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School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Y. Yoo,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz,
Juan Camilo Cristancho
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-74
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 identified as having a disability, yet limited large-scale evidence examines how disability identification varies for students from different income backgrounds. Using unique data linking information on Oregon students and their family income, we document pronounced income-based differences in how students are categorized for two school-based disability supports: special education services and Section 504 plans. We find that a quarter of students in the lowest income percentile receive supports through special education, compared with less than seven percent of students in the top income percentile. This pattern may partially reflect differences in underlying disability-related needs caused by poverty. However, we find the opposite pattern for 504 plans, where students in the top income percentiles are two times more likely to receive 504 plan supports. We further document substantial variation in these income-based differences by disability category, by race/ethnicity, and by grade level. Together, these patterns suggest that disability-related needs alone cannot account for the income-based differences that we observe and highlight the complex ways that income shapes the school and family processes that lead to variability in disability classification and services.
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Gifted Identification Across the Distribution of Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Aaron J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-73
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 differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. 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. Income-based differences persist after accounting for student test scores and exist across students of different sexes and racial/ethnic groups, underscoring the importance of family resources for gifted identification in schools.
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Kids to School and Moms to Work: New York City's Universal Pre-K Expansion and Mother's Employment
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-62
Using the restricted data from American Community Survey from 2011 to 2017, this paper examines the impact of New York City's (NYC) expansion of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) on labor force participation of mothers with the youngest child of 4 years of age. Starting in Fall of 2014, any child who is 4 years old and residing in NYC for the past year is eligible for UPK for the academic year, for example all children born in 2010 would qualify for the academic year 2014-15. It uses a triple-difference approach - first compare mothers in NYC with the youngest child of 4-year-olds (treated mothers) to mothers with the youngest child of 5 and 6-year-olds (control mothers) before and after the program. Next, it compares this difference with mothers living in adjacent counties in the New York Metropolitan Area (NMA) in New York to NYC. I find that the program increased mothers' labor force participation by 5 percentage points (a 7.5 percent impact) in NYC. The results are robust to various robustness checks like comparing with mothers living in all of NMA and mothers in Philadelphia.
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The Design of Sampling Strata for the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-13
The National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) and Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), examines the food purchasing behavior of various subgroups of the U.S. population. These subgroups include participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), as well as households who are eligible for but don't participate in these programs. Participants in these social protection programs constitute small proportions of the U.S. population; obtaining an adequate number of such participants in a survey would be challenging absent stratified sampling to target SNAP and WIC participating households. This document describes how the U.S. Census Bureau (which is planning to conduct future versions of the FoodAPS survey on behalf of USDA) created sampling strata to flag the FoodAPS targeted subpopulations using machine learning applications in linked survey and administrative data. We describe the data, modeling techniques, and how well the sampling flags target low-income households and households receiving WIC and SNAP benefits. We additionally situate these efforts in the nascent literature on the use of big data and machine learning for the improvement of survey efficiency.
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Potential Bias When Using Administrative Data to Measure the Family Income of School-Aged Children
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-03
Researchers and practitioners increasingly rely on administrative data sources to measure family income. However, administrative data sources are often incomplete in their coverage of the population, giving rise to potential bias in family income measures, particularly if coverage deficiencies are not well understood. We focus on the school-aged child population, due to its particular import to research and policy, and because of the unique challenges of linking children to family income information. We find that two of the most significant administrative sources of family income information that permit linking of children and parents'IRS Form 1040 and SNAP participation records'usefully complement each other, potentially reducing coverage bias when used together. In a case study considering how best to measure economic disadvantage rates in the public school student population, we demonstrate the sensitivity of family income statistics to assumptions about individuals who do not appear in administrative data sources.
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The Effect of Food Assistance Work Requirements on Labor Market Outcomes
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-54
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly named the Food Stamp Program, has long been an integral part of the US social safety net. During US welfare reforms in the mid-1990s, SNAP eligibility became more restrictive with legislation citing a need to improve self-sufficiency of participating households. As a result, legislatures created two of these eligibility requirements: the General Work Requirement (GWR), which forces an adult to work to receive benefits, and the Able-Bodied Adult Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement, which requires certain adults to work a certain number of hours to receive benefits. Using restricted-access SNAP microdata from nine states, we exploit age cutoffs of the ABAWD work requirement and General Work Requirement (GWR) to estimate the effect of these policies on labor outcomes. We find that at the ABAWD age cutoff, there is no statistically significant evidence of a discontinuity across static and dynamic employment outcomes. At the GWR age cutoff, unemployed SNAP users and SNAP-eligible adults are on average more likely to leave the labor force than to continue to search for work.
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Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults
June 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-32
Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor's degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than students in traditional public schools. Although there is growing demand for virtual charter schools, our results suggest that students who enroll in virtual charters may face negative long-term consequences.
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Universal Preschool Lottery Admissions and Its Effects on Long-Run Earnings and Outcomes
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-09
We use an admissions lottery to estimate the effect of a universal (non-means tested) preschool program on students' long-run earnings, income, marital status, fertility and geographic mobility. We observe long-run outcomes by linking both admitted and non-admitted individuals to confidential administrative data including tax records. Funding for this preschool program comes from an Indigenous organization, which grants Indigenous students admissions preference and free tuition. We find treated children have between 5 to 6 percent higher earnings as young adults. The results are strongest for individuals from the lower half of the household income distribution in childhood. Likely mechanisms include high-quality teachers and curriculum.
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Measuring School Economic Disadvantage
November 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-50R
Many educational policies hinge on the valid measurement of student economic disadvantage at the school level. Measures based on free and reduced-price lunch enrollment are used widely. However, recent research raises questions about their reliability, particularly following the introduction of universal free lunch in certain schools and districts. Using unique data linking the universe of students in Oregon public schools to IRS tax records and other data housed at the U.S. Census Bureau, we provide the first examination of how well different measures capture school economic disadvantage. We find that, in Oregon, direct certification provides the best widely-available measure, both over time and across the distribution of school economic disadvantage. By contrast, neighborhood-based measures consistently perform relatively poorly.
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There is Such Thing as a Free Lunch: School Meals, Stigma, and Student Discipline
July 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-23R
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students regardless of household income. Conceptualizing universal meal provision as a strategy to alleviate stigma associated with school meals, we hypothesize that CEP implementation reduces the incidence of suspensions, particularly for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students. We link educational records for students enrolled in Oregon public schools between 2010 and 2017 with administrative data describing their families' household income and social safety net program participation. Difference-in-differences analyses indicate that CEP has protective effects on the probability of suspension for students in participating schools, particularly for students from low-income families, students who received free or reduced-price meals prior to CEP implementation, and Hispanic students.
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