Dr. Chloe Gibbs: Education, Invested.

0:00:09.7 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning. From the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So we pair two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests, share your takeaways and come back for more. You're listening to Think. Pair. Share, with me, Audrey Scott.
 
0:00:42.5 AS: I'm glad to welcome Dr. Chloe Gibbs to Think. Pair. Share. Chloe is an assistant professor of economics and the newly selected Director of Notre Dame's Program for Interdisciplinary Educational Research, or ND PIER. Chloe studies the Economics of Education, how investments we make in children's lives generate short and long-term outcomes. She's interested in measuring the effects both intended and unintended of education policies and interventions on disadvantaged children and families. Chloe's commitment and vision sheds a whole new light on how cool it is to be an economist.
 
0:01:18.8 AS: Thank you so much for being here, Chloe.
 
0:01:20.7 Dr. Chloe Gibbs: Thank you for having me.
 
0:01:22.0 AS: So excited for our conversation. And I also just want to start by congratulating you on your new post as the director for ND PIER.
 
0:01:31.3 Chloe Gibbs: Thank you. I'm very excited to be taking on that role and looking forward to how it unfolds and working with the students.
 
0:01:37.2 AS: And I will ask you more about that, of course, but first we'll jump into those fun questions and we'll start with the rapid fire ones. Spring or Fall?
 
0:01:43.2 CG: Fall.
 
0:01:43.5 AS: Orange or black?
 
0:01:44.7 CG: Orange.
 
0:01:45.9 AS: Ghosts or goblins?
 
0:01:47.5 CG: Ghosts.
 
0:01:48.5 AS: Pumpkin patch or haunted house?
 
0:01:50.8 CG: Pumpkin patch.
 
0:01:52.2 AS: Picking apples or bobbing for apples?
 
0:01:54.4 CG: Picking apples.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:01:57.5 AS: I don't know who bobs for apples these days.
 
0:01:58.0 CG: Yes. That does not sound appealing.
 
0:02:01.3 AS: It's not my cup of tea either. Never was, I guess. Apple cider or apple pie?
 
0:02:08.8 CG: Apple cider.
 
0:02:08.9 AS: Black cats or spiders?
 
0:02:11.1 CG: Black cats.
 
0:02:12.1 AS: Excellent. Okay, so that was the fun little rapid fire once, and then we're gonna ask some other ones and you may see a continuing theme.
 
0:02:19.6 CG: Okay.
 
0:02:20.5 AS: What are you dressing up for Halloween like this year?
 
0:02:22.5 CG: I haven't really thought about it. I have four kids, so I've spent more time discussing with them what they are dressing up as, and usually what both my husband and I just kind of fill in with a theme, if we can, alongside what they're doing. So we're still working on it.
 
0:02:36.8 AS: Do you have a favorite theme you guys have dressed up for in the past?
 
0:02:39.9 CG: We did superheroes one year, and that was pretty fun. Everybody... We had a Supergirl, and we had a Wonder Woman and I was Cat Woman, and my husband was Batman. So that was pretty fun.
 
0:02:50.3 AS: Do you guys go around your neighborhood and everything?
 
0:02:53.0 CG: We do, and our neighborhood is great, we have a lot of kids, a lot of kids my children's age. And so it's really fun.
 
0:03:00.6 AS: That's awesome. Can I ask the age range for your kids?
 
0:03:02.2 CG: Yes. They are two, six, 10 and 11.
 
0:03:07.2 AS: Oh my gosh. Great range. A two-year-old, I didn't realize you have a two-year-old, that's so sweet.
 
0:03:10.6 CG: Yes. Pandemic guy. Because he's been home for so long, so he's just now kind of venturing out into the world.
 
0:03:16.4 AS: How has that been different for you to watch that? That's interesting.
 
0:03:20.0 CG: It's been interesting, he had a bit of a speech delay during the pandemic, perhaps not surprisingly, but then he started getting some services for that, and now that he's back out interacting with more people, and he goes to preschool, no delays anymore. And he's certainly caught up, he's gone the direction of being a social butterfly in response to having just been with his family for so long.
 
0:03:46.9 AS: That's wonderful. That's encouraging.
 
0:03:49.1 CG: Yes, I think you can imagine it going one of two ways, and the way he has gone is that people outside of our house are much more interesting than the ones he spent 18 months cooped up with.
 
0:04:00.1 AS: He'll come back around, I'm sure.
 
0:04:01.3 CG: Yes, hopefully.
 
0:04:02.9 AS: Do you like scary movies?
 
0:04:05.4 CG: I do not. It is not my thing. The only time I have is usually the night time, and so I can't watch a scary movie before I go to sleep, doesn't mesh well with sleeping well.
 
0:04:17.8 AS: I hear you. Do you have a favorite Halloween candy?
 
0:04:21.1 CG: Halloween candy. Well, I'm a sort of a... I think I'm an outlier here. I really like coconut, so I'm a big fan of Almond Joy and Mounds, and my kids always are like, "Oh, those are for mom, and those over." So those are my favorites.
 
0:04:38.3 AS: It seems fair too that you get certain ones or just the mom tax.
 
0:04:42.1 CG: Exactly, exactly.
 
0:04:43.0 AS: And my sister always took all the Reese's peanut butter cups, she somehow tricked us into trading all of ours, "That's only three of those, and I'll give you all of these."
 
0:04:53.4 CG: It sounds like an economist in the making there.
 
0:04:56.7 AS: I'll have to compliment her in that way next time.
 
0:05:00.9 CG: Yeah.
 
0:05:01.0 AS: So just feeling like I was had. What is your favorite holiday?
 
0:05:03.2 CG: My favorite holiday is actually probably Thanksgiving. I like the holidays where there's not a whole lot of build-up preparation, but you spend time with family and it's relaxing and that sort of thing, so I like Thanksgiving, I like the fourth of July, things like that, where there's just kind of a gathering, but especially as a parent, there's not a whole lot of preparation that I have to do for the day.
 
0:05:25.5 AS: I agree, family time is really when you can sit back and relax and just enjoy each other.
 
0:05:29.3 CG: Exactly.
 
0:05:31.2 AS: Wonderful. And I think I know, well, I don't know, maybe I don't know the answer to this. Are you superstitious?
 
0:05:36.3 CG: I'm not particularly superstitious. When I was a kid, I had some strange little superstitions, but...
 
0:05:43.4 AS: Dare I ask what one of the strange little superstitions was?
 
0:05:49.0 CG: I'm trying to remember. I can remember my parents always sort of like trying to talk me out of them.
 
0:05:54.1 AS: I don't even know if they'd be considered superstitions, but when you went over a railroad tracks, you had to raise your feet or hold your breath past the cemetery or...
 
0:06:01.5 CG: My kids still do that one, the holding the breath, unless you're wearing red or something... There's like...
 
0:06:06.9 AS: A new twist.
 
0:06:09.0 CG: Yes. There is one way you can get out of it. That one... So those were the kinds of things I did a lot as a kid. Also, things that I thought were lucky, so when something good happen, I was wearing this particular shirt, so now I've gotta wear this particular shirt, those kinds of things. I was pretty committed to.
 
0:06:25.7 AS: Yeah, I could see that. I think a lot of athletes are still committed to those kinds of things, like the cubs not shaving their beards. It finally worked.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:06:33.4 CG: Yeah.
 
0:06:37.3 AS: Alright, thank you so much. I think that's great. And then maybe just like a little bit of a transition. Do you have any Autumn traditions? Are you from the Midwest? Do you like the seasons?
 
0:06:44.2 CG: I grew up in Kentucky, which some people consider Midwest, some people consider South, has a little bit of both. Exactly. But I just like all of the kind of cozy fall things, we like going apple picking and going to a pumpkin patch, and then love watching football and making chilli and all of the things that come along with the change in seasons. That's a fun transition.
 
0:07:14.1 AS: I do too. I look forward to all those, I think you're in the right place with most of those things at Notre Dame.
 
0:07:16.9 CG: Exactly. [chuckle]
 
0:07:20.1 AS: What was your path to Notre Dame from Kentucky?
 
0:07:21.4 CG: I actually went to Notre Dame as an undergraduate, and so this was now 20 some years ago. I grew up Catholic in Kentucky, where I grew up in the center of the state, not particularly Catholic in nature. And so when I was looking at colleges, I was interested in potentially going to a place that was Catholic and had a Catholic identity and mission associated with it. And my dad, who was a Boston college grad, said, "Well, if you're gonna go to a Catholic institution, you have to go to Notre Dame. It's the best institution in the country." Don't tell his uncles that, who's also BC grad, uncles that, but he sort of steered me here, I had visited as an eighth grade or when my sister was looking at colleges, and I just loved the campus and I really fell in love with the environment.
 
0:08:17.8 CG: It just felt like the college experience to me, and so that's how I initially was here, and then my career took many twists and turns from there, and I went to graduate school and actually my first job out of my PhD program was at the University of Virginia, and then this opportunity to come back to join as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department came up, and of course, I was interested, and it also aligned well with where our family is; and we have, as I said, four kids, and so it just worked out well for us on a number of dimensions, professionally and personally. And so that's how my path first started at Notre Dame and then came back to Notre Dame.
 
0:09:06.7 AS: Oh, nice. I have to laugh, kudos to your dad for being able to be confident in his advice.
 
0:09:11.5 CG: I know.
 
0:09:13.0 AS: That's funny. I went here undergrad as well, and afterwards I worked in Boston for a while, and so beautiful area and lots of friends went to BC. So it's a fun rivalry, I think so.
 
0:09:24.8 CG: It is, it definitely is.
 
0:09:27.5 AS: Of course, we're on the right side of that.
 
0:09:30.1 CG: Right, exactly.
 
0:09:31.4 AS: What piqued your initial interest in economics?
 
0:09:32.4 CG: So economics is, to me, a set of tools and a lens for looking at the world and understanding a variety of problems and potential solutions to those problems, and so for me, it was more of a perspective of how we approach puzzles that we see in the world. And so I think economists bring a neat set of both theoretical tools for understanding how people, institutions behave under particular constraints, and really all policy problems are of that flavor, and I, actually, my training was in policy, I did a master's in Public Policy, and then I worked for a while on education policy issues, and so it was really that kind of set of both theoretical tools and then empirical tools to take the theory to data and actually test these questions that we were interested in.
 
0:10:35.2 CG: That was really appealing to me as a social science perspective, and so that's kind of how I arrived here, and it's always a bit confusing to people that I study education, but I'm an economist. "And how do those work? Don't you study the stock market?" And I always say to that that if economics was only about the stock market and inflation and monetary policy, those kinds of questions, it really would not be the right place for me. It was really the economist toolkit for understanding social problems, for understanding the kinds of policies that we leverage to address those problems and whether or not they're working, that really drew me in.
 
0:11:19.8 AS: That's a really great perspective actually. And thank you for clearing that up. I think that's a natural question.
 
0:11:24.2 CG: Yes.
 
0:11:26.2 AS: Correct me if I'm wrong, are you more sort of a... It's not Arts and Letters, but it's not a business degree, right?
 
0:11:31.1 CG: Yeah. So economics is in the College of Arts and Letters. At different institutions, it can be with the Arts and Sciences, group with the social sciences, or it can be in a business school. I think when it is housed in a business school, it does have a slightly different focus. Certainly, the teaching looks different when you're in a business school versus when you're in a more liberal arts kind of environment. And so here, in most places where I think I would feel most comfortable, it sits alongside the other Social Sciences, so sociology, psychology, and I mean that both literally and that we're all in the very close proximity on campus, but also figuratively that we are very much sort of aligned and the kinds of questions that we ask, the kinds of... Even some of the tools, the underlying tools that we use are very similar. And so sociologist studying education and a psychologist studying education and an economist studying education would have much more in common, and actually, I think much more aligned in the types of questions and their interests than even you might find between a macro economist study monetary policy and a laborer economist, like I am studying education.
 
0:12:45.9 AS: In the classroom, what do you want that distinction to mean for the students?
 
0:12:50.7 CG: So in the classroom, I have three main aims when I teach an Economics of Education course. I want students to understand the theoretical lens and underlying conceptual framework that economists bring to these questions. And so that's everything from understanding why does a person decide to go to college and what in that decision is influenced by policies that we leverage, by the prices that they face for college, by their experiences to date, their upbringing, that kind of thing. And so we bring some theoretical tools to understanding that problem, then we sort of build those out to think about other questions, about what leads a family to decide to send their child to preschool and what type of preschool, how do families make decisions about whether or not to send their children to private school or to public school, or what does that range of options look like.
 
0:13:49.5 CG: So economics is really about making decisions given the constraints in the context you're working in, and so the first and foremost angle in my class is to give them the tools to think through those kinds of decisions, and then how policy might influence those decisions in better ideally or worse ways. So we do that, we do the conceptual foundation from economics, and then we move into thinking about, "Okay, how do we actually test how this works in the real world?" To really get answers to some of the big questions, for example, why is there differential college going for kids from low income families and kids from high income families? And is there a policy lever that could potentially address that, such that the kinds of students who would benefit from going to college, who are from low income families, go to college at the same rates that those same students from high income families go.
 
0:14:46.9 CG: And so then we use empirical tools to turn to data and think about how best we answer those questions. And there's a lot of challenges in doing that, so we work through how we best study these questions and what are the qualities of a good study and what are the qualities of a potentially flawed study that doesn't help us get to a good answer. And so it's really about the sort of interaction of theory and data. And then the final piece is that I would like them to be able to use what we learn about in class to think about the real policy ramification, so to really think about when, for example, the Biden administration is floating an idea to forgive student loan debt or is thinking about a universal pre-K program for four-year-olds, that they have a foundation to be able to assess those kinds of policies, so what's the best evidence say about whether this will work and for whom it will work.
 
0:15:49.4 CG: So it's really, those are the three goals I have in class, is really to build up the theory so that they're thinking and approaching these kinds of questions like an economist, to help them with some data skills, such that they can understand how we turn to data to answer questions and then to them really be able to use it to inform policy making and thinking about real policy implications.
 
0:16:14.6 AS: It sounds very interesting. I think I need to sit in on your class.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:16:19.0 CG: It's a fine one. We do a whirlwind tour through from early childhood all the way through college, and then we do some international education topics, so it's a whirlwind.
 
0:16:30.8 AS: Wow, that's great. It sounds extremely interesting though. What kind of questions or feedback do you get from students?
 
0:16:36.3 CG: So I think students come to my class with... My understanding is broadly two goals, one is that they care deeply about education questions, and so they're really interested in knowing, how best do we address inequitable access to education resources or to college-going or to high quality pre-K. So they're really motivated by those of questions, and then I think the second piece is much more practical, they want skills that are then useful as they move into either careers or to go to graduate school, or if they're gonna go and eventually work in education policy space or run education programs, or work in a school district or for a state government, they want the kinds of skills that will make them equipped for those kinds of jobs.
 
0:17:34.2 CG: So that's really why I've structured the class in the way that I have, because I want them to get traction on both of those aims, I want them to leave the class with an understanding of some of the very difficult and deep problems in our education systems, and what we have learned about what works in the context of that inequitable system that does not function perfectly, so what have we learned about how we improve outcomes in that space, and then I also want them to leave being able to work on those problems to go into jobs or graduate school where they are now building the skills and they have a foundation in those skills to actually be able to help us learn more and address these problems in new and different ways.
 
0:18:25.1 AS: Ultimately, I know when people are an ACE, that if they don't wanna stay say in the classroom, that one of the options is, "Hey, but you can have the economics background, and you can work on policy." Is that something that you talk about in the classroom? Does that make sense?
 
0:18:41.9 CG: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
 
0:18:42.7 AS: Okay, okay.
 
0:18:44.2 CG: Yeah, so in the context of my Economics of Education class and other classes that I've taught in the Economics Department, I always have some students who are interested in going either into ACE, there's always a... I would say a large group of students interested in ACE and then other potential ways of working in schools and some other types of service roles that are working with children or families in ways that might sort of surround their educational experiences, so tutoring, various AmeriCorps types of efforts. And so I always have students that are interested in that track, and they're always kind of thinking where then do I go from there? If it turns out that I'm not necessarily gonna stay in the classroom or in direct service? Are there ways that I can still use my talents and my skills that I've developed in service of others and in pursuit of better outcomes for kids, for families? Particularly those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.
 
0:19:45.8 CG: And I always say that I think that direct experience gives you really important context to be able to think about the 30,000 feet questions at the policy level, whether that's a school's policy, a school district's policy, a state's policy, or even the federal government that having those real life experiences, I think both can motivate you to really wanna zero in on important questions and can provide important context to thinking about those kinds of policy questions. And also you can then move into a round where you're using additionally, some of these skills about assessing policy implications about analyzing the costs and benefits of different investments that we might make. And so there is a role for people who are thinking about these very real challenges in both spaces, both directly working with the individuals that are experiencing these challenges and in shaping policy that tackles these challenges.
 
0:20:49.2 AS: Thank you. That's extremely helpful, and I'm glad that they're hearing about other ways that they can still continue to use their skills for good.
 
0:20:58.1 CG: Right, exactly.
 
0:21:00.6 AS: If you can tell me a little bit about ND PIER and as the new director, as you look ahead, what does that role look like for you?
 
0:21:05.9 CG: ND PIER is an interdisciplinary graduate training program. And so the idea behind it is that there are graduate students pursuing interesting education questions in their different disciplines, be that sociology or economics, or in psychology, political science. So students are rated across the university who are studying these important questions, and the idea of behind ND PIER is to support them in that pursuit and to bring them together in ways that might be productive and beneficial for their individual work. So if they were the only students, say in a cohort over in political science that was thinking about questions related to education systems and policies and practices, then they might not get the exposure to what other questions, what other data people are exploring, what other opportunities exist for them to expand on their work.
 
0:22:04.7 CG: And so what we hope is in bringing them together with students who are also studying education who may have very different questions, but may be able to bounce ideas off of and contribute to their work that we get some benefits from this collaboration and this group sort of orientation. And so the way that we think about the program is that there are these big, very important, very challenging questions that face schools, how schools are run, how students have access to schools, and then of course, the outcomes that schools produce.
 
0:22:42.9 CG: And so our hope is that we can provide students with the kinds of opportunities and exposure to make them better researchers and to improve the quality of education research more broadly, to contribute to their development in ways that then sort of set them off into the world to do the kinds of education research that we think can have big policy impact. And so that's really our goal with the program is to support them in their pursuit of a PhD, to bring in speakers to get them exposure to established scholars who are studying similar questions to also bring them together as a group so that they can brainstorm and work together and learn from one another, and that hopefully that then trains a generation of scholars who will be tackling the very questions that those of us who care about education are wrestling with all the time.
 
0:23:40.6 AS: Is there an effort to de-silo, I know it's wonderful to be focused, but maybe not so siloed.
 
0:23:47.6 CG: This is an ongoing challenge for programs like this, but also generally for academia and how universities think about research and about the work that we do. The incentives that people face are all still within their discipline, they have to finish dissertation in whatever discipline they're in, and they have to meet the standards and the expectations of the people that are reviewing them within that discipline. And then eventually they wanna get that work published, and so they have to get that work published within their disciplinary journals with reviewers who are gonna have the expectations of that specific discipline. So we don't want to impose any more separate expectations or an additional bar that you have to meet that your work has to in and of itself, be somewhat interdisciplinary. We want students to be doing excellent work within their disciplines.
 
0:24:42.3 CG: But we hope that the de-siloing is more of the nature that there is this communication across the scholars that are studying different things and that someone can always have a point or a data set they know of, or a context that they know of where you might be able to further push your research questions and the topics on your agenda. So what we're hoping for is to maximize the benefits of that interaction, and I do think that when you are, for example, the only person studying education questions or one of a few people studying education questions in your particular department, it can be harder to get access to those kinds of tips and insights and other scholars working on similar questions. So it's more like de-siloing for the purposes of helping everyone get access to the full range of opportunities available to them.
 
0:25:40.7 AS: It sounds like it maybe gives their area of focus a little bit more of a nuance, they might not have realized had a connection.
 
0:25:47.5 CG: Right, and I think that's often the case that if you are exclusively reading work and education that is in sociology journals and you're only interacting with a sub-set of people in sociology, you might just miss that there is this new relevant paper or there is this new interesting data set, or there's this new policy that Indiana is considering and that would be a context in which you could test and examine your question. So I think the hope is that they get this kind of additional input into the process of thinking about their own questions.
 
0:26:27.0 AS: Clearly there are already lots of really great things going on for ND PIER. But I'm wondering, as the new director, is there anything else you'd like to focus on or maybe put your personal stamp on?
 
0:26:36.6 CG: I think the main thing is through building of community, the structure, I think is there and it's working well, I think the components of the fellowship as we've designed them, I've been involved even before I was Director in designing the program. I think we are generally very happy with where it is in terms of the structure. And so my focus going forward will really be about the community of scholars, and we're at 19 fellows now across the disciplines studying education questions, there are varying points and there are trajectories, so some are finishing up, some are just starting their PhD careers. And so my hope is really that we can, especially in this kind of post-COVID time where some students spent their first year of graduate studies almost fully online and not interacting with each other much, especially not in person. And so going forward, I really want to build up the community in ways that all of the fellows feel like they have this group that they can turn to with questions that they can rely on.
 
0:27:47.3 CG: I was trained in a similar kind of program at the University of Chicago, and one really neat thing for me as I've moved out of the PhD and into my career is to see the successes of my fellow fellows who were also in the program with me and they're in different disciplines. I will see at an education conference that someone wins an early career award, or I will see a new publication from one of my co-fellows in the program at U Chicago and that is a really neat experience because we all moved through together, all pursuing our own questions and our own research, but in a way that really supported one another, and so it's really neat to see their successes now. And that's one thing that I hope our students get from this program too, is that you go through your PhD program, not only with your cohort of fellow political scientists or fellow Economist, but that you also move through with this group of... And a community of education researchers that are all very interested in similar questions. And so I think the community building will be my focus, and it's a great community of students, and so that's not hard work, but that's just... I think one of the primary aims of the program is to bring them together and allow them to collaborate and support one another.
 
0:29:14.1 AS: When you're working with them, does that lift your spirits? Give you more energy.
 
0:29:18.5 CG: Yes, it's always neat to see students at the different stages of a research project, and all of those stages can be exciting in different ways when you first have an idea or when you're first able to actually run something with data and actually take a look at the data and see what's there or when you're wrapping something up and now the findings can actually be out in the world. It's always fun to be with a group of individuals who are at these different stages so it's certainly energizing. And then we have launched our first few students who have finished their PhDs and are now out in the world, and that is as a director of the program, Mark Berends was in this role before, I know quite a moment of pride to actually see them go out into the world with these tools, these skills that we hope we've helped to contribute to and help them build, and now they're gonna go and continue to do great research and to provide scholarship that actually affects the world around them. One of the things that we've done with the program is we've brought in scholars who are really good at getting their research out into the policy conversation or into the world, and so we have brought in those kinds of scholars to talk to the students about how do you build that into your process of conducting research.
 
0:30:39.2 AS: Oh my gosh. That's critical these days. Another dimension that I guess, is sort of developing, continuing to develop and take on even greater importance.
 
0:30:47.0 CG: That's right, and I think to circle back to why students pursue a PhD in one of these disciplines to study education questions, it's probably not to simply have it published in a journal and read by fellow academics, it probably is in fact motivated by a desire to change things to inform policy to really affect people's lives. And so that final piece that we honestly are never really trained in in graduate school of connecting your research up to the real world and to practitioners and to policy makers, I think is really key for the kind of scholar who has come to this entire pursuit for that reason to provide that final feedback into the system.
 
0:31:36.8 AS: Close the loop.
 
0:31:38.6 CG: Exactly.
 
0:31:40.4 AS: Excellent, very critical. I'm so glad that that's another element that they'll be learning about, thanks for all your hard work and bringing all that together, and I can tell you're excited and we're excited for the future of ND PIER too. Just when you thought maybe you were starting to get a handle on some of this stuff, the pandemic happens. Has that redirected some of your work, is it too early to know how people are being affected to then study the funding of, I don't know, say in-person, smaller classes and all those kinds of things. Do you have a thought there?
 
0:32:13.6 CG: So the pandemic was hugely impactful for, I'd say a couple of different reasons. One is just that all ongoing education research that you were doing with any education provider/partner stopped and understandably so. They were all consumed with addressing the challenges right before them, and so there was this big hiatus in any work that was in partnership with school districts or schools or even state governments, because everybody was redirected to focus on the pandemic. And then, of course, it brought up a whole set of new questions for me around the impact of the pandemic, particularly on young children who sort of early introduction to schooling was being disrupted, so either if they were supposed to start kindergarten and it was now online or if they were in a pre-K program that could no longer operate, and we have a fair amount of data that points to the fact that parents made very different decisions about whether or not to send a kindergarten age eligible kid on into kindergarten, and a lot of parents just elected not to do that during these disrupted years. And so you also have these effects on sort of when you're starting school, and the format you're starting school and that kind of thing.
 
0:33:35.3 CG: So it brought up a whole bunch of questions about what will these disruptions mean, and in particular, the disparate effects of these disruptions on children from different family backgrounds, because certainly families with more means were able to buffer the shock of this in different ways. And there are some nice evidence that some economists have produced the shows that higher income families immediately sought out tutoring services and online kinds of programming and that kind of thing to ensure that the disruption to their kids learning was less severe. And so we know that there are going to be these effects on the gap between the learning gap and the achievement gap between kids from advantaged and disadvantaged families. And so what I wish the policy makers and practitioners had focused on was heading into this school year and will continue to focus on is precisely that is remediating what we think were some pretty negative shocks for kids from precisely the families that were affected in all ways by the pandemic, more dramatically, right. The low income families were more likely to have experienced a health shock, that these are exactly the families that might have experienced employment losses, and they're the same families then, where we think the schooling disruptions are particularly costly for the kids.
 
0:35:02.9 CG: And so I think education policy and education practitioners and education researchers should really be focused on what are the kinds of things we can do now that can help to sort of right this ship, so to speak, that can help to redress these differential effects of the pandemic, and I hope... And I think there will be work that is in this space very soon. I think there's certainly been work on the learning losses that students have experienced, and I think there will be more work on what works best to address those learning losses. In my own work, I'm really interested in what will be the effects and I plan on studying this of these disruptions to the early childhood experiences of kids, and so the delay of starting kindergarten or missing out on that pre-K year, and what do these things mean for both short and long-term outcomes. My own work would suggest they're gonna have pretty dramatic effects because we know that when we turn these investments on and we send kids to Pre-K, we provide head start, we improve the early childhood experiences of kids. We see these effects on their both short and long-term outcomes. And so now essentially what the pandemic did was turn all of that off, and so we would expect that that's gonna be pretty impactful for kids.
 
0:36:31.0 AS: Is there something specific that you think the policy makers could be keeping an eye on or start funding now?
 
0:36:38.9 CG: I think that there are a range of things that are mostly focused on targeting resources to the hardest hit schools, students, age groups. And so it's mostly around providing smaller class sizes, providing maybe summer school or additional lengthening, essentially lengthening the school day through after-school programs or tutoring or that kind of thing, and really sort of targeting it at the kids that we think were most affected. And I would argue at the youngest kids where some of these additional supports might help to kind of accelerate the skill development that they missed out on in the time frame when schooling was disrupted because you really can't replicate for the littlest kids that in school, in a group experience that we think is actually so impactful for their long-term outcomes, we actually think that's probably more of what the sort of secret sauce is than the academic skill building is, it's more about learning how to be in a classroom and be among peers and listen to a teacher and that kind of thing, and that you couldn't recreate via remote instruction. And so now I think it's just about finding every opportunity to provide kids with those kinds of learning experiences to build those foundational blocks towards social-emotional development, and building those kind of behavioral skills and regulation skills that we think are so important.
 
0:38:16.1 AS: Great. It's kind of maybe some of those intangibles that I feel like sometimes when you say Catholic school, they provide certain things, sometimes it's that intangible element of a community, as you mentioned, even what you're trying to do for ND PIER, etcetera. Do you feel that way? And is there a mission-driven sort of element for you and for what you're trying to help your students understand?
 
0:38:38.0 CG: Certainly, I think the best school environments are those kinds of environments that build community and encourage students on both their academic trajectories, but also in the development of social-emotional skills, what economists call non-cognitive skills that are so important for long-term trajectories. I think that those kinds of environments exist in Catholic schools certainly, and I think they also exist in some excellent public schools and in some charter schools. And I think we as researchers and as people who are interested in fostering children's skill development, should be looking to these context to understand, what is it about this particular context that engenders that sense of community and help students to build these kinds of skills. And hopefully what that eventually looks like is public schools learning from Catholic schools and Catholic schools learning from charter schools or public schools. And that there is this kind of collaboration or communication across the different types of settings about what works best.
 
0:39:47.2 CG: And I certainly think that those of us who study these kinds of questions who are really concerned as I am about the gap in outcomes for students from different socioeconomic status backgrounds, but also from different race and ethnic backgrounds, that the reason why we are concerned and motivated by these questions is because we want children, people to reach their full potential through the kinds of services, support systems that we're providing. And we're making these kinds of investments and we should make them well, and make them impactful. And so the way that the mission, both of Notre Dame as an institution and of IEI feeds into my work is in thinking about how we get to a place of equitable outcomes for children, and how we get to a place of human flourishing where children are reaching their fullest potential because of the kinds of services supports, the structures that we put in place to make that happen.
 
0:40:54.8 AS: Wonderful statement and wonderful goals, and it sounds to me that you're hopeful for the future of those efforts, are you?
 
0:41:02.2 CG: I am hopeful because we have increasingly through research, I think in large part over the past, say two decades, maybe three decades, really shined a bright light on what is happening in schools and how kids are doing and those critical long-term outcomes. So we may not really be concerned about a test score and sort of how well you're doing at the end of the fourth grade on this particular math assessment, what we ultimately care about is that kids are getting to a place where they are succeeding and they're doing what they wanna do in life, and that they have the foundation and the skills and the background to get there. And so I think we have increasingly understood what is going on on that dimension, gaps in both access to resources and outcomes. And then little by little, we are filling in the puzzle of which interventions, programs, policies get us to that point of more equitable outcomes. And so I am hopeful because I think we are at a point where we rely on research to help us fill in that puzzle where increasingly policy makers are looking to evidence to make the best policy investments. And so we will continue to build that evidence base and get to a point where we much better understand what those investments should look like.
 
0:42:25.8 AS: Well, we're lucky to have you in your new post and your students are lucky to have you, and I just thank you for your time and all your efforts, and I'm hopeful too, and I love learning about an economist view on how we can move forward. So thank you so much.
 
0:42:39.4 CG: Well, thank you. This has been great.
 
0:42:42.0 AS: Yeah, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.
 
0:42:43.8 CG: Thank you. No, I really enjoyed it, it was a good conversation.
 
0:42:47.8 AS: And thank you all for joining us for Think. Pair. Share. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review, it's very much appreciated. Check out our website at iei.nd.edu/media for this and other goodies. Thanks for listening and for now, off we go.