Jing Liu is an Assistant Professor in Education Policy at the University of Maryland College Park. Named as a National Academy of Education Sciences/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, he earned his Ph.D. in Economics of Education from Stanford University in 2018. Before he joined UMD, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute. Dr. Liu's research uses rigorous quantitative evidence to evaluate and inform education policies at the national, state, and local levels, with the goal of improving learning opportunities for historically marginalized students in urban areas. His work broadly engages with critical policy issues including student absenteeism, exclusionary discipline, educator’s labor market, school reform, and higher education. Grounded in economic theory and policy analysis, he uses both quasi-experimental designs and data science methods such as computational linguistic analysis to analyze large administrative data and unstructured information. Most of his current projects focus on understanding the development of student engagement, behavior, and social-emotional skills, how these skills and dispositions contribute to student success in the short and long run, and what the implications are for improving equal educational opportunities. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Please visit his personal website or Google scholar page for his most recent publications and projects.
Watch Dr. Liu's EdTalk entitled "Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Support Teachers".
Watch a video by AERA in which Dr. Liu shared his findings from "Troublemakers? The Role of Frequent Teacher Referrers in Expanding Racial Disciplinary Disproportionalities", published by Educational Researcher
Liu, J., Penner, E., Gao, W. (Forthcoming), “Troublemakers? The Role of Frequent
Teacher Referrers in Expanding Racial Disciplinary Disproportionalities”. Educational Re-
searcherLiu, J., r, E., Gao, W. (Forthcoming), “Troublemakers? The Role of Frequent
Teacher Referrers in Expanding Rac"al Disciplinary Disproportionalities”. Educational Re-
searcherLiu, J., Penner, E., Gao, W. (Forthcoming), "Troublemakers? The Role of Frequent Teacher Referrers in Expanding Racial Disciplinary Disproportionalities". Educational Researcher.
Demzky, D., Liu, J., Hill, H., Jurafsky, D., Piech, C. (Forthcoming)Demszky, D., Liu, J., Hill, H., Jurafsky, D., Piech, C. (Forthcoming), "Can Automated Feedback Improve Teachers’ Uptake of Student Ideas? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in a Large-Scale Online Course''. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Liu, J., Hayes, M., Gershenson, S. (Forthcoming), "From Referrals to Suspensions: New Evidence on Racial Disparities in Exclusionary Discipline". Journal of Urban Economics.
Hayes, M., Liu, J., Gershenson, S. (2023), "Who Refers Whom? The Effects of Teacher Characteristics on Disciplinary Office Referrals". Economics of Eduation Review, 102376.
Liu, J., Loeb, S., Shi, Y. (2022), “More Than Shortages: The Unequal Distribution of Substitute Teaching”. Education Finance and Policy.
Liu, J.& Cohen, J. (2021), “Measuring Teaching Practices at Scale: A NovelApplication of Text-as-Data Methods”. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Demszky, D., Liu, J., Cohen, J., Hill, H., Mancenido, Z., Jurafsky, D., & Hashimoto,T. (2021), “Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Inter-actions”, Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for ComputationalLinguistics (ACL).
Liu, J., Lee, M., Gershenson, S. (2021), “The Short-and Long-Run Impacts of Secondary School Absences”. Journal of Public Economics, 199, 104441.
Liu, J. & Loeb, S. (2021), “Engaging Teachers: Measuring Teacher’s Impact on Student Attendance in Secondary School”. Journal of Human Resources, 56(2), 343-379. [LeadArticle].
Sun, M., Liu, J., Zhu, JM., LeClair, Z. (2019), “Using a Text-as-Data Approach to Understand Reform Processes: A Deep Exploration of School Improvement Strategies”. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(4), 510-536.
Penner, E., Rochmes, J., Liu, J., Solanki, S., Loeb, S. (2019), “Differing View of Equity: How Prospective Educators Perceive Their Role in Closing Achievement Gaps”. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of Social Sciences, 5(3), 103-127.
Bo, S., Liu, J., Shiu, J., Song, Y., Zhou, S. (2019), “Admission Mechanisms and Mismatches between Colleges and Students: Evidence from A Large Administrative Dataset from China”. Economics of Education Review, 68, 27-37.
Whitney, C. R. & Liu, J. (2017), “What We’re Missing: A Descriptive Analysis of Part-Day Absenteeism in Secondary School”, AERA Open, 3(2).
Bettinger, E., Liu, J., Loeb, S. (2016), “Connections Matter: How Interactive Peers Affect Students in Online College Courses”, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (Big Data Special Section), 35(4), 932-954.
TLPL788M: Research and Writing for Publication
TLPL 670/PLCY 688B: Economics of Education
TLPL 765: Quantitative Applications for Education Policy Analysis
TLPL 788X: Policy Analysis of the Education Workforce