Christina Weiland

Hadn’t seen a women in education policy research starter pack yet. Please let me know if I missed you… still getting my bearings in the new place. go.bsky.app/PixwBrM

139 schools closed—20% of West Virginia's public schools—gone in 15 years. 🏫 #KohnProfessor @weilanch.bsky.social built a school closure tracker to put this data where it belongs: in the hands of communities fighting for solutions. Read the Q&A: https://myumi.ch/G7W2P

New: Since DOGE cut the statistical arm of the Education Department, basic facts about American schools are no longer readily available. Some of these data points can be found elsewhere but are now harder to track down. Others simply don't exist anymore. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/05/07/e...

So proud of Jordy!!

POSTDOC OPENING! We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow for a mixed-methods project aimed at supporting and researching implementation of high-quality preschool curricula. The position is 1-2 years and can be in person or remote. More details here: edpolicy.umich.edu/what-we-do/j...

How much time do Pre-K students spend learning different things? TLDR: It depends on how you measure it. With @weilanch.bsky.social, Meghan McCormick, and Catherine Snow, we compared two classroom time-use instruments using the same classroom videos. Read open access here: shorturl.at/LPnai

@weilanch.bsky.social comments on Michigan’s Tri-Share program. When discussing solving financial difficulties of paying for child care, Weiland says, “Tri-Share is never going to solve the problem.” Read her full thoughts here: https://myumi.ch/P3X2y

We’re hiring a Research Coordinator! Please share.

Important, clever paper by MI-based team. @weilanch.bsky.social Basically, most kids flagged for 3rd-grade retention in MI weren’t retained. But did get add’l supports—as did kids near the retention point. Those supports spurred academic gains, raising doubts about retention impacts elsewhere.

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "Early Grade Retention Harms Adult Earnings" by Jiee Zhong. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

📢 New postdoc opportunity at Annenberg! The Annenberg Institute is seeking a postdoctoral research associate for a 2‐year appointment to join a diverse community of scholars committed to educational equity and improvement! More info here: annenberg.brown.edu/opportunitie...

Early education programs improve children’s readiness for kindergarten. Learn more about the elements that ensure high-quality ECE in Christina Weiland (@weilanch.bsky.social) and Paola Guerrero Rosada's (@paolaguerreror.bsky.social) chapter, Quality in ECE: livehandbook.org/early-educat...

The Fall Edition of the EPI Newsletter is here! mailchi.mp/umich.edu/ed... Stay up to date with the latest in education policy research, events, & publications. In this issue, you'll find: 📚 Research shaping education policy 📝 Publications and news 🤝 Research partnership updates

Welcome @edpolicyford.bsky.social to Bluesky!! Give a follow for research and happenings from our fantastic UMich faculty and students.

Ughh… the Child Care and Early Education Research Connections website and library will no longer be available after Sept. 30. Pull what you need! researchconnections.org If there is an effort to back it up underway, I’d love to know.

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: How can we measure student behavior at scale? @tiffanyxwu.bsky.social, @weilanch.bsky.social, @mattadiemer.bsky.social, Rebecca Unterman, @annakshapiro.bsky.social, & Thomas Staines use PCA and factor analysis to build behavior composites from admin data. 📄 bit.ly/4ofre5b

Researchers examine the impacts of transitional kindergarten, a publicly funded learning option that bridges prekindergarten and kindergarten, helping guide state programming and offering more information on the complicated early learning landscape. ➡️ bit.ly/3Sfrp1t

Big shout out to this amazing team, led by @weilanch.bsky.social Want more details but don’t have time to read the paper? See thread from @tiffanyxwu.bsky.social

🤔 What kind of Pre-K experience sets students up for long-term success? Our new working paper offers important new evidence to help answer this question! 🔗 edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai25-1194.pdf And 🧵👇

Using data from Michigan, we find that third grade retention for struggling readers may be a much less important component of the benefits of literacy reforms than previously understood. (Thx, @annenberginstitute.bsky.social, for the dissemination bump!)

Does school funding actually improve outcomes? 🤔Join our first-ever #EdWorkingPapers webinar Wed 5/21 at 2pm ET with @emilyrauscher.bsky.social and @chriscandelaria.com to find out. buff.ly/TW1oFhu #research #schoolfunding

🧵 But since Head Start's inception, there have been disagreements about whether or not the program "works." So let's review what we know from rigorous research on Head Start's effectiveness, and let's start with what it means for the program to work. 🧵 1/n

We asked 1,368 public school-based pre-K teachers across the country about the materials they use, their instructional resources and planning time, and how their programs align with elementary grades. Read more in my new co-authored report: www.rand.org/t/rra3279-3

Hours after we published this story on our site we received news that staffers in five of Head Start's 10 regional offices were put on leave. We're trying to track the on-the-ground implications -- please email me at samuels@hechingerreport.org or Signal cas.37 hechingerreport.org/head-start-i...

Head Start, which serves over 800K children and their families all over the country, was hit hard today by the HHS layoffs. <1% of HS’s annual funding is spent on federal staff. nhsa.org/press_releas...

As universal prekindergarten (UPK) expands, understanding which community-based organizations (CBOs) apply—and why—matters for equity and access. With @weilanch.bsky.social, Meghan McCormick, Catherine Snow. Read more: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1151 #ECE #UPK #EquitableECE #EduSky #WomaninQuant

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

In a devastating week for Ed research, #AEFP2025 is a balm to the soul. That goes double for the fantastic presentations by junior scholars. Today's UMich contributions, spanning early childhood, K-12, and higher ed:

Check out the livehandbook.org, an open-access resource that will be continuously updated to serve as a hub of policy relevant #educationresearch. @weilanch.bsky.social and I coauthored a chapter on ECE quality. This kind of initiatives bring me hope in challenging times for the education field.

I keep hearing the question: What's the biggest impact of Trump education disruptions so far? My answer: Research. Data. Knowledge on how students are doing and how schools might improve. All of this is being decimated. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/u...

The dismantling of NCES is insane and will critically hobble progress in improving education - this agency is so important it existed more than 100 years before the creation of Department of Education.

Yesterday ~68 people employed in HHS's Administration for Children & Families early childhood offices were terminated. I'm told Office of Head Start lost ~20% of staff; Office of Child Care lost ~25% These workers process grants for preschools/childcare centers, monitor health/safety issues, etc.

FANTASTIC ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?) You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them 1/N Inequality in college graduation rates Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...

Find out how much federally funded education programs benefit students in **each congressional district** in the US In this crucial new dashboard tool @UmichPoverty poverty.umich.edu/federal-educ...

Every Child Left Behind

Hearing from a govt contractor that Dept of Education is terminating What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) contracts. WWC is a website that rigorously evaluates education policies, programs, and products to determine what's effective and not. It's an invaluable tool for school, district, state leaders

🌟 Did you know that most federal education data are archived in the @urbaninstitute.bsky.social Education Data Explorer? It's a great resource for research and analysis - and there's even a full API version linked in thread. 🌟 #EduSky #EdPoliSky #EduSkyECEC educationdata.urban.org/data-explorer

Re: the cuts to overhead from NIH grants: The leading category of study at NIH is cancer research, an area that has produced breakthrough drugs to extend survival for people with blood cancers. As the parent of a child who not long ago finished treatment for blood cancer, this policy makes me weep.

Welcome! The Youth Policy Lab has joined BlueSky! Follow us to learn how we are informing public policy decisions that impact youth by analyzing data and evaluating programs to help society answer its most pressing questions. #youthpolicylab #youthpolicy