Aaron Ainsworth

Glad to see our work about special ed and gifted identification across the income distribution appear in this week's @chalkbeat.org

School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income Currently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets ...

Excited to share a new EdWorkingPaper on the relationship between family income and disability ID. 🧵

TLDR: Low-income students are much more likely to receive SPED services while high-income students are more likely to get 504 plan accommodations.

edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1374

Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced dif...

Stunning work:

"Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education ... Under 4 percent of students in the lowest income percentile are identified as gifted, compared with 20 percent of those in the top income percentile."

edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1375

Really fascinating work on a unique teacher pay reform!

🚨Thrilled to share our new @nber.org WP.

Research and policy often assume teacher effectiveness is essentially fixed.

We revisit this question by studying what happens when high-performing teachers are incentivized to transfer to struggling schools.

🧵

nber.org/papers/w34845

Thank you Alli! I have learned so much about this topic from your research already and I can’t wait to see all that is to come from the SPARC center. As our paper highlights, retention challenges are particularly acute in special education roles of all types. Glad you all are tackling this head on.

Teaching as a team sport: What happens when a great teacher moves to a struggling school? New research on a federal program found that when top teachers transferred to high-need schools, their performance dropped significantly. Teacher effectiveness may not be a fixed skill.

New–

A great teacher might not stay great in schools with less supportive learning environments. This is an important wrinkle on the "teachers are the most important in-school factor" line. It's more like: teachers + context.

www.chalkbeat.org/2026/02/17/t...

Thanks so much Andrew, I appreciate that!

Thanks so much Dan!

Thank you so much Gema!

Thanks so much Liz! And I completely agree, there is a lot more to dive into here. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the work you all are doing at the SPARC center about the workforce!

Thanks so much Lindsey! I have learned a lot in this area from your work. Can’t wait to catch up soon.

@lizbettini.bsky.social @edutuan.bsky.social @paul-bruno.com

Tagging folks doing fantastic related work in other contexts, many of whom have given us wonderful feedback on this project at various stages: @roddy-theobald.bsky.social @afgilmour.bsky.social @lindseykaler.bsky.social @cedr.bsky.social @gzamarro.bsky.social @andrewmcamp.com

There is so much more in paper that I encourage folks to take a look at (especially the extensive appendix materials). Grateful to have been able to do this work with @emilykpenner.bsky.social @yujialiu.bsky.social

However, among paraprofessionals and non-licensed staff, there are no differences in turnover rates by school achievement. Generally, turnover patterns among these two groups are less inequitable compared to teachers.

3. The inequitable patterns of turnover commonly observed for teachers do not consistently hold for other employees.

For example, in Oregon we find turnover is 4pp higher in the lowest achieving quartile of schools compared to the highest achieving quartile for teachers, admin and licensed staff.

2. Teacher turnover and non-teaching staff turnover is not highly correlated within schools.

We find that there is only a modest relationship between turnover rates for teachers and for other staff groups within a school (ranging from ~0.06 to at most 0.20).

This means that when turnover surged in 2022, including among teachers, not only did schools have to grapple with elevated teacher turnover, but they also were losing more of almost every other kind of employee in the system. This may have placed constraints on schools working on learning recovery.

1. Teachers are the most stable group.

When we look at turnover rates across many different types of employees, teachers, especially GenEd teachers, consistently have the lowest rates of turnover. This is true both in the short- and long-term and when looking at just district moving and exiting.

Revolving School Doors? A Longitudinal Examination of Teacher, Administrator, and Staff Contributions to School Churn - Emily K. Penner, Yujia Liu, Aaron J. Ainsworth, 2026 Non-teaching staff comprise over half of all school employees, and their turnover may be consequential for school operation, culture, and student success, yet w...

I’m really glad to see that our paper is now out at Ed Researcher! We examine turnover among the half of school employees who are not teachers to understand how their turnover compares. Using Oregon data (2007-23) for all public school employees, there are 3 new patterns that we document:
A 🧵

We are failing our kids

Very excited for the latest paper from the international administrative data network I am a part of!

Led by @aresherman.bsky.social we show that 75% of pay differences between immigrants and native-born workers arise because of sorting into different jobs, with 25% due to unequal pay within jobs.

Yay! Congrats Dr. Nigro 🥳

Abstract of CALDER working paper, Impacts of Staff Turnover on Test Scores for Students with and without Disabilities."

New @caldercenter.bsky.social WP! A study from my dissertation, w/ @roddy-theobald.bsky.social, @natejones.bsky.social‬, & @lizbettini.bsky.social. We find staff turnover matters for SWDs. Ungated WP & one pager:
• Working paper: tinyurl.com/j3rykkp9
• One-pager: tinyurl.com/bddtzxtp

That’s amazing! Congrats Laura 🥳

Education Department restarts online library ERIC New contract slashes budget in half, but library will continue to operate

Successful pushback to DOGE cuts. Funding had run out for the Education Dept's online library ERIC last week, but funding has restarted. But only half as much. hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

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

Congrats Andrew! This award is so well-deserved, you’re doing great work!

Infographic titled ‘Student-Led Pro-Democracy Protests and Their Impact Worldwide (1955–2025).’ A vertical timeline from 1955 to 2025 lists major student-led protests (e.g., Hungary 1956, Prague Spring 1968, Tiananmen Square 1989, Arab Spring 2010s). Each protest is color-coded by outcome: Successful Transition, Partial Gains, or No Immediate Gains. The visual underscores how student activism has shaped political and social landscapes over seven decades.

DHS just detained a Columbia student who helped lead campus protests—a direct attack on campus activism. This timeline shows why authoritarians fear student protests: they're often the first and most effective catalysts for pro-democracy movements.