COVID-19 has presented unprecedented challenges to schools, leaving principals to lead rapid organizational change with limited guidance or support. Drawing on interviews from a larger, national study of principals at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyzed the experiences of 20 principals in four large, urban school districts--Boston,…

Background: While chronic absenteeism hurts all students, one particularly vulnerable group, students with disabilities (SWDs), has received little attention in research or policy. Particularly troubling is the dearth of research into the patterns of absences for SWDs and GENs who attend school together in urban school systems, given relatively…

There is growing interest in improving and assessing teachers' use of culturally responsive practices (CRP) in the classroom, yet relatively few research-based approaches exist to address these measurement gaps. This article presents findings on the psychometric properties of a newly developed classroom observation measure of CRP, called the CARES…

While school choice has been well studied, there is little existing research exploring the role of transportation, in general, and school buses, in particular, to school choice decisions. We examine the effect of school buses on school choice decisions using data on kindergarten students and their eligibility for transportation assistance in New…

This article explores inequity in access to and provision of bus service across student sociodemographic groups and examines possible barriers to bus access and utilization. To so do, we use administrative data on New York City K-6 public school students from 2011-2017, including information on race/ethnicity, poverty status, distance from home to…

We use quantile treatment effects estimation to examine the consequences of the random-assignment New York City School Choice Scholarship Program (NYCSCSP) across the distribution of student achievement. Our analyses suggest that the program had negligible and statistically insignificant effects across the skill distribution. In addition to…

Nationwide, graduation rates at community colleges are discouragingly low. This randomized experiment provides evidence that graduation rates can be increased dramatically. The City University of New York's (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is a comprehensive, integrated, 3-year program that has an estimated 18 percentage point…

The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), developed by the City University of New York (CUNY), is an uncommonly comprehensive and long-term program designed to address low graduation rates among community college students. MDRC has been studying the effects of ASAP on low-income students with developmental (remedial) education needs at…

Understanding teachers' stress is of critical importance to address the challenges in today's educational climate. Growing numbers of teachers are reporting high levels of occupational stress, and high levels of teacher turnover are having a negative impact on education quality. Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers)…