Research

Rigorous, actionable knowledge about school system leadership is an important driver of equitable outcomes for students. The Broad Center facilitates the work of researchers exploring questions that contribute to the body of knowledge about education system leadership and management, while also directly and immediately informing the work of practitioners. 

Our work includes supporting the work of scholars at Yale SOM focusing on K-12 education, building a pipeline of future education leadership research, and encouraging additional faculty members who study important, related questions around management and leadership to extend into the K-12 education field. The Broad Center also convenes scholars including Yale faculty, practitioners and other experts for knowledge-sharing opportunities about the latest research on public education, and supports new pipelines of researchers interested in these topics. 

To encourage and support research that explores important questions in education systems leadership, The Broad Center provides financial and human capital resources to Yale SOM faculty pursuing research in this area. This includes both ongoing support for faculty members already interested in education; in addition, the Center also encourages additional faculty members who study important, related questions around management and leadership to extend into the K-12 education field. Starting in the 2024-25 school year, this includes funding projects from faculty members new to education as an area of interest, bringing further focus to K-12 education research within the school and engaging additional faculty members in this important work and in the academic conversation. 

Since 2023, The Broad Center has brought together promising scholars with multiple research perspectives to work with SOM faculty who focus on K-12 education. The goals of the postdoctoral associate program are to support promising early-career scholars interested in exploring questions connected to public education; provide additional support to Yale SOM faculty working in K-12 education and give the associates the opportunity to gain valuable learning experiences and mentorship through their collaboration; and support the furthering of the Center’s unique approach within the field of K-12 education research through exposure to the idea of bringing a leadership and management lens through the study of school systems as the unit of study and change.

The Broad Center's 2023-24 postdoctoral associates worked on questions ranging from examining the post-college pathways of low-income and first-generation students to exploring how families' pre-existing factors, such as home address, shape their educational choices. The 2024-25 postdoctoral associates, Sarah Payne and Angela Crema, are focusing on the intersections of race and equity in educational systems.

The predoctoral fellows program recruits promising scholars considering academic and research careers who have just recently completed their undergraduate education. Predoctoral fellows primarily provide SOM faculty with additional support to pursue their research and ensure greater focus and capacity within the school on questions of K-12 education leadership and management.

As a core effort of our research work, The Broad Center is building foundational data repository that will serve as an aggregator of key data on school system management, leadership, governance, and organizations. These type of data have not been extensively or comprehensively collected or maintained previously, contributing to a barrier to entry for researchers interested in exploring questions around K-12 education systems.

The Broad Seminar Series, which began in fall 2024, brings distinguished education scholars to the Yale SOM campus to discuss their work with a multidisciplinary audience of those who share an interest in driving excellence and equity in school systems in the United States. Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) at the University of Washington, delivered the inaugural Broad Seminar talk on the topic of teacher quality and retention of high-quality educators. The goal of the seminar series is to bridge the disconnect that often exists between education researchers and practitioners in school systems. 

In fall 2024, Yale SOM hosted the Northeast Economics of Education Workshop, bringing together scholars working on exploring education topics within the economics field, including questions around universal pre-Kindergarten and parent earnings; teacher labor; college admissions and future earnings; and more.