Thomas S Dee
Biographic Data
| ID | 1085819 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas S Dee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas S |
| FAMILY NAME | Dee |
| SIGNATURE | DEE T S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swarthmore College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7524-768X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 199 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Accelerating Opportunity
The pivotal role of algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their peers, and how it is taught. This random-assignment partnership study examined an innovative district-level reform—the Algebra I Initiative—that placed ninth grade students with prior math scores below grade level into Algebra I classes coupled with teacher training instead of a…
Ahead of the Game? Course-Taking Patterns Under a Math Pathways Reform
A controversial, equity-focused mathematics reform in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) featured delaying Algebra I until ninth grade for all students. This study examines student-level longitudinal data on mathematics course-taking across successive cohorts of SFUSD students who spanned the reform’s implementation. We observe large changes in ninth and 10th grades (e.g., delaying Algebra I and geometry). Participation in Advanced…
No one-size-fits-all solution to chronic absenteeism
As chronic absenteeism fails to ease from post-pandemic high levels, schools can turn to many reforms to promote school attendance. Commonly recommended strategies involve increasingly targeted and intensive tiers of interventions. Researcher Thomas S. Dee writes that the research base of many of these interventions is not strong. Schools facing financial and capacity restraints may have difficulty putting interventions in place. Dee suggests tha…
Where the Kids Went
Over the first two full school years under the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 enrollment in public schools fell dramatically (i.e., by more than 1.2 million students) with losses concentrated among the youngest students. Currently, little is known about where these students went and what learning environments they are experiencing. In this research note, I present leading descriptive evidence on this question by combining public-school enrollment data w…
The Revealed Preferences for School Reopening
Before the 2020–2021 school year, policymakers and parents confronted the uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the United States chose remote-only instruction, and enrollment fell dramatically (i.e., a loss 1.1 million K–12 students). We examine the impact of these choices on public-school enrollment us…
Mobile Phones, Civic Engagement, and School Performance in Pakistan
Bias in online classes
My Brother's Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports
The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male …
Patterns in the Pandemic Decline of Public School Enrollment
Early evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced public school enrollment in many states. However, little is known about the underlying patterns of these declines. Using new district-level data from Massachusetts, we find that these declines were concentrated in traditional districts while charter, virtual, and vocational districts increased their enrollment. Though the enrollment declines in traditional districts were widespre…
Vanished Classmates
For over a decade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has formed partnerships allowing local police to enforce immigration law by identifying and arresting undocumented residents. Prior studies, using survey data with self-reported immigrant and citizenship status, provide mixed evidence on their demographic impact. This study presents new evidence based on Hispanic public school enrollment. We find local ICE partnerships reduce the number…
The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education
In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement. However, we know little about whether these accountability reforms operate as theorized. This study provides…
The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance
An extensive theoretical and qualitative literature stresses the promise of instructional practices and content aligned with minority students’ experiences. Ethnic studies courses provide an example of such “culturally relevant pedagogy” (CRP). Despite theoretical support, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is limited. We estimate the causal effects of an ethnic studies curriculum, using a “fuzzy” regression discontinuity…
Persistence Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs)
Using a unique dataset of 44 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this article examines critical patterns of enrollment, engagement, persistence, and completion among students in online higher education. By leveraging fixed-effects specifications based on over 2.1 million student observations across more than 2,900 lectures, we analyzed engagement, persistence, and completion rates at the student, lecture, and course levels. We found compelling a…
Incentives, Selection, and Teacher Performance
Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance-based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher-evaluation syst…
The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state‐level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment…
Forsaking All Others? the Effects of Same‐Sex Partnership Laws on Risky Sex
One conjectured benefit of a marriage-like legal status for same-sex couples is a reduction in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STI). In this study, I discuss how such a policy might influence risky sexual behaviour and STI rates. I also present reduced-form empirical evidence on whether same-sex partnership laws have reduced STI rates, using country-level panel data from Europe. The results suggest that these laws led to statist…
Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement
Technology and Voter Intent
Conventional evaluations of voting systems focus on ballots for which no vote can be recorded (that is, “residual” votes). However, recorded votes that misrepresent voter intent are another potentially important, but less easily measured, source of error. I present evidence that a nontrivial number of voters in the recent California recall election mistakenly voted for one of the four candidates positioned next to the two major candidates on the …
A Teacher Like Me
Are there civic returns to education?
Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment
Recommendations for the aggressive recruitment of minority teachers are based on hypothesized role-model effects for minority students as well as evidence of racial biases among non-minority teachers. However, prior empirical studies have found little or no association between exposure to an own-race teacher and student achievement. This paper presents new evidence on this question by examining the test score data from Tennessee’s Project STAR cl…
Does merit pay reward good teachers? Evidence from a randomized experiment
A common criticism of merit‐pay plans is that they fail to systematically target rewards to the most effective teachers. This study presents new evidence on this issue by evaluating data from Tennessee's Career Ladder Evaluation System and the Project STAR class‐size experiment. Because the students and teachers participating in the experiment were randomly assigned, inferences about the relative quality of teachers certified by the career ladder…
Alcohol abuse and economic conditions
This study presents novel evidence on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and patterns of alcohol consumption. Prior research has suggested that alcohol abuse varies procyclically, implying that income effects dominate any drinking patterns related to the opportunity cost of time or the psychological stress of recessions. However, those inferences have been based either on aggregate measures of consumption volume or possibly confoun…
Does setting limits save lives? The case of 0.08 BAC laws
Nineteen states have established laws that make it illegal per se to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08. The controversy over extending this stricter definition throughout the nation has focused largely on whether the state laws have been effective at saving lives. Prior evidence on this question has been mixed as well as criticized on several methodological grounds. This study presents novel, panel-based evaluations of 0.08 B…
Data Watch
One reason for the recent proliferation of empirical studies addressing the role of education in promoting individual and social welfare has been the emergence of high-quality, micro-level data on education. In this paper, we discuss three broad types of data sets: data on educational institutions, data on educational outcomes at the individual level, and data sets from school reforms and experiments. In each section, we summarize some of the lea…
The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state‐level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment…
The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance
An extensive theoretical and qualitative literature stresses the promise of instructional practices and content aligned with minority students’ experiences. Ethnic studies courses provide an example of such “culturally relevant pedagogy” (CRP). Despite theoretical support, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is limited. We estimate the causal effects of an ethnic studies curriculum, using a “fuzzy” regression discontinuity…
Incentives, Selection, and Teacher Performance
Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance-based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher-evaluation syst…
Vanished Classmates
For over a decade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has formed partnerships allowing local police to enforce immigration law by identifying and arresting undocumented residents. Prior studies, using survey data with self-reported immigrant and citizenship status, provide mixed evidence on their demographic impact. This study presents new evidence based on Hispanic public school enrollment. We find local ICE partnerships reduce the number…
Forsaking All Others? the Effects of Same‐Sex Partnership Laws on Risky Sex
One conjectured benefit of a marriage-like legal status for same-sex couples is a reduction in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STI). In this study, I discuss how such a policy might influence risky sexual behaviour and STI rates. I also present reduced-form empirical evidence on whether same-sex partnership laws have reduced STI rates, using country-level panel data from Europe. The results suggest that these laws led to statist…
The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education
In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement. However, we know little about whether these accountability reforms operate as theorized. This study provides…
Patterns in the Pandemic Decline of Public School Enrollment
Early evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced public school enrollment in many states. However, little is known about the underlying patterns of these declines. Using new district-level data from Massachusetts, we find that these declines were concentrated in traditional districts while charter, virtual, and vocational districts increased their enrollment. Though the enrollment declines in traditional districts were widespre…
Does merit pay reward good teachers? Evidence from a randomized experiment
A common criticism of merit‐pay plans is that they fail to systematically target rewards to the most effective teachers. This study presents new evidence on this issue by evaluating data from Tennessee's Career Ladder Evaluation System and the Project STAR class‐size experiment. Because the students and teachers participating in the experiment were randomly assigned, inferences about the relative quality of teachers certified by the career ladder…
Persistence Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs)
Using a unique dataset of 44 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this article examines critical patterns of enrollment, engagement, persistence, and completion among students in online higher education. By leveraging fixed-effects specifications based on over 2.1 million student observations across more than 2,900 lectures, we analyzed engagement, persistence, and completion rates at the student, lecture, and course levels. We found compelling a…
My Brother's Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports
The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male …
Ahead of the Game? Course-Taking Patterns Under a Math Pathways Reform
A controversial, equity-focused mathematics reform in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) featured delaying Algebra I until ninth grade for all students. This study examines student-level longitudinal data on mathematics course-taking across successive cohorts of SFUSD students who spanned the reform’s implementation. We observe large changes in ninth and 10th grades (e.g., delaying Algebra I and geometry). Participation in Advanced…
Data Watch
One reason for the recent proliferation of empirical studies addressing the role of education in promoting individual and social welfare has been the emergence of high-quality, micro-level data on education. In this paper, we discuss three broad types of data sets: data on educational institutions, data on educational outcomes at the individual level, and data sets from school reforms and experiments. In each section, we summarize some of the lea…
Alcohol abuse and economic conditions
This study presents novel evidence on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and patterns of alcohol consumption. Prior research has suggested that alcohol abuse varies procyclically, implying that income effects dominate any drinking patterns related to the opportunity cost of time or the psychological stress of recessions. However, those inferences have been based either on aggregate measures of consumption volume or possibly confoun…
Does setting limits save lives? The case of 0.08 BAC laws
Nineteen states have established laws that make it illegal per se to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08. The controversy over extending this stricter definition throughout the nation has focused largely on whether the state laws have been effective at saving lives. Prior evidence on this question has been mixed as well as criticized on several methodological grounds. This study presents novel, panel-based evaluations of 0.08 B…
Are there civic returns to education?
Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment
Recommendations for the aggressive recruitment of minority teachers are based on hypothesized role-model effects for minority students as well as evidence of racial biases among non-minority teachers. However, prior empirical studies have found little or no association between exposure to an own-race teacher and student achievement. This paper presents new evidence on this question by examining the test score data from Tennessee’s Project STAR cl…
Does merit pay reward good teachers? Evidence from a randomized experiment
A common criticism of merit‐pay plans is that they fail to systematically target rewards to the most effective teachers. This study presents new evidence on this issue by evaluating data from Tennessee's Career Ladder Evaluation System and the Project STAR class‐size experiment. Because the students and teachers participating in the experiment were randomly assigned, inferences about the relative quality of teachers certified by the career ladder…
A Teacher Like Me
Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement
Technology and Voter Intent
Conventional evaluations of voting systems focus on ballots for which no vote can be recorded (that is, “residual” votes). However, recorded votes that misrepresent voter intent are another potentially important, but less easily measured, source of error. I present evidence that a nontrivial number of voters in the recent California recall election mistakenly voted for one of the four candidates positioned next to the two major candidates on the …
Forsaking All Others? the Effects of Same‐Sex Partnership Laws on Risky Sex
One conjectured benefit of a marriage-like legal status for same-sex couples is a reduction in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STI). In this study, I discuss how such a policy might influence risky sexual behaviour and STI rates. I also present reduced-form empirical evidence on whether same-sex partnership laws have reduced STI rates, using country-level panel data from Europe. The results suggest that these laws led to statist…
The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state‐level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment…
Incentives, Selection, and Teacher Performance
Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance-based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher-evaluation syst…
Persistence Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs)
Using a unique dataset of 44 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), this article examines critical patterns of enrollment, engagement, persistence, and completion among students in online higher education. By leveraging fixed-effects specifications based on over 2.1 million student observations across more than 2,900 lectures, we analyzed engagement, persistence, and completion rates at the student, lecture, and course levels. We found compelling a…
The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance
An extensive theoretical and qualitative literature stresses the promise of instructional practices and content aligned with minority students’ experiences. Ethnic studies courses provide an example of such “culturally relevant pedagogy” (CRP). Despite theoretical support, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is limited. We estimate the causal effects of an ethnic studies curriculum, using a “fuzzy” regression discontinuity…
The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education
In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information about program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement. However, we know little about whether these accountability reforms operate as theorized. This study provides…
Vanished Classmates
For over a decade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has formed partnerships allowing local police to enforce immigration law by identifying and arresting undocumented residents. Prior studies, using survey data with self-reported immigrant and citizenship status, provide mixed evidence on their demographic impact. This study presents new evidence based on Hispanic public school enrollment. We find local ICE partnerships reduce the number…
My Brother's Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports
The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male …
Patterns in the Pandemic Decline of Public School Enrollment
Early evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced public school enrollment in many states. However, little is known about the underlying patterns of these declines. Using new district-level data from Massachusetts, we find that these declines were concentrated in traditional districts while charter, virtual, and vocational districts increased their enrollment. Though the enrollment declines in traditional districts were widespre…
Mobile Phones, Civic Engagement, and School Performance in Pakistan
Bias in online classes
Where the Kids Went
Over the first two full school years under the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 enrollment in public schools fell dramatically (i.e., by more than 1.2 million students) with losses concentrated among the youngest students. Currently, little is known about where these students went and what learning environments they are experiencing. In this research note, I present leading descriptive evidence on this question by combining public-school enrollment data w…
The Revealed Preferences for School Reopening
Before the 2020–2021 school year, policymakers and parents confronted the uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the United States chose remote-only instruction, and enrollment fell dramatically (i.e., a loss 1.1 million K–12 students). We examine the impact of these choices on public-school enrollment us…
No one-size-fits-all solution to chronic absenteeism
As chronic absenteeism fails to ease from post-pandemic high levels, schools can turn to many reforms to promote school attendance. Commonly recommended strategies involve increasingly targeted and intensive tiers of interventions. Researcher Thomas S. Dee writes that the research base of many of these interventions is not strong. Schools facing financial and capacity restraints may have difficulty putting interventions in place. Dee suggests tha…
Ahead of the Game? Course-Taking Patterns Under a Math Pathways Reform
A controversial, equity-focused mathematics reform in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) featured delaying Algebra I until ninth grade for all students. This study examines student-level longitudinal data on mathematics course-taking across successive cohorts of SFUSD students who spanned the reform’s implementation. We observe large changes in ninth and 10th grades (e.g., delaying Algebra I and geometry). Participation in Advanced…
Accelerating Opportunity
The pivotal role of algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their peers, and how it is taught. This random-assignment partnership study examined an innovative district-level reform—the Algebra I Initiative—that placed ninth grade students with prior math scores below grade level into Algebra I classes coupled with teacher training instead of a…
Psychology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · School Choice and Performance (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Mathematics education (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Demographic economics (8 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)