. Some wanted to read comics.
Most consistently, folks wanted access to legal literature or blank journals.
Even if prisons do have libraries, they often did not have a librarian. If they did have a librarian, the library may be open for less than an hour a week. If the prison is locked down, inmates couldn't access the library.
When inmates have their OWN books, they can keep them in their cells.
In addition to fulfilling book requests, we would often get replies from inmates where, in addition to amazing poetry and drawings, they would detail how important the Prison Book Program was for them. They would also describe the obstacles in accessing books *within* the prison system.
I volunteered with Prison Book Program who, until now, has provided books to incarcerated folks free of charge in all 50 states.
AR came up at the last volunteer session and it seems like this is going into place under the guise of addressing contraband (lol)
A quick thread.
prisonbookprogram.org
This new paper shows that shortening the length of parole supervision from 12 months to 6 months reduced prison readmissions within a year by ~45%, driven by reductions in technical revocations. This decrease in incarceration was achieved with no increase in new crime. ⬇️ www.nber.org/papers/w34663
They will murder unarmed citizens and then accuse them of wrongdoing. Zero sense of accountability or shame.
We @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social are hiring a director for our Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Buildling Lab (PARABL), to help education system leaders build research roadmaps to effect change in a particular area.
More info here:
wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/u...
Higher Education and Political Polarization Paper Session Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST) Philadelphia Convention Center, 204-C Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Chair: Joshua Goodman, Boston University
Politics, Institutional Choices, and Student Outcomes in Education Paper Session Monday, Jan. 5, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST) Philadelphia Convention Center, 203-A Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Chair: Amalia Miller, University of Virginia
I’m in Philly for #ASSA2026! I’ll be discussing and presenting, respectively, in these two sessions👇
Lots of great work will be shared in both, so come by if you’re around!
what a bar
you’re obsessed!!!
Me, currently:
Grades are in, which means I’m officially done with the first semester on the tenure track 🤩
Doodle courtesy of a student’s final exam:
So happy that this paper has (finally) found a great home!
It started as Jo’s @miamiecon.bsky.social master’s thesis when I was a first year AP and has been a joy to work on with them and Austin these past few years.
See below for a 🧵 on our results!
A lesson in persistence fr
Taken together, these results suggest that broader economic conditions play a significant role in how student behavior is addressed in schools. They also highlight the role that social safety net policy plays in ensuring positive educational experiences for youth-- schools can't do it alone!
We further show that this moderating effect is unique to UI– the generosity of other social safety net programs such as TANF, EITC, SSI, and SNAP do not explain this phenomenon, nor do layoff-induced changes in school characteristics/composition.
Table of regression coefficients for each subsample.
Disaggregating these results by subgroup reveals that these impacts are driven by Black students and male students, especially those Black students in predominantly White schools and in schools with a high baseline reliance on suspension.