Hi, I am a recent graduate of the Ph.D. program in Education Policy and Leadership, with a dual focus in Comparative and International Education (CIED), at Pennsylvania State University. I am primarily a quantitative researcher and my current research focuses on educational inequities and segregation, with particular attention to how disparities in schooling experiences translate into differences in access and outcomes for historically marginalized student populations.
My dissertation included three studies that explored caste-based segregation and inequalities in Indian schools and evaluated the impact of an affirmative action policy on access and segregation in private schools. My Ph.D. advisor was Dr. Erica Frankenberg.
I am also interested in studying inequalities in teacher preparation, benefits, and shortages. In this vein, I am developing a series of four reports on racial/ethnic inequalities in the ECE workforce, led by Dr. Frankenberg and co-authored with Dr. Karen Babbs Hollett for the Center for Education and Civil Rights (CECR). The first three reports in this series can be found here. My other research interests include policy interventions surrounding the care and protection of children in shelter homes and, more generally, all children outside parental care.
News
2025
Working paper, Right to Education Act’s Influence on Caste-based Enrollment Gaps and Segregation in India posted on the Annenberg Institute's EdWorking Papers Series.
Reports on Racial/Ethnic Composition and Segregation in ECE and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities in the Teaching Contexts of ECE Workforce published on the Center for Education and Civil Rights (CECR) website.
Extent, Patterns, and Geographic Scale of Caste-based Segregation in Indian Schools published in the International Journal of Educational Development.
2024
Presented the paper, 'Investigating Mechanisms Contributing to Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Wages and Benefits of ECE Teachers' at Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) Annual Conference 2024 in Baltimore, MD.
Presented the paper, 'Assessing the Impact of Private School Sector Growth on Caste-based Segregation in India' at Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Annual Conference 2024 in Miami, FL.
Attended the Causal Inference Mixtape sessions II (advances in difference-in-differences) and III (synthetic control) by Dr. Scott Cunningham.
2023
Presented the paper, 'Racial/Ethnic Disparities in ECE Teaching and Community Contexts' at the Penn State College of Education Research Annual Conference.
Presented the poster, 'Assessing the Impact of India's Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 on Caste-based School Segregation' at the AEFP Annual Conference 2023 in Denver, CO.
Got to participate in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) - Howard/Mathematica.
Paper with Dr. Maithreyi Gopalan, 'Health Policies as Education Policies? A Review of Causal Evidence and Mechanisms', was accepted for publication at AERA Open.
Presented the paper, Assessing the Extent and Scale of Caste-based School Segregation in India [Student Research Presentation] at the Association for Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Fall Research Conference 2022 in Washington, D.C.