Education Policy Commons^™

International Students In The Campus Carry Debate: A Descriptive Phenomenological Inquiry, Andre Richardo Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study purposefully sampled 15 graduate international students at a Southern University (SU). Semi-structured interviews were used to determine their perceptions and attitudes regarding the implementation of campus carry policies at the institution. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: How has the implementation of the campus carry policy at SU impacted international students’ perceptions of their experiences at the institution? How has the implementation of campus carry policies at SU influenced international students’ perceptions of the social ecology of the institution? and How did SU formally include international students in the on-campus campus carry policy …

Did Government Benefits Help Israeli Households Avoid Hardship During Covid-19? Evidence From A National Survey, Olga Kondratjeva, Talia Schwartz-Tayri, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, John Gal, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Israel quickly introduced aggressive social distancing measures to curb the virus spread and adapted its unemployment insurance program in response to rising unemployment rates. This study examines the relationship between household income and the experience of material hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, and investigates how the receipt of unemployment benefits moderated the relationship between income and material hardship. Using data from a household survey, we find a negative association between household income and the experience of material hardship. Moreover, middle-income households receiving unemployment benefits were more likely to …

Vaccine Hesitance During Covid-19: Exploring Motivations And Incentives, Laura Brugger

Social Policy Institute Research

As rates of vaccination have slowed, concerns are growing about how to increase vaccine uptake among those who are vaccine hesitant, particularly with the emergence of new and contagious variants such as Delta. Using our national Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey, we examine the predictors of vaccine hesitance in the U.S. and report on findings from an experiment assessing the potential impacts of vaccine incentive schemes.

Our study points to the difficulties in overcoming vaccine hesitance among the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitance was common across income levels, and experience with COVID-19-related hardships—such as knowing someone who died of the disease or …

Paid Sick Leave Heading Into Covid-19: A Descriptive Account Of Workers Who Lacked Paid Sick Leave, David Rothwell, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Paid sick leave is vital for controlling the spread of illness in the workplace and an invaluable public health tool, but too few workers have access to it. In this brief, we examine the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to assess paid sick leave coverage with a focus on the social and economic characteristics of workers without paid leave.

Using a nationally representative survey with roughly 4,000 working respondents, we found that a third lacked access to paid sick leave. Workers without paid leave were younger, more likely to be female, more likely to be white, and less likely to …

Expanded Child Tax Credit Payments Have Not Reduced Employment, Stephen Roll, Leah Hamilton, Yung Chun

Social Policy Institute Research

Approximately 60 million American children living in 35 million households are now receiving monthly payments from the federal government as part of the temporary Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. Recently, a debate has emerged over whether or not the expanded CTC will cause parents to leave the workforce. On one side of the debate, a large number of economists have argued that the CTC will not cause a reduction in employment. However, a recent study used a simulation approach to estimate that 2.6% of parents will exit the labor force as a result of the CTC.

The reports below address …

Charter School Funding: Dispelling Myths About Emos, Expenditure Patterns, & Nonpublic Dollars, Angela K. Dills, Patrick J. Wolf, Corey A. Deangelis, Jay F. May, Larry D. Maloney, Cassidy Syftestad

School Choice Demonstration Project

Three decades after the first charter school law passed in the United States, myths about these public schools not only persist but continue to fuel strong claims and divisive debates. Commentators point to education management organizations (EMOs), for-profit organizations which manage or operate a network of charter schools, as examples of private entities supposedly profiting off public education.

In this report, we dispel three common myths about charter schools and their funding, spending, and management (see box). We draw upon comprehensive school funding data collected from traditional public schools (TPS) and public charter schools in 18 cities during fiscal year …

Vaccination Options For Medicaid Parents Uncomfortable With Office Visits During Covid Pandemic, Amy Mcqueen, Tess Thompson, Enguday Teshome, Jennifer Staten, Saneel Kulkarni, Thidaporn Tanpattana, Lourdes Balaez, Matthew W. Kreuter

Social Policy Institute Research

Objective: Rates of child vaccinations declined during the COVID pandemic, which increases the risk of outbreaks of preventable diseases among children. Methods: We conducted an online survey of parents of Medicaid beneficiaries age 0-5 years old in Florida USA during January 2021 to assess barriers and strategies to increase adherence to childhood vaccinations.

Results: We surveyed 1,951 parents. Most (91%) respondents reported their child was up-to-date with childhood vaccinations, but fewer (36%) children had received a flu shot. Some (31%) parents had wanted to take their child to see a doctor but decided not to, and 22% were …

Impact Of Covid-19 On Households With Children, Alejandra Muñoz-Rivera, Jason Jabbari, Stephen Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

The COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruptions in employment, child care and education. As a result, both parents and children experienced a variety of hardships in their work and education. While these hardships had reverberating effects throughout households, they were not equally distributed across families with children. In this brief, we explore the effects of COVID-19 on families with children, highlighting unaddressed areas of need, as well as potential points of intervention. In this study we find:

• Almost one-quarter (22%) of families experienced job or income loss as a result of child care disruptions, which was especially prevalent in households with …

Use Of Public Benefits Over The First Year Of Pandemic, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen, Dan Zhao

Social Policy Institute Research

In response to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government enacted initiatives designed to help households weather the pandemic’s effects. These initiatives included expansions of existing programs, such as unemployment insurance, as well as new programs like the economic impact payments. In this brief, we investigate the extent to which households relied on an array of public benefit programs over the course of the pandemic, how they used their economic impact payments, and the extent to which the unemployment insurance expansion was effective in insulating recipients from hardship during the pandemic.

We find that, in …

Employment Changes During Covid-19, Mathieu Despard, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen

Social Policy Institute Research

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. unemployment peaked at 14.4%. While some workers have returned to payrolls, others have been left behind. This brief examines the nuances of employment changes over the course of the pandemic and the impact of those changes on household financial well-being. Our study finds that the proportion of employees who were laid off peaked in the spring of 2020 and has only recently returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, self-employment rose during the pandemic by 42% between the springs of 2020 and 2021. In households where someone lost a job during the pandemic, rates of financial …

Pandemic Schooling: Lessons In Equity, Advocacy, And Racial Justice, Donna Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It was my fourth year of teaching at a Brooklyn elementary school when the COVID-19 pandemic forced school buildings, and the entire city, to enter a world of lockdown and quarantine. New York City was an early epicenter of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, and the virus quickly revealed severe racial and socioeconomic disparities across the city. A disproportionate number of cases, serious illnesses, and death has been experienced by low-income Black and Latinx communities. At the same time, 2020 also ushered in a national racial reckoning following the May murder of George Floyd.

In this thesis, I will provide a …

Housing Hardships During Covid-19, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Yung Chun, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen

Social Policy Institute Research

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. households were burdened by the cost of rental and mortgage payments, burdens which disproportionately fell on Black and Hispanic families. Using a 5-wave survey, we examined whether disparities in housing cost burden continued throughout the pandemic and trends in how households fell behind on rent and mortgage payments. We found that more than a third of households experienced housing cost burdens during the pandemic, with a slightly higher percentage of households of color bearing cost burdens than white households. Renters had greater cost burdens than homeowners.

During the pandemic, significantly more Black and …

Employment, Financial And Well-Being Effects Of The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit: Wave 1 Executive Summary, Leah Hamilton, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Elaine Maag

Social Policy Institute Research

The 2021 temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) is unprecedented in its reach and is predicted to cut American child poverty by more than half. The expanded CTC provides families with $3,600 for every child in the household under the age of six, and $3,000 for every child between the ages of six and 17. Almost all middle- and low-income families with children are eligible for the CTC. Married parents making less than $150,000 and single parents making less than $112,500 per year will receive the full amount of the credit, which begins to phase out slowly after …

The Socioeconomic Impacts Of Covid-19 Study: Survey Methodology Report, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Yung Chun, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

The Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey uniquely documents the social and economic impacts of a global pandemic as people experienced the global pandemic. These findings can inform social, economic and health policies now and in the future. Though the data from the survey are not publicly available, they are freely available on a limited basis to interested researchers. If you or your organization are interested in accessing the cleaned and coded survey data, or would like more information about the survey, please reach out to the Social Policy Institute at.

Student And Teacher Diversity In The Mountain West, Marie A. Falcone, Guadalupe De La Rosa, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

K-12 Education

This fact sheet highlights public K-12 teacher and student diversity in the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. We explore data from Michael Hansen and Diana Quintero’s “Mountain West states face growing teacher diversity gaps” a 2018 Brookings Institution report. Specifically, we explore the teacher and student population in Mountain West states by race, revealing a disproportionate gap between students of color and teachers of color.

Pinching Pennies Or Money To Burn? The Role Of Grit In Financial Behaviors, Jason Jabbari, Joshua Jackson, Stephen Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

We explore whether gritty individuals are better savers by virtue of their wealth or due to diligent choices that benefit their long-term economic health. We test these competing hypotheses by examining the ways in which grit influences how LMI tax filers report spending or saving their tax refund in the months following tax filing. We leverage a novel dataset combining longitudinal household financial survey data with administrative tax data for a sample of 6,904 low- and moderate-income tax filers. After balancing individuals on grit with propensity score weighting and machine learning, we find that grit was associated with better financial …

“Take My Word For It”: Group Texts And Testimonials Enhance State And Federal Student Aid Applications', Jason Jabbari, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Jessica Mckay

Social Policy Institute Research

"As the cost of college continues to rise, it has become increasingly important for students to apply for financial aid. However, many students are unaware of the benefits of FAFSA. We launched a field experiment with a non-profit organization to explore the impact of text message interventions on FAFSA application rates. 2,236 potential students were randomized into three groups: a control group that focused on reminders for upcoming deadlines, a treatment group that focused on benefits-framed messaging, and a second treatment group that added social proofing and norming. Each group received 8 text messages from late September 2020 to early …

College-Educated Young Adults In The Mountain West, Eshaan Vakil, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet examines data originally published in “The Young and Restless and the Nation’s Cities,” a report prepared by Joe Cortright for the City Observatory. The original report explores the percentage of college-educated young adults (or individuals aged 25 to 34 with a bachelor’s degree), as well as the percentage these individuals made up of the total population in each metro area between 2000 and 2012. This fact sheet explores data for the following Mountain West places, as reported by the original source:

• Denver CSA (Combined Statistical Area)
• Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ Metro Area
• Las Vegas-Paradise, NV Metro Area
• Salt …

Timely And Well-Targeted Financial Assistance During Covid-19, Mathieu Despard, Selina Miller, Katie Kristensen

Social Policy Institute Research

The Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis partnered with PerkUp Financial Health LLC, a financial services technology company, to study an emergency financial assistance program offered to employees of three hotels in New Orleans, LA who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. PerkUp serves as a technology hub for a collaboration of non-profit partners that deliver financial support services and innovative products to employees of participating companies. The array of financial health services available through the PerkUp platform provides a financial safety net for the most financially vulnerable employees.

Improving K-12 Education For Hispanic Students In Las Vegas And Beyond, Richard Reeves, Ember Smith

Policy Briefs and Reports

Public K-12 education serves as a launching pad for economic mobility and opportunity, preparing students for college or a good-paying job. Despite K-12 education’s influence on later-in-life outcomes, schools often underserve students of color. Hispanic students in particular constitute a significant and growing portion of the U.S. student population yet are often overlooked in education literature because they are not the lowest performing demographic. In this brief, we examine how well public K-12 education serves Hispanic students in Clark County, where nearly half of students are Hispanic. We then consider factors that may influence student performance, including both in-school factors …

Charter School Funding: Support For Students With Disabilities, Cassidy Syftestad, Patrick J. Wolf, Wendy Tucker, Lauren Morando Rhim

School Choice Demonstration Project

The subject of public charter schools and students with disabilities is both important and sensitive. These students have the potential to benefit greatly from the smaller size and specialized focus of many public charter schools, but questions persist regarding whether all or even most charters are as receptive to enrolling students with disabilities as they are to serving students who do not have disabilities. Furthermore, do differences in enrollment of students with disabilities explain differences in funding between the two sectors? To shine a brighter light on this vital question, we have conducted a careful study of the funding surrounding …

The Child Population In The Mountain West, Marie A. Falcone, Eshaan Vakil, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet focuses on the demographics of the child population (under 18 years old) in the five Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah from 2010 to 2019. Most Mountain West states demonstrate a substantial decline in their child populations during this time period; causing considerable impacts on the future workforce. The child populations in these states are dominated by children of color, most of whom are living in high levels of poverty.

K-12 Discipline Disparities In The Six Largest U.S. School Districts, Marie A. Falcone, Saha Salahi, Olivia K. Cheche, Peter Grema, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

K-12 Education

This fact sheet highlights K-12 school discipline disparities by race in the six largest school districts in the United States. The districts include New York City Public Schools, NY; Los Angeles Unified, CA; Chicago Public Schools, IL; (Miami) Dade County, FL; Clark County School District (CCSD), NV; and Broward County, FL. Data are compiled from the Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2015-2016 academic year. Specifically, we examine the data for the discipline strategies of in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions.

2021 Salary Scores: University Of Nevada, Las Vegas And University Of Nevada, Reno, Olivia K. Cheche, Emmanuel A. Berrelleza, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet provides a comparative analysis on salary earnings for graduates of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Data are gathered from the GradReports website, which offers salary scores ranging from 0 to 100 for UNLV and UNR degree programs.

220— Affirmative Action As Part Of Educational Reform In The U.S, Yadariselt Romano

GREAT Day Posters

Affirmative action is one of the most controversial topics in American politics as many groups fight for more expansive affirmative action while other groups are calling for their complete removal. Affirmative action in higher education is a series of policies that were enacted by the US government to ensure that historically underrepresented people were able to obtain academic opportunities from which they have been historically excluded from. However, almost sixty-one years later after the implementation of the first policies approved by JFK, has anything changed? This research will aim to evaluate whether various affirmative action policies across several states have …

2022 Graduate Program Rankings, Unlv & Unr, Madison Frazee-Bench, Marie A. Falcone, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This Fact Sheet presents the 2022 U.S. News and World Report Graduate program rankings for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). The rankings for 2022 are important when taking into consideration that both UNLV and UNR reached Carnegie R1 status in 2018. This status marks their place in the top 130 research universities in the country.

The Issue Of Unemployment Among People With Disabilities, Angelina C. Pagano

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The rate of unemployment for people with disabilities continues to rise greatly above that of people without disabilities. The issue seems to be exacerbated by employer biases and concerns which are not supported in the face of evidence. A lack of employer education on disability related subjects causes this misconception among both employers and the public as a whole. To resolve the underlying problem of miseducation, an increase in the self-identification of people with disabilities is necessary to provide researchers with data to assist in the formation of a revised curriculum.

Modernizing Tuition Assistance: Programs To Build A 21st Century Workforce, Mgm Public Policy Institute

Pathways for Postsecondary Education

This is the first paper in a series from the MGM Resorts Public Policy Institute at UNLV, exploring tuition assistance programs. This report provides a broad overview of tuition assistance programs, and key challenges and insights about best practices.

Does Frequency Or Amount Matter? Testing The Perceptions Of Four Universal Basic Income Proposals, Leah Hamilton, Mathieu Despard, Stephen Roll, Dylan Bellisle, Christian A. Hall, Allison Wright

Social Policy Institute Research

The concept of universal basic income (UBI) first gained traction in the United States in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and again recently due to the 2008 recession and COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the idea lags in popularity in comparison to existing cash transfer policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit and COVID relief packages. We hypothesize that this disparity is related to predicted uses of a UBI in comparison annual or lump sum cash programs. In this survey of 837 American Amazon MTurk workers, we explore whether predicted behavioral responses to four randomly assigned hypothetical cash transfer scenarios vary across …

Bipolaridad De Las Políticas De Movilidad Del Valle De Aburrá: Análisis Desde Los Instrumentos De Gestión De La Demanda Implementados Entre 1999 Y 2019, Viviana Tobón Jaramillo

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

Medellín and the Aburrá Valley are internationally recognized for their capacity to design bold projects regarding transportation and sustainability. However, the city's mobility dynamics show a different reality: the number of vehicles has grown steadily over the last 20 years. The metropolitan inhabitants spend 44% more time mobilizing in the city than 12 years ago and air quality has become the main challenge on the city's environmental agenda. The purpose of this article is to understand, from the analysis of public policies, the reasons why no progress has been made in the implementation of policies that effectively discourage the use …