I am completing my Ph.D. in Education Policy at the University of Virginia. I am a quantitative policy scholar with a research emphasis in equitably improving our educational systems to prepare K-12 students with the skills and knowledge for future college, career, and civic success. My dissertation prioritizes higher-order thinking skills (critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and problem solving abilities), an increasingly important set of skills. I leverage quantiative approaches (psychometric and econometric) to rigorously examine higher-order thinking at scale. My research advances our knowledge by allowing us to measure the skill at scale, understand the role of our educational systems in shaping those skills, and examining the causal impact of educational interventions like school turnaround on shaping higher-order thinking. The work has been supported by the Urban Institute’s Student Upward Mobility Initative, the Virginia Education Sciences Training Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, and the Bankard Fund for Political Economy Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.

Papers

Schueler, B., Wang, J. & Nigro, L. (Conditionally Accepted). The Impact of School District Turnaround on Postsecondary Outcomes: Evidence from Lawrence, Massachusetts Educational Researcher.

Schueler, B., Nigro, L. & Wang, J. (2025). Can States Sustain and Replicate School District Improvement? Evidence from Massachusetts on Multilevel Governance American Educational Research Journal.

Selected Works in Progress

Wang, J. Schueler, B., Soland, J. Capturing Higher-Order Thinking Skills At Scale: Validity Evidence Toward Extant Item-Level Administrative Test Data as Indicators of Higher-Order Thinking Skills.

Wang, J. Unpacking Potential Higher-Order Thinking Inequality by Race and Class.

Wang, J. Does School Turnaround Policy Compromise Higher-Order Thinking Skills?