Jessica Boccardo


Jessica Boccardo is in the final year of her Ph.D.in Public Policy at NYU and works at the Institute of Education and Social Policy. As a graduate student, she was awarded the Institute for Education Sciences Pre-doctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) 4-year scholarship, (2009) and this year she was selected for the Emerging Education Policy Scholars Program by Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute (2012). She has co-authored two papers with Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel and Matt Wiswall all focusing on the effect of different school types in academic and non-academic outcomes in NYC. Her research focuses on understanding the experiences that students have inside their schools, moving beyond academic outcomes. The first paper of her dissertation explores whether small schools, a crucial component of recent reforms to improve school quality in the USA, foster a more positive learning environment in NYC. A second paper uses a nationally representative sample of Mexican students and schools to further explore this question. The third paper combines data on academic outcomes for NYC students with data on fitness and obesity to better understand the link between academic and non-academic skills, exploring the particular way in which academic and fitness/obesity outputs are formed and how they affect each other. By zooming in on what is going on inside high schools, she hopes policymakers will be better equipped to understand the mechanisms driving student outcomes and behavior.

 

 



Contact Details

jb3102@nyu.edu