Brian Jacob
Biographic Data
| ID | 1470869 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Jacob |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian |
| FAMILY NAME | Jacob |
| SIGNATURE | JACOB B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-3794-9850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Education Governance and Race: An Analysis of School Board Discourse Using Large Language Models
Media accounts suggest that American school board meetings have transformed from bureaucratic affairs into arenas of conflict, particularly around race. Yet systematic evidence remains limited. Analyzing over 40,000 meeting minutes from 2018 to 2022, we examine the prevalence and predictors of race-related discourse. Using large language models and natural language processing, we find that race-related content appears in 24% of meetings, predomin…
Loopholes and the Incidence of Public Services: Evidence From Funding Career and Technical Education
In 2015, Michigan increased its Career and Technical Education (CTE) funding and changed its funding formula to reimburse programs based on student progression through program curricula. Although this change nearly doubled program completion rates, student enrollment and persistence were unaffected; instead, administrators accelerated student progress by reorganizing course curricula around notches in the new funding formula. As a result of respo…
Transitional Kindergarten: The New Kid on the Early Learning Block
In recent years, several states have expanded a new publicly funded learning option: Transitional Kindergarten (TK). TK bridges prekindergarten and kindergarten in its eligibility, requirements, and design. Using Michigan as a case study, we examine TK’s fit in the early learning landscape. Broadly, we find TK in Michigan reduces some socioeconomic gaps in early program enrollment while exacerbating others. Specifically, districts with more White…
The Value of Student Debt Relief and the Role of Administrative Barriers: Evidence from the Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program
We explore how much borrowers value student debt relief in the setting of the federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness program, which cancels between $5,000 and $17,500 in debt for teachers at high-need schools. Using both quasi-experimental evidence and a randomized controlled trial, we find that neither eligibility nor a targeted information intervention affects employment decisions. Information was found to increase application and receipt rates for t…
The Covid Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One‐Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Well‐Being of Families Receiving SNAP in Twelve States
There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit…
Online Course-Taking and Expansion of Curricular Options in High Schools
A common rationale for offering online courses in K-12 schools is that they allow students to take courses not offered at their schools; however, there has been little research on how online courses are used to expand curricular options when operating at scale. We assess the extent to which students and schools use online courses for this purpose by analyzing statewide, student-course level data from high school students in Florida, which has the…
Economics of Foster Care
Foster care provides substitute living arrangements to protect maltreated children. The practice is remarkably common: it is estimated that 5 percent of children in the United States are placed in foster care at some point during childhood. This paper describes the main tradeoffs in child welfare policy and provides background on policy and practice most in need of rigorous evidence. Trends include efforts to prevent foster care on the demand sid…
The Return to Hours Worked within and across Occupations: Implications for the Gender Wage Gap
Prior research suggests that gender differences in hours worked play an important role in the gender pay gap. Yet common estimates of the wage returns to hours worked are close to zero, implying that hours differences explain little of the gender wage gap, even though men work more hours than women on average. However, while the wage returns to hours worked within occupations are small, the authors document that the wage returns to average hours …
The Potential and Limits of Federal Policy: A Response to Ladd
The Changing Federal Role in School Accountability
Can Technology Help Promote Equality of Educational Opportunities
This chapter assesses the potential for several prominent technological innovations to promote equality of educational opportunities. We review the history of technological innovations in education and describe several prominent innovations, including intelligent tutoring, blended learning, and virtual schooling
The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems
Economists often use test scores to measure a student’s performance or an adult’s human capital. These scores reflect nontrivial decisions about how to measure and scale student achievement, with important implications for secondary analyses. For example, the scores computed in several major testing regimes, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), depend not only on the examinees’ responses to test items, but also on the…
New Evidence on Teacher Labor Supply
Recent evidence on the large variance in teacher effectiveness has spurred interest in teacher labor markets. Research documents that better qualified teachers typically work in more advantaged schools but cannot determine the relative importance of supply versus demand. To isolate teacher preferences, we document which schools prospective teachers interviewed at during job fairs in Chicago. We find substantial variation in the number of applican…
The Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery
This study estimates the effects of means-tested housing programs on labor supply using data from a randomized housing voucher wait-list lottery in Chicago. Economic theory is ambiguous about the expected sign of any labor supply response. We find that among working-age, able-bodied adults, housing voucher use reduces labor force participation by around 4 percentage points (6 percent) and quarterly earnings by $329 (10 percent), and increases Tem…
The impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity
Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
Research on the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. To extend this literature, we administered an in-depth survey to new math teachers in New York City and collected information on a number of nontraditional predictors of effectiveness, including teaching-specific conten…
The Short-Term and Localized Effect of Gun Shows: Evidence from California and Texas
We examine the effect of more than 3,400 gun shows using data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar and vital statistics data from California and Texas. Considering the one month following each show and a surrounding area ranging from 80 to 2,000 square miles, we find no evidence that gun shows increase either gun homicides or suicides. The similarity of our estimates for California and Texas suggests that the much tighter California gun show regulati…
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…
Can Principals Identify Effective Teachers? Evidence on Subjective Performance Evaluation in Education
We examine how well principals can distinguish between more and less effective teachers. To put principal evaluations in context, we compare them with the traditional determinants of teacher compensation—education and experience—as well as value‐added measures of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement gains. We present “out‐of‐sample” predictions that mitigate concerns that the teacher quality and student achievement measures are dete…
Using technology to explore social networks and mechanisms underlying peer effects in classrooms
Peer interactions among children have long interested social scientists. Identifying causal peer effects is difficult, and a number of studies have used random assignment to produce evidence that peers affect each other's outcomes. This focus by sociologists and economists on whether peers affect each other has not been matched by direct evidence on how these effects operate. The authors argue that one reason for the small number of studies in so…
The Challenges of Staffing Urban Schools with Effective Teachers
Brian Jacob examines challenges faced by urban districts in staffing their schools with effective teachers. He emphasizes that the problem is far from uniform. Teacher shortages are more severe in certain subjects and grades than others, and differ dramatically from one school to another. The Chicago public schools, for example, regularly receive roughly ten applicants for each teaching position. But many applicants are interested in specific sch…
The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries
School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence …
The impact of school choice on student outcomes: An analysis of the Chicago Public Schools
Accountability, incentives and behavior: The impact of high-stakes testing in the Chicago Public Schools
Public Housing, Housing Vouchers, and Student Achievement: Evidence from Public Housing Demolitions in Chicago
This paper utilizes a plausibly exogenous source of variation in housing assistance generated by public housing demolitions in Chicago to examine the impact of high-rise public housing on student outcomes. I find that children in households affected by the demolitions do no better or worse than their peers on a wide variety of achievement measures. Because the majority of households that leave high-rise public housing in response to the demolitio…
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…
New Evidence on Teacher Labor Supply
Recent evidence on the large variance in teacher effectiveness has spurred interest in teacher labor markets. Research documents that better qualified teachers typically work in more advantaged schools but cannot determine the relative importance of supply versus demand. To isolate teacher preferences, we document which schools prospective teachers interviewed at during job fairs in Chicago. We find substantial variation in the number of applican…
The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems
Economists often use test scores to measure a student’s performance or an adult’s human capital. These scores reflect nontrivial decisions about how to measure and scale student achievement, with important implications for secondary analyses. For example, the scores computed in several major testing regimes, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), depend not only on the examinees’ responses to test items, but also on the…
Networks, Partnerships and European Union Regional Economic Development Initiatives in the West Midlands
The paper concerns the emergence of complex networks and public/private partnerships in EU regional economic development initiatives in the English West Midlands. The implications of the partnership model for the governance of the West Midlands are examined with reference to the role of the Government Office for the West Midlands and the involvement of Birmingham City Council in multi-agency policy initiatives. Despite their importance, the netwo…
The Covid Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One‐Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Well‐Being of Families Receiving SNAP in Twelve States
There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit…
Can Technology Help Promote Equality of Educational Opportunities
This chapter assesses the potential for several prominent technological innovations to promote equality of educational opportunities. We review the history of technological innovations in education and describe several prominent innovations, including intelligent tutoring, blended learning, and virtual schooling
Defining Culture in a Multicultural Environment: An Ethnography of Heritage High School
The primary goal of this article is to examine how multicultural education can alter the learning environment of a school and thereby influence student relations, attitudes, and behaviors. The study generated three primary findings. (1) By creating an engaging and close-knit learning environment, activities that recognize and celebrate cultural diversity can increase motivation, effort, and school identification in minority students. (2) Despite …
Black Minority Participation in the USA and Britain
Little attention has been paid to the comparative study of the politics and administration of race in the USA and Britain. There exist certain important similarities between the two countries particularly with regard to the way in which even militant leaders are willing to co-operate with centrally funded community agencies and to moderate their demands to gain political and economic returns for their organisations from government. There are, how…
Using technology to explore social networks and mechanisms underlying peer effects in classrooms
Peer interactions among children have long interested social scientists. Identifying causal peer effects is difficult, and a number of studies have used random assignment to produce evidence that peers affect each other's outcomes. This focus by sociologists and economists on whether peers affect each other has not been matched by direct evidence on how these effects operate. The authors argue that one reason for the small number of studies in so…
Coming to Terms with the System: Black Politics in the USA
Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations: The Pattern of Participation
This paper examines the major factors affecting the pattern of black ethnic minority interest group affiliation to the Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations (WCCR). The study views group affiliation within the general context of the financial and administrative interrelationships between WCCR, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and Wolverhampton Corporation. The political setting is one in which councillors, local authority official…
Online Course-Taking and Expansion of Curricular Options in High Schools
A common rationale for offering online courses in K-12 schools is that they allow students to take courses not offered at their schools; however, there has been little research on how online courses are used to expand curricular options when operating at scale. We assess the extent to which students and schools use online courses for this purpose by analyzing statewide, student-course level data from high school students in Florida, which has the…
The Changing Federal Role in School Accountability
Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations: The Pattern of Participation
This paper examines the major factors affecting the pattern of black ethnic minority interest group affiliation to the Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations (WCCR). The study views group affiliation within the general context of the financial and administrative interrelationships between WCCR, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and Wolverhampton Corporation. The political setting is one in which councillors, local authority official…
Black Minority Participation in the USA and Britain
Little attention has been paid to the comparative study of the politics and administration of race in the USA and Britain. There exist certain important similarities between the two countries particularly with regard to the way in which even militant leaders are willing to co-operate with centrally funded community agencies and to moderate their demands to gain political and economic returns for their organisations from government. There are, how…
Coming to Terms with the System: Black Politics in the USA
Labour against the centre: The clay cross syndrome
1984). Labour against the centre: The clay cross syndrome. Local Government Studies: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 75-87
Defining Culture in a Multicultural Environment: An Ethnography of Heritage High School
The primary goal of this article is to examine how multicultural education can alter the learning environment of a school and thereby influence student relations, attitudes, and behaviors. The study generated three primary findings. (1) By creating an engaging and close-knit learning environment, activities that recognize and celebrate cultural diversity can increase motivation, effort, and school identification in minority students. (2) Despite …
Networks, Partnerships and European Union Regional Economic Development Initiatives in the West Midlands
The paper concerns the emergence of complex networks and public/private partnerships in EU regional economic development initiatives in the English West Midlands. The implications of the partnership model for the governance of the West Midlands are examined with reference to the role of the Government Office for the West Midlands and the involvement of Birmingham City Council in multi-agency policy initiatives. Despite their importance, the netwo…
Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education
Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating
We develop an algorithm for detecting teacher cheating that combines information on unexpected test score fluctuations and suspicious patterns of answers for students in a classroom. Using data from the Chicago public schools, we estimate that serious cases of teacher or administrator cheating on standardized tests occur in a minimum of 4–5 percent of elementary school classrooms annually. The observed frequency of cheating appears to respond str…
Are Idle Hands the Devil’s Workshop? Incapacitation, Concentration, and Juvenile Crime
This paper examines the short-term effect of school on juvenile crime. To do so, we bring together daily measures of criminal activity and detailed school calendar information from 29 jurisdictions across the country, and utilize the plausibly exogenous variation generated by teacher in-service days. We find that the level of property crime committed by juveniles decreases by 14 percent on days when school is in session, but the level of violent …
Public Housing, Housing Vouchers, and Student Achievement: Evidence from Public Housing Demolitions in Chicago
This paper utilizes a plausibly exogenous source of variation in housing assistance generated by public housing demolitions in Chicago to examine the impact of high-rise public housing on student outcomes. I find that children in households affected by the demolitions do no better or worse than their peers on a wide variety of achievement measures. Because the majority of households that leave high-rise public housing in response to the demolitio…
Remedial Education and Student Achievement: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis
As standards and accountability have become increasingly prominent features of the educational landscape, educators have relied more on remedial programs such as summer school and grade retention to help low-achieving students meet minimum academic standards. Yet the evidence on the effectiveness of such programs is mixed, and prior research suffers from selection bias. However, recent school reform efforts in Chicago provide an opportunity to ex…
The impact of school choice on student outcomes: An analysis of the Chicago Public Schools
Accountability, incentives and behavior: The impact of high-stakes testing in the Chicago Public Schools
The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries
School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence …
The Challenges of Staffing Urban Schools with Effective Teachers
Brian Jacob examines challenges faced by urban districts in staffing their schools with effective teachers. He emphasizes that the problem is far from uniform. Teacher shortages are more severe in certain subjects and grades than others, and differ dramatically from one school to another. The Chicago public schools, for example, regularly receive roughly ten applicants for each teaching position. But many applicants are interested in specific sch…
Can Principals Identify Effective Teachers? Evidence on Subjective Performance Evaluation in Education
We examine how well principals can distinguish between more and less effective teachers. To put principal evaluations in context, we compare them with the traditional determinants of teacher compensation—education and experience—as well as value‐added measures of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement gains. We present “out‐of‐sample” predictions that mitigate concerns that the teacher quality and student achievement measures are dete…
Using technology to explore social networks and mechanisms underlying peer effects in classrooms
Peer interactions among children have long interested social scientists. Identifying causal peer effects is difficult, and a number of studies have used random assignment to produce evidence that peers affect each other's outcomes. This focus by sociologists and economists on whether peers affect each other has not been matched by direct evidence on how these effects operate. The authors argue that one reason for the small number of studies in so…
The impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity
Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
Research on the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. To extend this literature, we administered an in-depth survey to new math teachers in New York City and collected information on a number of nontraditional predictors of effectiveness, including teaching-specific conten…
The Short-Term and Localized Effect of Gun Shows: Evidence from California and Texas
We examine the effect of more than 3,400 gun shows using data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar and vital statistics data from California and Texas. Considering the one month following each show and a surrounding area ranging from 80 to 2,000 square miles, we find no evidence that gun shows increase either gun homicides or suicides. The similarity of our estimates for California and Texas suggests that the much tighter California gun show regulati…
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 Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery
This study estimates the effects of means-tested housing programs on labor supply using data from a randomized housing voucher wait-list lottery in Chicago. Economic theory is ambiguous about the expected sign of any labor supply response. We find that among working-age, able-bodied adults, housing voucher use reduces labor force participation by around 4 percentage points (6 percent) and quarterly earnings by $329 (10 percent), and increases Tem…
New Evidence on Teacher Labor Supply
Recent evidence on the large variance in teacher effectiveness has spurred interest in teacher labor markets. Research documents that better qualified teachers typically work in more advantaged schools but cannot determine the relative importance of supply versus demand. To isolate teacher preferences, we document which schools prospective teachers interviewed at during job fairs in Chicago. We find substantial variation in the number of applican…
Can Technology Help Promote Equality of Educational Opportunities
This chapter assesses the potential for several prominent technological innovations to promote equality of educational opportunities. We review the history of technological innovations in education and describe several prominent innovations, including intelligent tutoring, blended learning, and virtual schooling
The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems
Economists often use test scores to measure a student’s performance or an adult’s human capital. These scores reflect nontrivial decisions about how to measure and scale student achievement, with important implications for secondary analyses. For example, the scores computed in several major testing regimes, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), depend not only on the examinees’ responses to test items, but also on the…
Psychology (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · School Choice and Performance (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Mathematics education (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (8 works) · Demographic economics (7 works) · Economic growth (7 works)