Christina Weiland

The Fall Edition of the EPI Newsletter is here! mailchi.mp/umich.edu/ed...

Stay up to date with the latest in education policy research, events, & publications.

In this issue, you'll find:
📚 Research shaping education policy
📝 Publications and news
🤝 Research partnership updates

Welcome @edpolicyford.bsky.social to Bluesky!! Give a follow for research and happenings from our fantastic UMich faculty and students.

Ughh… the Child Care and Early Education Research Connections website and library will no longer be available after Sept. 30. Pull what you need!

researchconnections.org

If there is an effort to back it up underway, I’d love to know.

From Inside Philanthropy: Will Philanthropy Ever Pay Attention to Appalachia — Appalachia Funders Network New Research Highlights Disparities

Philanthropic dollars aren’t remotely equally distributed. This is huge!

www.appalachiafunders.org/news-resourc....

Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith supporting Clay County music program Clay County students received a special message from an enduring rock star this week.Chad Smith, the heartbeat of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, shared a video with

Incredibly cool… Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is supporting the music program in my rural WV county:

wchstv.com/news/local/r...

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: How can we measure student behavior at scale?

@tiffanyxwu.bsky.social, @weilanch.bsky.social, @mattadiemer.bsky.social, Rebecca Unterman, @annakshapiro.bsky.social, & Thomas Staines use PCA and factor analysis to build behavior composites from admin data.

📄 bit.ly/4ofre5b

Today is the final day of work for many dedicated, talented employees at the Institute of Education Sciences. I am thankful for their service, and I hope that they find new roles that continue their mission of supporting education research that serves as a public good.

Child playing with building blocks.

Researchers examine the impacts of transitional kindergarten, a publicly funded learning option that bridges prekindergarten and kindergarten, helping guide state programming and offering more information on the complicated early learning landscape.

➡️ bit.ly/3Sfrp1t

Big shout out to this amazing team, led by @weilanch.bsky.social

Want more details but don’t have time to read the paper? See thread from
@tiffanyxwu.bsky.social

A screenshot of the abstract of the working paper

Figure 1: School Enrollment Pathways for Lottery Winners and Control Group Students through 8th Grade. This figure represents school enrollment pathways across different school types (BPS, BPS Exam School, non-BPS district school, charter school, and other) for both lottery winners and the control group. The thickness of the lines represents the percentage of lottery winners/control group students that are enrolled in each type of school. Blue lines show the pathways taken by lottery winners, and BPS-specific school categories are highlighted in the light blue boxes. BPS = Boston Public Schools.

🤔 What kind of Pre-K experience sets students up for long-term success?

Our new working paper offers important new evidence to help answer this question!

🔗 edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai25-1194.pdf

And 🧵👇

Using data from Michigan, we find that third grade retention for struggling readers may be a much less important component of the benefits of literacy reforms than previously understood.

(Thx, @annenberginstitute.bsky.social, for the dissemination bump!)

Does school funding actually improve outcomes? 🤔Join our first-ever #EdWorkingPapers webinar Wed 5/21 at 2pm ET with @emilyrauscher.bsky.social and @chriscandelaria.com to find out. buff.ly/TW1oFhu #research #schoolfunding

🧵 But since Head Start's inception, there have been disagreements about whether or not the program "works." So let's review what we know from rigorous research on Head Start's effectiveness, and let's start with what it means for the program to work. 🧵 1/n

How federal investments in education research help students succeed Researchers discuss how federally funded research projects have helped identify and scale programs that improved student outcomes.

How federal investments in education research help students succeed www.brookings.edu/articles/how...

Pre-K students walking on a path/bridge up and right to represent their path to kindergarten. Path transitions into dotted line to signify a disconnect

We asked 1,368 public school-based pre-K teachers across the country about the materials they use, their instructional resources and planning time, and how their programs align with elementary grades. Read more in my new co-authored report: www.rand.org/t/rra3279-3

Head Start is turning 60. Will the federal child care program make it to 61? Providers operating on ‘razor-thin margins’ worry about the possibility of deep cuts

Hours after we published this story on our site we received news that staffers in five of Head Start's 10 regional offices were put on leave. We're trying to track the on-the-ground implications -- please email me at samuels@hechingerreport.org or Signal cas.37

hechingerreport.org/head-start-i...

Head Start, which serves over 800K children and their families all over the country, was hit hard today by the HHS layoffs.

<1% of HS’s annual funding is spent on federal staff.

nhsa.org/press_releas...

Georgetown has put together resources for federal workers who may be facing a transition in jobs. These include various seminars and workshops, as well as tuition scholarships providing a discount on many master's programs and certificates. Please spread the word to anybody who might benefit.

Count Me In? Identifying Factors That Predict Centers’ Application to Boston’s Mixed-Delivery Universal Pre-K Program Universal prekindergarten (UPK) programs often expand through mixed-delivery systems by offering seats in public schools and community-based centers (CBOs). Although this approach aims to meet varied ...

As universal prekindergarten (UPK) expands, understanding which community-based organizations (CBOs) apply—and why—matters for equity and access. With @weilanch.bsky.social, Meghan McCormick, Catherine Snow.

Read more:

edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1151

#ECE #UPK #EquitableECE
#EduSky
#WomaninQuant

If you have research dependent on these data here is my suggestion
1/N

Big picture:

Create a dataset of cell means (cells must be big enough to pass disclosure)

- load these cell means into many, many tables & put through review

-These cell means can then be used in OLS - which runs on means

In a devastating week for Ed research, #AEFP2025 is a balm to the soul. That goes double for the fantastic presentations by junior scholars.

Today's UMich contributions, spanning early childhood, K-12, and higher ed:

Check out the livehandbook.org, an open-access resource that will be continuously updated to serve as a hub of policy relevant #educationresearch.

@weilanch.bsky.social and I coauthored a chapter on ECE quality.

This kind of initiatives bring me hope in challenging times for the education field.

Are Schools Succeeding? Education Department Cuts Could Make It Hard to Know At least 800 education department research employees and outside partners have lost jobs. The cuts will decimate research and data collection.

I keep hearing the question: What's the biggest impact of Trump education disruptions so far? My answer: Research. Data. Knowledge on how students are doing and how schools might improve. All of this is being decimated. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/u...

The dismantling of NCES is insane and will critically hobble progress in improving education - this agency is so important it existed more than 100 years before the creation of Department of Education.

Mathematica 65,991 followers 1d • • • • To our clients, partners, and peers: We want to let you know that we are reducing our workforce to align with the needs of our clients and ensure the continued, exceptional support we've offered for decades to the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. The staff we are letting go are skilled, experienced, and passionate about their work. Any organization would be fortunate to have them. Please don't hesitate to reach out if we can be of assistance.

Dan Gaylin • 2nd President and CEO, NORC 10h • 너 + Follow Like many of our peer organizations, this week NORC had to reduce our staff to ensure we are operating effectively and have the right mix of skills to align with client needs. The people departing NORC are highly talented and capable professionals, and they have made important contributions to our mission of delivering trustworthy and reliable data and analysis to inform society's most important decisions. They will be valuable employees and colleagues wherever their careers take them next. To each of you who are leaving, and on behalf of everyone at NORC, I offer our deepest thanks and appreciation for your dedicated service and the lasting impact you've made on our organization.

marc MDRC 15,135 followers 9h • 0 To our collaborators: Like many of our peer organizations, MDRC has had to reduce our staff in recent days, letting go of many talented and highly skilled professionals. Each of these colleagues would be an asset to another organization, and we encourage you to consider them for any career opportunities you may have. MDRC remains committed to our mission of learning what works to improve policy, practice, and people's well-being.

// Westat Westat 35,042 followers 22h • In light of recent industry changes, Westat is making strategic reductions to our workforce to better align with our clients' needs. The talented professionals who are leaving Westat have made significant contributions to our mission and embody our values of uncompromising excellence, client commitment, and innovation. They are current and future leaders in their fields and will undoubtedly be an asset to any organization they join. We remain committed to our mission to improve lives by delivering exceptional data-driven research and technical assistance, fostering insights and solutions to advance health, education, and social and economic opportunity.

Heartbreaking to see announcements of major layoffs at most research organizations that have played a vital role in supporting federal statistics for education and developing high-quality evidence about what policies/practices actually work.

Below are just a few examples from my LinkedIn feed.

Some of the Michigan TK research behind our op-ed:
- Features of TK: edpolicy.umich.edu/sites/epi/fi...

- Impacts on child learning: edpolicy.umich.edu/sites/epi/fi...

- Impacts on the early learning landscape: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Christina Weiland, Brian Jacob and Jordan Berne: Getting Washington’s Transition to Kindergarten program right By Christina Weiland, Brian Jacob and Jordan Berne

Despite the federal chaos, states+cities are still hard at work figuring out how to best to expand early opportunity.

Case in point: WA's Transition to Kindergarten is under debate in the state legislature again this session.

Our op-ed on getting WA TK right:
www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

Yesterday ~68 people employed in HHS's Administration for Children & Families early childhood offices were terminated. I'm told Office of Head Start lost ~20% of staff; Office of Child Care lost ~25%
These workers process grants for preschools/childcare centers, monitor health/safety issues, etc.

FANTASTIC

ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?)

You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have

www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them

1/N Inequality in college graduation rates
Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education
www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...