Federal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. In this working paper, Professor Matthew Kraft and co-authors examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting their staggered implementation across states.

Kiana Harriel, a Rhode Island native, is a Master of Arts in Teaching student in Secondary Social Studies Education. She has a BA in Anthropology with a Minor in Education from Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Sara Mickelson graduated from Brown's Urban Education Policy master's program in 2012 and is the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Early Childhood Education Department.

A study co-authored by Professor Lindsay Page shows that Asian American students — especially South Asian applicants — are less likely to attend Ivy League and other prestigious institutions compared to white students despite having similar academic and extracurricular credentials.

In this brief, Brown scholars highlight data-driven opportunities that build on the Providence Public School District's existing teacher staffing strategies, particularly around recruitment practices, and have identified where targeted retention efforts could be most beneficial.

Ramona Santos Torres, a current Urban Education Policy master's student at Brown, is the Executive Director and one of the Co-founders of Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE). PLEE is a parent-led, grassroots organization with a mission to fight for parent voice in education decision-making, and for access to a high-quality public school option for all children of color.

A new paper from Professor Lindsay Page, along with co-authors Danielle Lowry, Aizat Nurshatayeva, and Jennifer Iriti, contributes to the literature on college financial aid and aid displacement by investigating whether the aid packaging practices of postsecondary institutions are responsive to the generosity of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship.

This working paper by Matthew A. Kraft and Sarah Novicoff examines the fundamental and complex role that time plays in the learning process, revealing how large differences in the length of the school day and year across public schools are an underappreciated dimension of educational inequality in the United States.

At a recent event hosted by the Boston Foundation, researchers from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University joined several educational leaders to explore the changing demographics and critical resources required to support immigrant newcomers to Massachusetts high schools.

Britt Ruiz graduated from Brown's Master of Arts in Teaching program in 2023 and teaches U.S. History and AP U.S. Government at Paul Cuffee School in Providence, RI.

Christien Laible is from Norwalk, CT, and is a current Urban Education Policy master's student at Brown. He earned his Bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies with a minor in Human Development from Colby College.

The Education Department at Brown University invites applications for a one-year visiting Assistant Professor in urban education policy with expertise in race and politics to begin August 2024.

Cuauhtemoc Arizpe comes from the City of San Antonio and is a current MAT student specializing in secondary mathematics education. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Public Policy from Brown University with a primary focus on education policy.

A new policy briefing from the White House cites research by Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education. On January 17, the Biden-Harris Administration announced its Improving Student Achievement Agenda for 2024, which is focused on proven strategies that will accelerate academic performance for every child in school. The administration urges States, districts, and schools to provide high-dosage tutoring and incorporates Kraft's and Grace Falken's design and implementation principles into their recommendation.

A new publication by Professor David Rangel, Department of Education, and Professor Emily Rauscher, Department of Sociology, examines the complex relationship between infant health, parental education, and race and ethnicity.

Professor Lindsay Page is working in partnership with the NISS and Georgia State University to study how chatbots can improve student outcomes in foundational college math and English courses.

Professors Matthew Kraft, John Papay, and Lindsay Page have been recognized by Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Education Week blogger, as being among the nation's 200 most impactful university-based scholars in education policy in 2023.

Kate Donohue graduated from Brown's Master of Arts in Urban Education Policy program in 2018 and is a Senior Project Manager at Annenberg Institute at Brown University where she studies teacher pipelines and human capital processes.

The paper, “New Schools and New Classmates: The Disruption and Peer Group Effects of School Reassignment,” was selected as one of two 2022 Best Paper winners for Economics of Education Review. Co-authored with David Liebowitz, Rodney Hughes, Matt Lenard, and Darryl Hill, the paper focuses on the impacts of the school reassignment policy in Wake County, North Carolina.

Nicole Mathis graduated from Brown's Master of Arts in Teaching program in 1996 and is an Assistant Principal at Classical High School in Providence, RI. 

The Swearer Center provides Community-Based Learning and Research (CBLR) Course Mini-Grants to instructors of undergraduate and graduate courses at Brown, in order to support the implementation of high-impact community-engaged learning experiences.

The Board of Overseers of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University established the permanent annual scholarship in 2012 for an Urban Education Policy masters student who most epitomizes the former Brown University president’s commitment to educational equity and social justice.

The move away from exit exams has a lot to do with a growing sense that, while standardized tests measure student learning, they don’t capture the full range of student abilities, said John Papay, an associate professor of education at Brown University who studies high-stakes testing.

New research from the Annenberg Institute offers a case study of how one state, Massachusetts, has fared in addressing the needs of a unique English-learner population and what lessons other states can learn.

In his latest column for Kappan, Professor Jonathan Collins explains that superintendent turnover is one of the biggest problems plaguing urban school districts.

A team of Annenberg Institute researchers, including Professor John Papay, has released a report on the demographic characteristics and educational outcomes of high school newcomers, defined as English learners (ELs) in their first 12 months of schooling in the United States.

“Our work shows that there is good evidence that the MCAS is measuring the academic skills of students,” said John Papay, associate professor of education and economics at Brown University and director of the Annenberg Institute. If MCAS scores simply reflected “teaching to the test, we wouldn’t see the same relationship with long-term outcomes that we do,” the Brown economist noted.

“We ask the K-12 school system to do lots of things,” said John Papay, an associate professor at Brown University who studies high-stakes testing. “One of the questions is ‘How do we have requirements ensure students leave high school ready to live productive lives?’”

A psychologist and an economist walk into a debate … Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Matthew A. Kraft, associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, discuss looping—staying with the same teacher for multiple years.

Ellie Jurmann is a current senior in Brown's Combined Baccalaureate/Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. After completing her undergraduate degree in 2024, she will enroll in the MAT program as a member of the mathematics cohort.

Adam Jackson is from Carlisle, PA, and is a current student in our MAT-Science Education program. He has a B.A. in Physics from Wesleyan University.

In an increasingly competitive academic environment, high school students often turn to data to inform their college application decisions. Professor Lindsay Page and others show that the adoption of one popular tool to view historical admissions data, Naviance, inadvertently dissuaded many high-achieving high school students from applying to colleges for which they were competitive.

In July, Professor Tricia Kelly traveled to Guatemala with educators and pre-service teachers to engage with local educators, youth, and families, and to exchange ideas and understanding of Guatemalan and U.S. educational systems and practices. Here she reflects on the experience.

In this chapter, Professor Lindsay Page and co-authors present the economic rationale for financial aid, a summary of how aid works in the US context, and common methodological challenges in the study of financial aid.

Three grads of Brown’s master’s program in urban education policy are working to help Providence families get their kids to college. One, Madalyn Ciampi ’17 AM, helped launch the nonprofit Providence Promise six years ago and is the organization’s executive director. Two others joined her: Rachel Palumbo ’21 AM, development manager, and Chandana Srinivas ’21 AM, family engagement director.

A team of researchers, including Professor John Papay, has released a new report on the challenges and opportunities that Rhode Island's education system faces as the state emerges from the pandemic. As a valuable resource for ongoing efforts to enhance public education across the state, the report underscores the importance of collective action in ensuring a brighter future for Rhode Island's students.

In August, LeBron James' I Promise school in Ohio came under scrutiny for its low test scores. District politics and systems may be ruining LeBron’s initiative, writes Professor Jonathan Collins.

On this episode of "Trending Globally" Dan Richards talks with Professor Jonathan Collins about participatory budgeting — where it came from, what it looks like on the ground, and how it might help strengthen our democracy, one community at a time.

Danielle Emerson '23 is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. She has a B.A. in Education Studies and a B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. She writes fiction, poetry, plays, and creative essays, drawing on personal narratives and places of home—wherever that may be.

Despite documented benefits to college completion, more than a third of students who initially enroll in college do not ultimately earn a credential. A paper co-authored by Professor Lindsay Page reports on the effect of a text-based chatbot with artificial intelligence (AI) capability on college students' academic task navigation in introductory courses.

Professor Matthew A. Kraft and co-authors in this paper document a largely unrecognized pathway through which schools promote human capital development – by fostering informal mentoring relationships between students and their teachers, counselors, and coaches.

Professor Yoko Yamamoto and co-author, Naoko Yabuta, published a book chapter in "Contemporary Perspectives on Research on Immigration in Early Childhood Education." In addition to demonstrating cultural beliefs and educational practices that bring challenges to immigrant students, Yamamoto and Yabuta examined a wealth of research on "empowering schools" that bring human rights education and culturally responsive practices in Japan.

Professor Yoko Yamamoto has authored a chapter "Education, Cultural Capital, and Social Class Reproduction" published in Sustainability, Diversity, and Equality: Key Challenges for Japan. The chapter aims to present students’ educational opportunities and experiences related to family socioeconomic status (SES) in Japan.

A new article by Professor Andrea Flores explores how immigrant-origin Latinx youth in Nashville, Tennessee, who are active community volunteers, linked volunteering to moral personhood and their claims to national membership.

Professor Snyder, a valued teacher in Brown's Department of Education, has been promoted to Senior Lecturer.