Research

Research Papers:

Using Technology to Reduce the Cost of High Dosage Tutoring: Experimental Evidence (with Monica Bhatt, Jon Guryan & Michael LaForest)

Previous research from the University of Chicago Education Lab has shown that high-dosage tutoring is one of the most effective education interventions to help students advance even if they are behind grade level. Research has shown that one year of Saga Education’s traditional, 2:1 high-dosage tutoring model improves a student’s math learning by an additional two to three years. While we know the traditional Saga tutoring model is effective, the cost of providing every two students with one tutor is cost-prohibitive for many school districts. Thus, even though high-dosage tutoring has been shown to be effective, many districts cannot implement this program at the scale needed. 

New research from the University of Chicago Education Lab shows that Saga Education’s blended-learning high dosage tutoring model, which introduces the use of an education technology platform in addition to in-person tutoring, provides similar gains in student math achievement as the traditional Saga tutoring model. The program reaches more students by increasing the student to tutor ratio to 4:1, and by using education technology platforms to also personalize instruction. In the blended learning model, students split their time between working in-person with a tutor and on an education technology platform.  With this blended model, we find students who participated in Saga’s blended-learning model gain an extra one to two years of additional math learning, when compared to students who did not participate. These results are promising, as they show that it is possible to scale up high-dosage tutoring by lowering the cost of the intervention while still preserving its effectiveness.

Learn more about our work by reading this two-pager.

"Unmet Expectations: The Impacts of School Construction on Female Outcomes in Rural Punjab, Pakistan” (Job Market Paper) (2 minute Video Documentary Style) (2 minute Video with Slides) (Blog) (Won Best Student Paper at AGEW 2021)

In this paper, I study the long-term and intergenerational effects of expanding educational opportunities through school construction in a low education setting with significant gender inequality (rural Punjab, Pakistan). Using administrative data on historical school construction that started in the 1960s, I exploit variation across birth cohorts and regions in the timing of school construction to build on a Difference-in-Differences approach that allows for staggered school construction in this context. I find that an additional girls’ school per 1000 children at the district level led to a 4-5 pp (20-25%) higher likelihood of girls completing primary education and increased their years of education by around 0.5 years. I do not find any statistically significant impact of the boys' school construction on their education. These findings indicate that improved access to schooling is driving the results on educational attainment since mobility restrictions, due to social norms, are only relevant for females in this setting.  I also find evidence of intergenerational impacts on educational attainment of children of mothers that are more exposed to the school construction program. However, I do not find corresponding improvements in female labor market or marriage market outcomes as a result of improved educational attainment. These findings contribute to a growing literature that finds that females in developing countries continue to face barriers in terms of later life outcomes despite improvements to their educational attainment especially in settings where social norms and the economic position of males may mediate these effects.  My findings provide valuable insights to policy makers interested in returns to girls education as well as addressing gender inequality in developing countries. 

Watch a quick summary of my JMP in 2 minutes (Documentary Style)

“Human Capital Investments of Young Hispanics: The Bright Side of the Great Recession?”

In this paper, I analyze the impact of the labor demand shocks induced by the Great Recession on the human capital investments of young Hispanics, a disadvantaged sub-group in United States on the basis of their education. I use a Bartik approach where I construct labor demand shocks separately by race group and ethnicity at the metropolitan area level to analyze their impact on schooling decision of young cohorts. I find that the higher responsiveness of young Hispanics, even conditional on the differential size of the shock experienced by Hispanics relative to other groups, can explain more than half of the observed convergence in High School dropout rates and college attendance rates between Hispanics and other groups following the Great Recession. My results are robust to specification checks for endogenous migration and highlight the impact shocks to opportunity cost can have on educational decisions of a historically disadvantaged group.

(Selected) Research Work in Progress:

“Impact of Lady Health Workers on fertility outcomes of rural females: Evidence from Pakistan.”

 “Local labor market outcomes and the slowdown in Mexican emigration to the United States” with Darren Lubotsky and Benjamin Feigenberg.

 “Determinants of non-compliance with Covid-19 regulations: the role of right wing groups?” with Hasin Yusuf.

 “Chance for All or Opportunity for Some: The case of Low Fee Private Schools in a low education setting.”