Dr. Nathan Aaron Burroughs                                           Research
 

Early Childhood

Early childhood education has moved to the center of my research agenda over the last several years. I have been the Principal Investigator on multiple large-scale federally funded research projects examining a) the impact of state policy changes in the child care subsidy program on equity of access to quality care; b) the implementation of Michigan's "next generation" quality rating system and the impact of ECE workforce shortages in the success of that system; c) measuring administrative burden in ECE systems; and d) examining long-term trends in child care subsidy  participation across states by children from differing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

K-12 Educational Policy
Alongside evaluation work on K-12 educational initiatives, I have examined several facets of how the institutional structure of K-12 educational institutions interact with inequality. Examples include: differences in educational performance and various points in the achievement distribution (the "excellence gap"); the relationship of traditional measures of teacher quality to student outcomes using international comparative data; and the prevalence of socioeconomic segregation in multiple countries. Most recently, I completed an intensive study of Michigan's K-12 labor force to examine shortages in the educational labor force, considering not just teachers but also administrators, substitutes, and other support personnel. 

Political Institutions
Supplementing my empirical work in education is a more normatively oriented vein of research focused on the role of auxiliary institutions (most particularly schools) and socioeconomic conditions in promoting the health of democratic institutions. I have published work on egalitarian justice as it relates to education and the social and institutional requirements for democratic stability (of which educational institutions play a critical part). In past work I have also explored the intersection of wealth and political power in American elections.

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