Douglas N. Harris

About Doug

Doug Harris is the founding Director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, Tulane Professor of Economics, and Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education. His research has helped inform and influence national debates over a range of education policies, especially in charter-based school reform, teacher evaluation, accountability, and college access.

His first book, Value-Added Measures in Education, was nominated for the national Grawemeyer prize in education and published by Harvard Education Press in 2011.

His more than 50 academic articles have been cited more than 3,000 times by other researchers. He has advised the White House, the U.S. Senate, and several governors on education policy. He contributed to the Obama Administration's transition team on the measurement of school performance, advised the White House on college performance measures, and testified in the U.S. Senate about the TRIO college access programs. Most recently, his Brookings report on community colleges helped shape President Obama’s college reform plans.

Harris is also widely cited in the national media, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Journal, and others. He has recently been named as one of the most influential economists studying education. In addition to his role as Director and professor, Harris is the Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education at Tulane and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was tenured Associate Professor of Education and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Harris received his Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University in 2000.

Publications by Doug

National Longitudinal School Database

January 19, 2024 | By Jamie M. Carroll, Douglas N. Harris, Anjana Nair, Emilia Nordgren

The National Longitudinal School Database (NLSD) was created by the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) to allow researchers to examine various aspects of traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, and private schools.

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How Should the Government Regulate Charter Schools? State Policy Patterns and Causal Effects

November 01, 2023 | By Douglas N. Harris, Roy McKenzie

This brief describes how charter regulation varies across states, it shows how the regulations are related to charter school outcomes, and provides evidence of their policy effects.

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Online Reviews Are Leading Indicators of Changes in K-12 School Attributes

May 28, 2023 | By Linsen Li, Aron Culotta, Douglas N. Harris, Nicholas Mattei

In this paper, we investigate to what extent the language used in online reviews of a school is predictive of changes in the attributes of that school, such as its socio-economic makeup and student test scores.

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How Do Charter Schools Affect the Supply of Teachers from University-Based Education Programs?

October 27, 2022 | By Douglas N. Harris, Mary Penn

This study examines how charter schools affect the number of traditionally prepared teachers who receive a bachelor’s degree in education.

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Extreme Measures: A National Descriptive Analysis of Closure and Restructuring of Traditional Public, Charter, and Private Schools

May 24, 2022 | By Douglas N. Harris, Valentina Martinez-Pabon

This study provides the first analysis of closure and restructuring trends for essentially all schools nationwide over the past 30 years. We analyze the annual closure and restructuring rates of all schools across the United States, how these rates changed over time, and what factors predict closure and restructuring.

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How Do Charter Schools Affect System-Level Test Scores and Graduation Rates? A National Analysis

February 04, 2022 | By Feng Chen, Douglas N. Harris

In this study, we analyze data from 1995-2016 for all the nation’s publicly funded school systems and find that charter schools increase average graduation rates and math and reading scores across all types of publicly funded schools when charter schools open in their districts.

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Why Did So Many Public Schools Stay Remote During the COVID Crisis?

July 12, 2021 | By Douglas N. Harris, Daniel M. Oliver

We examine how a wide variety of community and school district characteristics may have affected the likelihood of schools reopening in this national analysis of data from fall 2020 and spring 2021.

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The Effects of School Reopenings on COVID-19 Hospitalizations

January 04, 2021 | By Douglas N. Harris, Engy Ziedan, Susan Hassig

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How America's Schools Responded to the COVID Crisis

July 13, 2020 | By Douglas N. Harris, Daniel M. Oliver, Lihan Liu, Cathy Balfe, Sara Slaughter, Nicholas Mattei

With a representative sample of 3,511 schools, this is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies to date on what America’s schools have done to respond to the pandemic.

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Cover of the REACH policy brief on retention and rewards for teachers in New Orleans

Do Charter Schools Keep Their Best Teachers and Improve Quality? Retention and Rewards for Teachers in New Orleans

March 06, 2020 | By Nathan Barrett, Deven Carlson, Douglas N. Harris, Jane Arnold Lincove

New Orleans’ all-charter school system succeeds in removing low-performing teachers, but it struggles to replace them with high-performing ones.

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