Dr. Erica Harbatkin

Dr. Erica Harbatkin is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Evaluation. Her research uses quantitative research methods to examine the implementation and impact of policies related to school accountability, school improvement, and teacher labor markets. In particular, she applies an economics of education lens to isolate causal effects and then to unpack the mechanisms that exacerbate opportunity gaps and contribute to educational inequities. Some of her current research examines school and district turnaround in Michigan, with particular focus on the role of human capital in turnaround as well as the COVID-19 pandemic’s outsized effects on the lowest performing schools and districts. Other current work examines career and technical education (CTE) teacher effectiveness in Florida. She is a faculty affiliate at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University. Dr. Harbatkin earned her Ph.D. in educational policy with a graduate minor in quantitative methods from Vanderbilt University. She has a master’s of public policy from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in print and multimedia journalism from Emerson College. Prior to her work in education policy research, Erica was a reporter at daily newspapers throughout the country.

Dr. Harbatkin’s website: www.harbatkin.com
Current CV: www.harbatkin.com/cv.html

Selected Recent Publications

Harbatkin, E., Strunk, K.O., & McIlwain, A.* (in press) School Turnaround in a Pandemic: An Examination of the Outsized Implications of COVID-19 for Low-Performing Schools, Districts, and Their Communities. Economics of Education Review. Working paper available at https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-814.

Burns, J.A., Harbatkin, E., Strunk, K.O., Torres, C., McIlwain, A.*, Waldron, S.F.* (in press). The Efficacy and Implementation of Michigan’s Partnership Model of School and District Turnaround: Mixed-Methods Evidence from the First Two Years of Reform Implementation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Advance online publication: https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737221141415.

Henry, G. T., McNeill, S. M., & Harbatkin, E. (2022). Accountability-driven school reform: Are there unintended effects on younger children in untested grades? Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 61, 190–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2022.07.005

Wolf, B. & Harbatkin, E. (2022). Making Sense of Effect Sizes: Systematic Differences in Treatment Effect Sizes by Outcome Measure Type. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2022.2071364. 

Harbatkin, E. (2022). Staffing for School Turnaround in Rural Settings. Leadership and Policy in Schools. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2022.2058963. 
Goldhaber, D., Imberman, S., Strunk, K.O., Hopkins, B., Brown, N., Harbatkin, E., & Kilbride, T. (2022). To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 41(1), 318-349. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22354. 

Harbatkin, E. (2021). Does Student-Teacher Race Match Affect Course Grades? Economics of Education Review. 81, 102081.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102081

Henry, G.T. & Harbatkin, E. (2020) The Next Generation of State Reforms to Improve their Lowest Performing Schools: An Evaluation of North Carolina’s School Transformation Intervention. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 13(4), 702-30.  https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2020.1814464.

Bleiberg, J. & Harbatkin, E. (2020). Teacher Evaluation Reform: A Convergence of Federal and Local Forces. Educational Policy, 34(6), 918–952. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904818802105.

Selected Recent Working Papers

Bleiberg, J., Brunner, E., Harbatkin, E., Kraft, M. & Springer, M. Taking Teacher Evaluation to Scale: The Effect of State Reforms on Achievement and Attainment. Working paper available at https://www.nber.org/papers/w30995 or https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai21-496.

Harbatkin, E., Burns, J.A., & Cullum, S.* The Role of Culture and Climate in School Turnaround. Working paper available at: https://edworkingpapers.com/index.php/ai23-817

Harbatkin, E., Nguyen, T., Strunk, K.O., Burns, J.A., & Moran, A.* Should I stay, or should I go (later)? Teacher intentions and turnover in low-performing schools. Working paper available at: https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-815

Harbatkin, E. & Wolf, B. State Accountability Decisions under the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Validity, Stability, and Equity of School Ratings. Working paper available at: https://edworkingpapers.com/index.php/ai23-863

* Denotes student coauthor