Learning Collider

Building Smarter Ed Tech Through Real-World Research - The Learning Agency Partnerships between academics and ed tech are crucial to navigating the current uncertainty in education policy and industry.

The many, multiplying challenges imposed by the WH on K-12 education shouldn't define the quality of edtech. We can build better, rigorously tested digital tools that improve learning outcomes. With Bibi Groot of Eedi, @peterbergman.bsky.social explains how: the-learning-agency.com/the-cutting-...

Breaking Barriers: Smart Funding Fuels Innovation in Education How Startups Use AI, Measure Progress, & Take Risks to Succeed

Advice from @learningcollider.bsky.social, @waltonfamilyfdn.bsky.social, Valhalla Foundation & Renaissance Philanthropy at @sxswedu.com 2025 for #socent & #startups about how to use #AI, measure progress, & take risks to succeed.

📖 Learn More: medium.com/startingupgo...

#SXSW25 #SocialImpact

I was just informed that the Department of Education has taken down all its Civil Rights data. If you need it, alternative sites are now hosting it for the public. See links in this thread. ocrdata.ed.gov/notfound

Education Dept. Cancels Over $600M in Grants for Teacher Pipeline Programs Many of the efforts focused on increasing teacher diversity, which now, officials say 'is inconsistent' with the administration’s priorities.

Education Dept. Cancels Over $600M in Grants for Teacher Pipeline Programs - new from @the74.bsky.social's @lrj417.bsky.social www.the74million.org/article/educ...

Talking about Words Boosts Preschool-Age Children’s Vocabulary: Evidence from a Parent Intervention | Becker Friedman Institute Language development is a fundamental aspect of formation, and researchers continue to explore the most effective ways to support young children in acquiring new vocabulary. Evidence indicates that pa...

Sending conversation prompts to low-income parents encourages them to discuss vocabulary with their preschoolers, boosting children's vocabulary and strengthening parents' belief in their role. New brief from @arielkalil.bsky.social @harrissocial.bsky.social & co-authors. ow.ly/9tQj50V3OS0

We are excited to join Bluesky! J-PAL North America is a regional office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, based at MIT, seeking to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence. www.povertyactionlab.org/na

Topics - EPI Library The EPI Data Library offers comprehensive, up-to-date labor data from Economic Policy Institute analysis, covering wages, inequality, and economic trends across demographics.

DATA RELEASE WHEN DATA FEELS SCARCE!
Check out data.epi.org -a data repository with 78,000+ series on topics like employment, wages, poverty, and inequality. You can get many measures by gender, race and state!

I've been working with our @epi.org team to build this and am so proud of the result

NIJ and other federal agencies have paused research funding, but @arnoldventures.bsky.social has not! Check out our open RFPs. We're looking for causal studies across a range of issues, including crime/criminal justice.

www.arnoldventures.org/grantees

😬

SUBJECT: Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs 'The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar. In Fiscal Year 2024. of the nearly $10 trillion that the Federal Government spent, more than $3 trillion was Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans. Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending wokeness" and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve. This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President's policies and requirements. For example, during the initial days of his Administration, President Donald J Trump issued a series of executive orders to protect the American people and safeguard valuable taxpayer resources, including Protecting the American People Against Invasion (Jan. 20, 2025). Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan 20, 2025), Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements (Jan. 20, 2025). Unleashing American Energy (Jan. 20. 2025). Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Jan. 20.

ent these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all jal assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that any of the President's executive orders. In the interian, to the extent applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency nay be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial surice tot foreign nongovernmental organizations, DEL woke gender ideology, and the pause will provide the Administration time to review agency programs of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the he temporary pause will become effective on January 28, 2025, at 5:00 rehensive analysis. Federal agencies must immediately deadlines for assistance programs arising while the les must report this information to OMB along with an directs Federal agencies to pause all activities associated conducting merit review panels No later than Febrar - 10. 2025, agencies shail submit to OMB detailed information on any programs projects or activities subject to this pause. Each agency must pause. (i) issuance of disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards, and (il) other relevant has reviewed provided guidance to your agency with respect to the information act recordin grant and ptions allowing Federal agencies to issue new awards or take other case basis. To the extent required by law, Federal agencies may continue nistrative actions. such as closeout of Federal awards (2 CFR 200.344), or expressly required by law

NEW — OMB temporarily pauses all agency grants and loans programs.

Per copy of memo: "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."

Submission: Economics of Education Program Meeting, Page 1 of 2 - MyNBERNBER: National Bureau of Economic Research

Call for papers: Econ of Ed @nberpubs.bsky.social Spring Meeting at Stanford.

Submissions are welcome from researchers with and without NBER affiliations, from early career scholars, and from researchers from under-represented groups. #EconConf

www.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

Just had our data access rescinded for a projected using federal microdata to study and reduce disparate impact in housing markets.

📌

Updated paper: A lot of work on the effects of tracking in education, which is a widespread practice globally. We show 1) algorithms can track students far more effectively than test scores 2) test scores discriminate 3) algorithmic placement has infinite MVPF static1.squarespace.com/static/60d0c...

Submission: Children and Families Program Meeting, Page 1 of 2 - MyNBERNBER: National Bureau of Economic Research

Submit your papers to NBER @nberpubs.bsky.social Children's Spring meeting by January 31st! The meetings will be held April 3-4 in Cambridge, MA!
conference.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

Always tough questions with this guy 😁

Top 20 definitely incudes 'Unwarranted Disparity in High-Stakes Decisions: Race Measurement and Policy Responses'

✒️ E. Jason Baron, Joseph J. Doyle, Jr., Natalia Emanuel, Peter Hull, & Joseph Ryan

Incredible work, Noam, Moitshepi, Claire, and the entire Youth Impact squad!

🔖

Building Fair and Equitable AI Systems; Understanding and Reducing Discrimination in AI and Human Decision-Making; Using AI to Address Learner Variability; Creating Pathways to Economic Mobility

What's happening under the hood at our lab? Take a look at today's email blast:
www.learningcollider.org/campaigns/vi...
#econ #sci #research #ds

Bottom line: LLMs can be powerful tools for research with the necessary guardrails. But if those guardrails can't be placed, LLMs should not be used.

Double bottom line: applying these same guardrails for benchmarking analysis and building AI tools support more responsible, accurate models.

2️⃣ Researchers should only use open-source AI-models with transparent training data

3️⃣ Researchers must validate AI-generated outputs by comparing them to outputs from established methods on a small sample and appropriately correct for errors.

🧵 Our takeaways from Ludwig, @sendhil.bsky.social and Rambachan on the reliability and validity of LLMs in research:

1️⃣ LLMs should only be used if the training data does not overlap with the research data, preventing the model from "cheating"

#econ #sci #data #ai

Better Together? Social Networks in Truancy and the Targeting of Treatment — Learning Collider: Building AI that Expands Human Opportunity Because students skip school with friends, social network maps can help target truancy interventions and reduce class absences.

And spillover effects on truancy rates, through student social network mapping, from Bergman & @maibennett.com
www.learningcollider.org/research-lib...

Hope these are useful!

Research Summary: Enrollment Methods in Text Messaging Interventions Affects Adoption Rates — Learning Collider: Building AI that Expands Human Opportunity School districts committed to empowering families with actionable, accessible information in support of student success should consider not only what digital communications tools they use, but how the...

Related summary on text messaging enrollment plus Bergman, Lasky-Fink & Rogers:
www.learningcollider.org/research-lib...

Leveraging Parents through Low-Cost Technology: The Impact of High-Frequency Information on Student Achievement — Learning Collider: Building AI that Expands Human Opportunity Automated text messages to parents show major promise for boosting school attendance and grades at a low cost to districts.

Thanks, Sarah!
@laurakgee.bsky.social - depending on your audience, we have a quick summary of Bergman & Chan's paper on low-cost text messaging and great resources from J-PAL linked here:
www.learningcollider.org/research-lib...

new WP y'all www.nber.org/papers/w33236

Large Language Models: An Applied Econometric Framework Large language models (LLMs) are being used in economics research to form predictions, label text, simulate human responses, generate hypotheses, and even produce data for times and places where such ...

🔖 Looking forward to digging into the latest working paper from Jens Ludwig, @sendhil.bsky.social and Ashesh Rambachan on the use of LLMs in economics research.

#econsky #scisky #phdsky

arxiv.org/abs/2412.070...

Awesome! We 💛 the National Zoning Atlas!

A very interesting new working paper by the greats Ashesh Rambachan, Rahul Singh, and @vivianodavide.bsky.social: arxiv.org/pdf/2411.10959

It seems that this is another area where the empirical common practice was "too fast,'' and econometrics is catching up!

Cool and empirically relevant stuff!

Interesting-looking JMP on using quasi-experiments to measure discrimination in high-stakes settings

nikh-rao.github.io/site_files/d...