Faculty

Sean P. Corcoran

Associate Professor of Educational Economics

Sean P. Corcoran

Phone: 212-992-9468
Email:

Sean P. Corcoran (Ph.D Economics, University of Maryland) is an assistant professor of educational economics at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and an affiliated faculty of the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service. He has been a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. since 2004, and was selected to be resident visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in 2005-06. In addition to being a member of the board of directors of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (formerly the American Education Finance Association), he serves on the editorial board of the journal Education Finance and Policy.

Professor Corcoran's research focuses on three areas: human capital in the teaching profession, education finance, and school choice. His recent papers have examined long-run trends in the quality of teachers, the impact of income inequality and court-ordered school finance reform on the level and equity of education funding in the United States, and the political economy of school choice reforms.  In 2009, he led the first evaluation of the Aspiring Principals Program in New York City, and he is currently working on a retrospective assessment of the Bloomberg-Klein reforms to school choice and competition in New York City for the American Institutes for Research.  He co-edits a book series on alternative teacher compensation systems for the Economic Policy Institute, and in recent years has been interested in value-added measures of evaluating teacher effectiveness, both their statistical properties and their obstacles to practical implementation. His recent publications can be found in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the American Economic Review.
 


Degrees Held

  • Ph.D University of Maryland 2003
    Economics

Awards

  • 2011 : Co-Principal Investigator, NIH grant, "How Does School Food Policy Shape the Health, Fitness, and Academic Outcomes of School Children?”
  • 2009 : Principal Investigator, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant, "The Future of the Nursing Workforce: What Nursing Workforce Research Can Learn From Other Labor Markets"
  • 2008 : Co-Principal Investigator, NYU University Research Challenge Fund, "Fair Student Funding: The Effects of Student-Based Budgeting on Equity and Achievement"
  • 2006 : Principal Investigator, Spencer Foundation, "The Political Economy of Inequality in America's Public Schools"
  • 2006 : Principal Investigator, Russell Sage Foundation grant, "The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution in U.S. Education Finance"

Selected Publications

  • Curriculum Vitae (link)
  • "Women, the Labor Market, and the Declining Relative Quality of Teachers," with William N. Evans and Robert M. Schwab. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v. 23 n. 3, Summer 2004. (link)
  • "The Political Economy of School Choice: Support for Charter Schools Across States and School Districts," with Christiana Stoddard. Journal of Urban Economics, v. 62 n. 1, July 2007. (link)
  • "Long-run Trends in the Quality of Teachers: Evidence and Implications for Policy," Policy Brief, Education Finance and Policy, Fall 2007, vol. 2 no. 4. (link)
  • "Equity, Adequacy, and the Evolving State Role in Education Finance," with William N. Evans, in Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy, ed. Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske, New York: Routledge, 2008. (link)
  • "Stalled Progress in Closing the Race Achievement Gap: The Role of Teacher Quality," with William N. Evans, in Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black- White Test Score Gap, ed. Katherine Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008. (link)
  • "The Troubled Quest for Equality in School Finance," with Howard Rosenthal and Thomas Romer, in What do we Owe Each Other? Rights and Obligations in Contemporary American Society, ed. Howard Rosenthal and David J. Rothman, Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2008.
  • "Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas: Reflections on Growth Models for Accountability," with Jennifer L. Jennings. Phi Delta Kappan, v. 90 n. 9, May 2009. (link)
  • "Local Demand for School Choice: Evidence from the Washington Charter School Referenda," with Christiana Stoddard, forthcoming in Education Finance and Policy (link)

Courses

  • RESCH-GE 2110 - Applied Statistics: Using Large Databases in Education Research
  • EDPLY-GE 2025 - Economics of Education
  • RESCH-GE 2155 - Economic Analysis for Education Policy
  • EDPLY-GE 2020 - Financing Schools: Equity and Adequacy in Public Education
  • INTE-GE 2008 - Comparative Education II: Quantitative Analysis

Research Interests

  • state and local public finance
  • teacher labor markets
  • school finance
  • school choice and charter schools
  • applied econometrics