Liz Bettini

Promotional graphic that announces the launch of the SPARC Center Scholars Program. It includes that applications are due by May 1, 2026. The SPARC Center logo is featured in the graphic’s bottom left corner and it includes the website sparccenter.org

📢Just launched: the SPARC Center Scholars Program! This program aims to support early career scholars in conducting rigorous research on the #SpecialEducation teacher workforce. Learn more and apply by May 1:

sparccenter.org/sparc-center...

"Reimagining" the Institute of Education Sciences It didn't have to be this way

My response to the "Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences" report. It didn't have to be this way: betsyjwolf.substack.com/p/reimaginin...

Thank you @caldercenter.bsky.social for a great day of insightful presentations and discussion at #CALDER2026. If you missed it you can check some of the papers presented and follow the work at the CALDER Recruitment and Retention Center web 👇

I wish opportunities like this had been available when I was a doc student!! Please share with your early career colleagues interested in studying the special education workforce using state longitudinal data systems!

Excited to release this policy brief exploring the college enrollment impacts of Massachusetts' recent dramatic expansions of free community college.

TLDR: The clear messaging and simple design of MassReconnect & MassEducate sparked substantial increases in community college enrollment.

A promotional image for a podcast about special education staffing by AIR. It includes a quote emphasizing the need for effective and accessible systems in special education. Below the quote, there is a profile image of Allison Gilmour, with a title indicating she is a Principal Researcher at AIR. AIR's logo and website are at the bottom.

AIR Principal Researcher Alli Gilmour joins a new episode of S.O.S.: Strategies for Operation Special Education to discuss the causes of special educator staffing shortages—and practical strategies schools can use to recruit and retain staff.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/18JqMRrL4dCets4ol3YzLj

Principal Effects on Teacher Working Conditions Ataur Rahaman & Cory Koedel CALDER Working Paper No. 335-0226 February 2026 Abstract: Research on school principals highlights their role in shaping teachers’ work environments, but most evidence is qualitative or correlational. We provide plausibly causal estimates of how principals affect a broad swath of teacher working conditions using data from Illinois, where the State Board of Education collects detailed and comprehensive information annually on teacher working conditions in nearly all schools. We estimate the variance of principal effects by comparing correlations in working conditions over time in schools that do and do not experience principal changes. Under reasonable stationarity assumptions, the difference in the correlations can be used to back out the variance of principal effects. Unsurprisingly, we find principals have large effects on working conditions related to leadership directly. They also influence teachers’ professional work environments and their interactions with students and families, though their effects on these broader indicators are much smaller, particularly the latter.

What do we know about the impact of principals on teachers' working conditions? New CALDER paper from Ataur Rahaman & Cory Koedel uses data from IL to explore this relationship. 🔗https://bit.ly/4kQRpxC (1/2)

The @caldercenter.bsky.social Conference is Monday 3/2 in Arlington, VA. SPARC's @roddy-theobald.bsky.social will present new findings on #SpecialEducation teacher retention from work with @lizbettini.bsky.social, @afgilmour.bsky.social, & LaRon Scott.

Register: caldercenter.org/events/17th-...

Disparate Impacts of Teacher Certification Exams Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Disparate Impacts of Teacher Certification Exams www.nber.org/papers/w34860

"our findings show that certification exams have a disparate impact in the sense that they impose much larger economic costs on URM teaching candidates than on white candidates with similar potential teaching quality."

NEW CALDER WEBPAGE Visit to learn about the CALDER Recruitment and Retention Center

📢 Want to learn about new research on teacher recruitment & retention? Visit our new webpage for the IES funded CALDER Recruitment & Retention Center!🔗 bit.ly/4aJ8FQH

And join us for #CALDER2026 next Monday 3/2, where we'll be presenting multiple studies from this work.
Register:🔗 bit.ly/3ZSd5Qw

If you are a special ed scholar looking to analyze SLDS, this paper is for you!!

THIS BOTHERED ME SOOOOO MUCH ALL DAY YESTEDAY!!

Excited to share a new manuscript and policy brief, published in TESE!! This is one of my dissertation papers, co-authored with @roddy-theobald.bsky.social, in which we study turnover patterns among paraeducators in WA state. When do paras leave the workforce and what are risk factors for exiting?

This week, our experts LaRon Scott and @lmasonwms.bsky.social presented at the @ceedarcenter.bsky.social Cross-State Convening on strengthening teacher and leader preparation. When we lead together, we can better support #SpecialEducation teachers and students with disabilities.

Really cool study! This raises so many questions for future work!

Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions.

An import part of the resistance to fascism in the United States (maybe what will save us) is "neighborism," or a commitment to protecting ALL of the people around you. An important read. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Opinion | One Thing Trump Can’t Do to Us

I wrote about how we're dealing with a war of attrition at the hands of a callous and cruel administration, and how we cannot let them whittle us down to their level. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...

I'm excited to be presenting work funded by @sparccenter.bsky.social and co-authored with @lizbettini.bsky.social and @afgilmour.bsky.social at the CALDER Conference in early March! Registration details below!

The act of standing up in front of a room full of children, engaging them for 6 straight hours, is both (a) a BLAST & (b) emotionally, physically, & mentally exhausting, in a way that no amount of meetings, data collection, grant writing (etc) can match.

Just reflecting on how my workdays now are longer than when I was teaching (FTR, they were long when I was teaching too), but I was SO MUCH MORE exhausted at the end of the day when I was teaching.

Kids, staff, parents detained: How federal activity in Minnesota is affecting schools and students The recent surge in federal law enforcement activity is increasingly affecting school children across the state. Some schools are offering online learning to students to afraid to go to school, while ...

VERY comprehensive @mprnews.org @eshockmanwrites.bsky.social roundup of how the surge of federal agents in MN is impacting schools, students and educators. Numerous reports of children detained by masked agents.

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SUCH A FREAKING COOL PAPER!!!!

Proud to be on the list and to have so many @buwheelock.bsky.social colleagues who also engage deeply and publicly with issues of serious importance to education policy!

www.bu.edu/wheelock/new...

🚨New RFP Alert!🚨
@Arnold_Ventures
Evidence & Evaluation team released just two new RFPs to support research evaluating the causal impacts of U.S. social programs and policies: bit.ly/4aXA43k

A short 🧵on what we're prioritizing and what's new this cycle (1/n)

We @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social are hiring a director for our Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Buildling Lab (PARABL), to help education system leaders build research roadmaps to effect change in a particular area.

More info here:

wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/u...

Those of us who saw it up close knew this. www.brookings.edu/articles/cut... There is absolutely no joy in saying I told you so.

Inside One State's Bold Plan to Keep Special Education Teachers Pennsylvania's training and mentoring program works to retain teachers serving students with disabilities.

💡“The unique thing about Pennsylvania is they decided to do as many things as they can at once, addressing each part of the [special education teacher] pipeline.” - @afgilmour.bsky.social

Read how Pennsylvania supports its #SpecialEducation workforce: www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality.

And trans lives are grounded in reality.

We see y'all. No matter what.

www.popsci.com/science/tran...

IDK if she'd have time, but Corinne Huggins-Manley (UF) is the methodologist on my IES Measurement grant, and is WONDERFUL!