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, 2025 International Symposium on Contemporary Labor Economics, 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
Presentations: BC Applied Micro Brown Bag