Berta Bartoli

Anyone wishing to pontificate about changes in the demand for a college education should be forced to stare at this graph for a bit first

Excited by the prospect of Mamdani bringing his communication skills to talking about basic public functions and the people that provide them.

Abstract for "The truly isolated: Spatial isolation of advantage in the United States" by Shannon Rieger, Angela Li, and Patrick Sharkey, published at Urban Studies

👉 Our new paper uses daily mobility data to show that spatial isolation is much more common today among those living in advantaged neighborhoods than the converse.

👩🏻‍💻 Lots of massive data wrangling and careful assumptions about mobility data needed - but check it out here! doi.org/10.1177/0042...

Elsevier has a 38% profit margin, and the other journal publishers aren't far behind.

NIH PubMed The controversy over daylight saving time: evidence for and against Michael C Antle. Curr Opin Pulm Med. 2023. Abstract Purpose of review: Biannual clock changes to and from daylight saving time have been pervasive in many societies for over 50 years. Governments are considering abandoning this practice and choosing a single permanent time. Recent findings: Our endogenous circadian clock follows our photoperiod, which changes over the year. The acute disruption caused by changing our clocks can affect safety (motor vehicle and on the job accidents), health (cardiovascular disease, drug overdoses, suicide), and human behavior (sport performance, generosity, and procrastination). Although abandoning the clock change could help avoid these acute harms, choosing the wrong permanent time could lead to chronic circadian misalignment, which could have even more profound implications for health, safety, and human behavior. Summary: Ceasing the biannual clock change may be a…

“Sleep and circadian experts generally advocate for permanent Standard Time… Change between Standard Time and DST is not simply loss/gain of sleep, but rather misalignment between circadian and social clocks…”

Immigrant Student Enrollment Is Dwindling at Schools Amid Stepped-Up Enforcement In many school systems, the biggest factor is that far fewer families are coming from other countries.

Immigrant Student Enrollment Is Dwindling at Schools Amid Stepped-Up Enforcement: In many school systems, the biggest factor is that far fewer families are coming from other countries.

This is correct! Researchers find that a) most people underestimate the administrative burdens of immigration, and b) when informed about these burdens become more supportive of immigration.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If you missed our panel, go check out the manuscript on the conference website! Feel free to send us thoughts and ideas — timely feedback always welcome 😉

Opinion | Universities Gave Us the iPhone, the Jet Engine and Gatorade. We’re Tossing That Away. The postwar compact on research that powered America’s economic and military dominance is under threat.

Columbia sociologist of science Jonathan Cole gets it right:

“If we don’t resist collectively by all legal means, & by social influence and legislative pressure, we are apt to see the destruction of our most revered institutions and the enormous benefits they accrue to America.”

1/ Our department has been thinking about how NCES data access will be disproportionately affecting our doctoral students. Other proactive things I'm considering that your institution/department might do if you are hoping to support early career scholars/students:

The news over the weekend and this morning have been terrifying. I'm dismayed at the total lack of action but I also have no idea how to act. I can't believe I'm watching America as I know it collapse in front of my eyes.

One thing everyone should understand is that DOGE has created the least efficient conditions for government I've ever seen.
*The working conditions are chaotic.
*No clear sense of who works there.
*Routine processes have been stopped.
*No planning can take place.
*People are incredibly demoralized.

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

Screenshot of the article that reads: It’s not just children. In addition to bolstering underfunded K-12 schools and protecting the rights of kids with disabilities, the department also manages the federal financial aid process for college students. “I am not certain whether or not students will be able to get financial aid next year,” Dominique Baker, a professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, told Vox.

Screenshot of the article that reads: While students and families are the most directly impacted by changes at the Education Department, those changes have also inspired a broader concern. Some of the programs terminated by DOGE are congressionally mandated, and if the president or Musk can simply stop them, “that means that Congress no longer actually functions,” Baker said. “There are no longer checks and balances for the executive branch,” Baker said. “A significant part of this goes beyond education and speaks to a constitutional crisis that shapes the future of our country.”

Here Vox's explainer for just what is going on at the Department of Education which includes me saying I don't have faith in financial aid disbursement next year and, oh yea, I think we're in a constitutional crisis

www.vox.com/policy/40233...

I appreciate this point! If we scrutinize the exclusionary dimensions of school choice, magnet schools should be part of the conversation.

That said, my research highlights stratifying role of geog/transportation & social networks, not just admissions criteria: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

I want to say again to academics who are interested in public writing. Look locally. Sure national outlets are good and I do that too, but this kind of visibility in your community can have a real impact.

lmao ok

If your state just handed $447M to vouchers for kids already in private school, spare me the "it’s too much money" excuse when it comes to educating undocumented immigrant students. Follow the law of the land—Plyler still stands.

“Don’t let National School Choice Week fool you. Behind the banners extolling the virtues of vouchers, charter schools, homeschooling…a small group of wealthy heirs is using their vast sums to undermine support for public schools and the vital role they have played in our culture and economy.”

I'm not saying a shutdown will definitely happen. I *am* saying that if one happens and you didn't grab that one census file or download the ipeds data you needed, you're gonna be mad.

The "every-bro-for-himself mentality" nails the education policy ethos of universal voucher states

Little regulation, no transparency, no accountability, no attention to inequality.

The way to tell vouchers are a private school subsidy above all is:

The private schools retain the right to choose students and have no performance assessment or financial 🔎.

A child-centered voucher scheme would require open admissions, quality control, and $$ oversight

My adviser when I signed up for another new project:

Helpful for anyone thinking about how AI could be used as a tool in the classroom. It’s encouraging to see the nuance of both children and teachers’ perspectives — student-teacher conversations about AI in the beginning of the school year are probably a good approach.

Making SNAP Interviews More Flexible Increases Take-up A tangible thing that state and local governments can do to maintain safety net access

New, from @giannella.bsky.social & I: It is very likely that the Trump administration will add administrative burdens to safety net programs.

What can state and local govts do? We talk about one simple innovation to increase SNAP take-up.
open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

"Racial segregation is harmful because it concentrates minority students in high-poverty schools, which are, on average, less effective than lower-poverty schools."

An institution-level analysis of gender gaps in STEM over time Gender gaps in engineering and computer science narrow at math-selective schools and widen in others

🔬 Major new findings on STEM gender gaps: Looking across institutions over time, physics, engineering & computer science (PECS) show stark divides—gaps are closing at selective colleges but widening elsewhere. w/ @joalkhafajiking.bsky.social [<--🌟 on the job market 😉] www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...