Annaliese Paulson

Silvia Robles, Annenberg research scientist, was interviewed about course availability challenges that college students may face.

Read more:

"Feel" as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

"Feel" as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather www.nber.org/papers/w34944

"poor tour weather reduces participants’ likelihood of applying"

At least $7.2 million in taxpayer funds has been spent on LEGOs through Arizona's school voucher program, new public records obtained by 12News show 12News uncovered the spending -- including one family spending $30,000 on LEGOs -- after suing Superintendent Horne and Treasurer Yee to obtain ESA public records.

Since 2022, AZ taxpayers funded $7.25M in Legos that individual families kept for themselves.

Every AZ K12 teacher could have spent ~$125 on purchases *for their whole class, present & future* w those "take my toys & go home" Lego sets.

[And yes, my code for this analysis was straight bananas.]

When Compliance Becomes A Crime What Does Transgender Citizenship Mean after a New Kansas Law?

New from @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social & @paisleycurrah.com at Can We Still Govern:
Many trans people in Kansas just had the primary form of ID deemed illegal. It fits a pattern of criminalizing compliance with previous policies. 🧵https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-compliance-becomes-a-crime

Apparently there is an IES alumni group on LinkedIn !
www.linkedin.com/groups/8540416

Would love to see something like this! I moved to Philadelphia while I was finishing my PhD at Michigan and the Penn IES program adopted me: some of my closest academic friends in Philly came out of the IES network.

Here are the Department of Education's recommendations for next steps with the Institute for Education Sciences.

My two cents: to help improve education, we need timely data and more support for pressing questions.

ies.ed.gov/ies/2026/02/...

‘Very Republican, very patriotic’: right-leaning civic centers now offer courses at US public colleges Republican lawmakers push for conservative professors to counter purported leftwing indoctrination in schools

Want to know more about the sweeping trend of state mandated taxpayer financed and hyper empowered civics centers, and the political project they embody, as in Ohio? See this excellent @theguardian.com article @osuaaup.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

description: Assists with empirical social science.
---

When reviewing code and research products:

### Always:

1. **Appreciate economist's emphasis on causal identification**
2. **Ensure tables/figures match output.**

### Never
1. **Try to make me vibe with economists more than I already do**

Screenshot from Claude Code output reading: Conclusion (p. 30–31) "ways of knowing" is evocative but vague. If you want to keep it, great — it signals a broader epistemological framing. But if the audience is primarily economists, "disciplines" or "fields of study" may land more precisely.

Help, Claude Code is bullying this Education PhD!

How Early Morning Classes Change Academic Trajectories: Evidence From a Natural Experiment Using a natural experiment which randomized class times to students, this study reveals that enrolling in early morning classes lowers students’ course grades and the likelihood of future STEM course....

How Early Morning Classes Change Academic Trajectories: Evidence From a Natural Experiment onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🎉🎉🎉🎉

Absolutely! Will add it to the ever growing list of things we should probably get coffee at a conference and talk about sometime.

Seminar ~ Pathways Network The seminar is our town square. Each session features a presentation of recent publications or works in progress that contribute to our joint enterprise, with plenty of room for Q and A. All are welco...

Next Thursday, Feb. 26th, at 12 PST, I'm excited to present at the virtual Pathways Seminar on a question that keeps me up at night at: isn't it strange researchers have so little to say about the effects of general education requirements in the US?

More info here!: pathways.stanford.edu/seminar/

Edu policy peeps!

I'm co-chairing the edu section for APPAM 2026 conference with @doughesm.bsky.social @taylorodle.bsky.social and @brittanyvasquez.bsky.social - if you would be interested in reviewing submissions, please let us know! We're aiming for about ~10 per reviewer.

@appam.bsky.social

Hey #HigherEdSky I'm hiring! I'm looking to hire a Reverse Transfer Project Coordinator, a part-time contractor position to oversee the deployment of the National Student Clearinghouse's reverse transfer tool at my universities.

If you understood those words, see here: www.masu.org/sites/defaul...

National Lampoon cover with the text if you don't buy ring we'll kill the dog

That Ring ad

📣 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Join us at the 2026 Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at Penn, from June 15–26!

ℹ️ More info: sicss.io/2026/penn
.
⏳ Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2026, at 11:59 pm EST.

#SICSS #ComputationalSocialScience

Learn more about higher education finance in Lindsay Leasor and Kevin Stange’s chapter on expenditures and costs: livehandbook.org/higher-educa...

It's been a minute since I posted about the new ACTS survey. Some more details have emerged that reinforce my suspicion that this data will be of limited value. 🧵

If someone paid you $4.75 every night you slept 7+ hours, would you sleep more?

And--more importantly--would that increase in sleep change your behavior in other meaningful ways?

This new paper ran an experiment to find out.

I cannot believe I missed this pun!

Excited for your upcoming working paper "Heat and Learning II: Evidence from Joshua Goodman."

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: @taylorodle.bsky.social & @isabelmcmullen.bsky.social evaluate Advise TN’s expansion across 33 communities and find the program increased college enrollment by 6%.

📄 Read more: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1371

So all colleges and universities will bring back the DEI stuff they cut when obeying in advance right...............................................................................................................................................right?

#EdResearch folks - early bird registration for the annual Association for Education Finance & Policy conference ends TODAY! Join us in Chicago for lots of great discussions about the research and policy.

aefpweb.org/2026conference

Happy to have this descriptive piece with @camilantmorales.bsky.social, Kalena Cortes, @julia-turner.bsky.social, & @loismiller.bsky.social out!

Look for more causal work on this topic from our team in the near future 👀

Marginal Returns to Public Universities* Abstract. This article studies the returns to enrolling in U.S. public universities by comparing the long-term outcomes of barely admitted versus barely re

#QJE Feb 2026, #8, “Marginal Returns to Public Universities,” by Jack Mountjoy: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof. What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.

A few months ago, ICE hired me

I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable

And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!"

My latest for Slate

Immigration policy is #EdPolicy 😞