Sarah Cohodes

About

Sarah Cohodes is an associate professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her expertise involves using quantitative causal inference methods to evaluate education policies and programs. She is known for her influential research on charter schools, school choice, programs for high-achieving students, and settings that support access to high-quality education. Cohodes holds a PhD in Public Policy and an EdM in Education Policy and Management from Harvard University. She is affiliated with several research organizations, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), CESifo, and Blueprint Labs. Her work focuses on education, poverty, and social policy, and she has contributed to understanding the impact of charter schools, teacher performance pay, STEM summer programs, and the relationship between education and voting behavior.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Political science
• Mathematics education
• Demographic economics
• Computer science

Selected publications

• When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-01-01 · 13 citations

  report1st authorCorresponding
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• When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence From New York City High School Choice

  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · 2023-11-06 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Despite evidence that informational interventions can influence K–12 school choices, we know little about the mechanisms through which they work and the factors that produce heterogeneity in student responses. Through a school-level randomized controlled trial conducted in 473 New York City middle schools serving 115,000 eighth graders, we evaluated three counselor-delivered informational interventions that were designed to help students avoid low-graduation high schools, but differed in their l…

  PublisherDOI

• STEM Summer Programs for Underrepresented Youth Increase STEM Degrees

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-07-01 · 8 citations

  report1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Thirty Years of Charter Schools: What Does Lottery-Based Research Tell Us?

  Journal of School Choice · 2024-08-08 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Charter schools can serve as "laboratories of innovation," generating evidence about effective educational practices via their random admissions lotteries. This paper synthesizes findings from charter school lottery-based studies and identifies future research priorities. Evidence shows charter schools can boost academic achievement and long-term outcomes, especially for lower-performing, nonwhite, low-income students and those with disabilities. However, these findings are limited to oversubscr…

  PublisherDOI

• Different Paths to College Success: The Impact of Massachusetts’ Charter Schools on College Trajectories

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-07-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Lovenheim

  40 shared

• Samuel Kleiner

  Federal Trade Commission

  39 shared

• Daniel Grossman

  37 shared

• Jennifer L. Jennings

  19 shared

• Sean P. Corcoran

  King's College - Pennsylvania

  16 shared

• Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj

  16 shared

• Joshua D. Angrist

  8 shared

• Parag A. Pathak

  7 shared

Labs

• Sarah Cohodes LabPI

Awards & honors

• Faculty influence rankings (2026 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Inf…
• Faculty influence rankings (2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Inf…

Similar researchers at University of Michigan

• Scott Atranh-83
• Jeremy Levineh-78
• Brian A. Jacobh-68