Working Papers
School Choice, Teacher Access, and Student Outcomes (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: Unequal access to high-quality teachers remains a key driver of educational inequality, and recent education reforms, such as charter school expansion, further reshape teacher access. This paper examines inequality in teacher access by modeling the joint sorting behavior of students and teachers and explores how such sorting exacerbates inequality in both teacher access and student outcomes under charter school expansion. Exploiting a large-scale expansion of charter schools in North Carolina, I first document the joint sorting of students and teachers at nearby public schools. The opening of a charter school with 500 seats is associated with a 0.023 s.d. reduction in teacher value-added and a 3.15 p.p. increase in the share of low-income students at nearby low-income public schools, while the average effects among all public schools are modest. To better understand these patterns, I develop and estimate a model that incorporates schools' hiring decisions, teachers' job decisions, and students' school choices, accommodating the equilibrium effects of joint sorting. Counterfactual analyses show that 1) the income-based joint sorting of teachers and high-income white students, a process in which both sort into schools with more high-income students, widens the income achievement gap by 0.01 s.d. (on the standardized test score distribution); 2) a simulated entry wave of charter schools exacerbates the income-based joint sorting and enlarges the income achievement gap by 0.002 s.d.; and 3) policies aimed at improving access to charter schools for low-income students, including relocating charter schools to low-income areas and offering school bus services, effectively mitigate the increased outcome inequality.
Presentations: 2025 Dynamic Structural Econometrics Conference at HKU (scheduled), 2025 International Symposium on Contemporary Labor Economics (scheduled), Boston University WERISE 2025 (poster), Toulouse School of Economics 2nd Economics of Education Workshop, SOLE 2025 (poster), AEFP 2025
Work in Progress
Flexible Pay Under School Closure: Distributional Impacts in the Teacher Labor Market (Draft available upon request)
Abstract: The design of teacher compensation systems plays a central role in attracting, retaining, and allocating teachers across schools. It has been shown that flexible pay facilitates the efficient allocation of teachers while also generating distributional consequences. Evidence suggests that granting districts larger autonomy in wage determination disproportionately penalizes younger and female teachers, raising concerns about equity in the teaching profession. At the same time, declining enrollment has led many school districts in the U.S. to close or consolidate schools at an increasing rate. By reducing the number of available positions, closures can enhance the bargaining power of districts relative to teachers, potentially altering both employment prospects and wage dynamics. In this paper, I examine how school closures interact with flexible pay schedules to shape labor market outcomes for teachers in Wisconsin. By comparing teachers from closed schools to those from schools that remained open via coarsened exact matching, I find that teachers affected by school closures are more likely to exit the teaching profession, switch to other districts, and experience reductions in salaries. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that following school closures: 1) young teachers are less likely to switch to other districts, and untenured teachers tend to be assigned fewer working hours, even prior to the closure event; 2) young teachers, especially untenured ones, experience substantial and persistent reductions in compensation; and 3) senior male teachers are less likely to exit the teaching profession, more likely to switch districts, and experience significant and persistent gains in compensation. These results suggest that school closures weaken teachers’ bargaining power, with particularly pronounced effects for younger and female teachers.
Presentations: BC Applied Micro Brown Bag