School's Out. How Are America's Teachers Doing?

Evan Banks

You're listening to Policy Minded, a podcast from RAND. I'm Evan Banks. It's the end of the school year. So in today's episode, we're going to discuss how America's teachers are doing. Joining us today for this conversation are Elizabeth Steiner and Ashley Woo, RAND researchers who study education policy with a particular focus on teachers. Elizabeth and Ashley are part of a team at RAND that surveys panels of educators across America. This unique approach helps them discover insights directly from teachers, principals, superintendents, and school district leaders on a wide range of issues, including the pressures they face, the training they receive, and the technology they use. Think of it as taking the pulse of America's educators. Elizabeth and Ashley, welcome and thanks for being here.

Elizabeth Steiner

Thanks for having us.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, thanks for having us. We're really excited to talk about all of our research today.

Evan Banks

Before we get into your recent findings, can we talk a little bit about the surveys that you use to gather data? So what are the American Educator Panels and what makes them so unique?

Elizabeth Steiner

The American Educator Panels are panels of public school teachers, principals, and districts. The goal of the panels is to bring educator voices to critical discussions about public education. They were established in 2014 and are the largest standing panels of school educators outside of those run by the federal government. They're nationally-representative, which is one of the things that makes them unique. And that means that the findings capture the experiences of educators across the United States. And it allows for lots of different types of subgroup analyzes. We can call out specific states. We can call out teachers in specific grade levels or in specific subjects or with specific characteristics or experiences to really understand how their experiences are similar to or different than teachers across the nation.

Evan Banks

How do you decide what to ask teachers about?

Elizabeth Steiner

A lot of that is client-driven, and some of it is also topic and policy-driven. So we run, gosh, I think over a dozen surveys on the panels each year. Some of those have to do with math education or math teaching and learning. Others have to with principal and teacher retention or well-being, as are some of the surveys we're going to talk about today. Still others talk about curriculum adoption and use, and others even talk about social and emotional learning.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, and I think what I'll add on to that, what I think is really nice is, you know, Elizabeth was talking about how some of the topics that we explore are really topical and kind of like relevant to the moment. So one of the surveys that Elizabeth and I have been working on for several years now is a survey on teacher wellbeing in the workforce. And I think that, you now, we started fielding this survey back in 2021. And that was a time like deep in the pandemic where, um... issues around like teacher well-being and how stressful it was to completely like reimagine the teaching career like just in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I think that was like super top of mind for not only policymakers but also the public. And so I think one of the examples of the ways that our work can really provide some kind of like quick turn around results that can help inform policymaking that is like super relevant and really speaks to the moment that we're in. And I think kind of an example of that too is like, of course, as we were exiting the pandemic, the issues around workforce and teacher wellbeing also evolved over time and kind of shifted towards thinking about the policies that would support teacher retention. And so as states were... and districts were starting to think about increasing teacher pay, that was something that we were able to kind of explore deeper as we saw these kind of policies beginning to pass across the nation.

Evan Banks

And that's one of the really nice things about the panels, too, right, is that because we've been running them for a long time, you can see how attitudes change over time and how things shift in the space.

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, that's right. We have so many teachers and principals in the panel that we're able to track shifts in perceptions and experiences over time. And as Ashley was saying, one of the ways that we use the state of the teacher survey, at least, which is one of those surveys Ashley and I work on, is both to identify problems and try to track solutions.

Evan Banks

And there's a couple of new panels that are just being established now, right? One focused on parents and another one focused on young people. Can you tell us a little bit more about those?

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, for sure. The teacher panel expanded in 2023 to include public school-based pre-k teachers. And this is super important because pre-k teachers are kind of a forgotten population in some ways, at least the ones who work in public schools. They're public school teachers and work in public schools, but they're often lumped in with early childhood educators in other settings like center or home-based care. And so people don't really think about or examine their experiences too closely. And so we were really excited to be able to add those teachers to the panel and start to understand the challenges that they're facing. The panels also expanded recently to capture young people and their parents. These youth and parent panels were launched in 2024. And they're focusing on youth ages 12 to 21, so sort of just as they're transitioning into secondary grades. And through their transition out of college and into the workforce, along with their parents. So it'll be really cool to track how youth experiences are changing over time as they grow, as they mature, and as they think about entering college and/or the workforce as well as the attitudes of their own, their parents and caregivers toward a variety of policy topics of which education is only one.

Evan Banks

Okay, let's get into some of that recent research, starting with teacher well-being. What did you learn about the stress that teachers experience on the job, and how do teachers compare with working adults in other professions?

Ashley Woo

We have a couple of different indicators that we use to look at teacher well-being. One of the things that we look at is how stressed teachers are feeling about their work and their jobs. Another question that we ask is how teachers feel with regards to coping with that stress. We also ask a couple of questions that are also validated in the health space around whether or not teachers are experiencing symptoms of depression. And then we also have a burnout indicator where we ask teachers questions like whether or not they're looking forward to teaching in the future or whether or they feel like the stress of teaching is worth it. And so we have these four different indicators that we've been tracking since the first administration of the State of the American Teacher Survey, which as I mentioned earlier began in 2021. And broadly we found that teacher well-being according to some of these indicators has improved since the pandemic. So we find that teachers' reports of frequent job-related stress have dropped since 2021. And we also find that teacher's reports of symptoms of depression have dropped. But I think that it's also important to keep in mind. We also survey a set of working adults to kind of use as a benchmark to better understand and put in context teachers' responses. And we find in comparison to working adults generally, and also what we call similar or comparable working adults, like adults who also similarly have a bachelor's degree who are kind of in the same age range as most teachers. We find that in comparison to those adults, teachers are still far more likely to experience frequent job-related stress. They're far more than likely to say that they have difficulty coping with their stress, and they're also far more likely to say that they're experiencing burnout. And so even though we have seen improvements in teacher well-being over time, we still continue to see that teachers experience worse well-being than other adults who are also working in the nation.

Evan Banks

You mentioned one of those benchmarks was asking teachers about their intentions to leave teaching. What did they say about that?

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, this is something we've started tracking more recently. But in our most recent year, which was January of 2024, about 22%, just a little under a quarter of teachers said that they were thinking or that they intended to leave their current teaching job by the end of the 2023-2024 school year. So teacher turnover is typically tracked either as attrition, which means you leave the profession entirely. Or mobility, which means you stay within the profession, but you maybe move to a different school or a different district. You leave your current teaching job in some way, but you're still a teacher. And our survey question, our indicator, is designed to track both of those things. We don't really distinguish between the two, because when a teacher leaves their job, there's always some disruption. There's always change in circumstances or change in the school environment that occurs when that happens. So, it's about a quarter. This is similar to the share of working adults at the same time in January of 2024, who said that they plan to leave their own job in a similar timeframe. So this is a place where we see teachers and similar working adults being pretty comparable with similar shares saying that they're planning to leave their jobs. Intending to leave doesn't mean someone will quit, though, right? You're like saying, yeah, maybe I'll leave. I'm likely to leave. I'm very likely to live. Other research has found that saying you intend to leave is predictive of actual resignation. In one estimate, about 30% of teachers who said they plan to leave within a year actually did so. And that number only increased over time. We also interpreted it as sort of a general, broader indicator of job dissatisfaction. And so tracking this number is something we plan to do in the future.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, and I'll also add on to that. We see some really interesting differences by teacher race, which I think are also echoed in some of the actual turnover data by teacher race. We find that teachers of color, and especially Black teachers in particular, are more likely to say that they're intending to leave the profession. And so I think that's something that we're continuing to look at over time and to continue to examine how well-being and stressors also differ across teachers in different types of groups.

Elizabeth Steiner

And I would add just as a benchmark that when you look at federal data that track actual mobility and actual attrition among teachers, you tend to see about eight percent mobility and eight percent attrition. So together, 16 percent of teachers are leaving their jobs yearly in one way or another. That national number has been pretty stable over time, even during the pandemic nationally, but we see a lot of state variation, again, by teacher race and ethnicity, by teacher experience, and by teacher grade level. And so just to know that these national numbers are one way of looking at this problem, but they certainly do mask a lot of variation at the state level and within subject, grade, and experience.

Evan Banks

I'm curious about how pay and benefits might factor into that intention to leave the profession. What do we know about how teachers get paid and what do we know about how they feel about how they're compensated?

Ashley Woo

Yeah, so we ask about this in a couple of different ways. So one of the things that we do is we present teachers with a whole long list of things that we think could stress them out. So managing student behavior often is at the top of that list. But second is low salaries. And so I think for us, that really indicates that receiving low salaries is kind of something that a lot of teachers feel like is one of things that is stressing them out about their jobs. And then separately, we also ask teachers whether or not they feel like their pay is adequate. And we find that only about a third of teachers feel like their base pay is adequate. And that's in comparison to about half of similar working adults. So I think the big takeaway picture there is that a lot of teachers are not feeling really great about their pay. So I'll like pass it off to you Elizabeth to talk a little bit more about why.

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, there's a couple of really interesting things about this, which is that when we compare what teachers say they earn to what similar working adults say they earn, there's about an $18,000 difference on average. So average pay for teachers is $70,000 per year, as reported in our survey. And average pay, for similar working adults, is about $88,000 dollars per year. And that's a big gap. At least, I don't know what you all make, but $18,000 for me is a lot of money, especially in a year. So yeah, and that gap is very similar to what people call the teacher pay penalty, which it uses actual teacher salary data from the current population survey and the Bureau of Labor to calculate average differences between what teachers and their similar counterparts are paid. So we feel like our survey is picking up on some real differences that are reflected in other research. So maybe a natural question is, why do only a third of teachers say that their pay is adequate? One reason is that it's less, probably, than similar working adults. Another possible reason is the teachers' pay increases tend to be pretty small. Many teachers, not all teachers, but many teachers are paid on a contract basis. And if you're in a state that collectively bargains, where you have a union that establishes a contract, you get increments, yearly raises for an additional year of experience, things like acquiring additional education, like a master's degree or other credentials. And sometimes you can get raises for other things, too. And in states that don't collectively bargain, there are generally yearly raises for years of experience. But they may not be as systematic or as ... they may not be as systematic or flow in the same pattern that they are in states where collective bargaining is in force. But the point is that, generally, teachers get raises every year. The average amount of raises reported by the teachers in our survey was pretty small. It was about $2,000. And that varied for a number of different reasons. But when you compare that to the gap between what teachers are paid and what similar working adults are paid. It's not that much. And there are some other reasons why teachers may not feel great about their pay too. But Ashley, do you want to talk about the extra work that they perform and whether they get paid for it or not? Yeah.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, so we also find that, so what's interesting is like, not only are teachers like not very happy with their pay, but they also work, they're also not very happy with the number of hours that they have to work and we're finding that teachers are working far more hours than their contract says that they have to. And so, you know, you can imagine this is because they have to like do extra grading. Some of them might be also taking on additional tasks like sponsoring a club or, you know, coaching a sport or something like that. And so to Elizabeth's point, we also find that about a quarter of teachers say that they are doing extra work for their schools that they're not getting compensated for. So I think that's another reason that a lot of teachers may not be happy with their pay is because they're doing all of this extra work that they are not getting paid for. And when teachers are getting paid for that extra work a lot of times it's also not very much pay either. They're getting paid about $3,000 on average for that extra work. So again, going back to Elizabeth's point, like you're getting a raise of about $2,000. If you do get paid for your extra work, you're gonna pay like another $3,000, but that is altogether only a fraction of the amount that it would take to close that teacher pay penalty and the gap between what teachers actually make feel like they should make in order to have their pay be adequate. And in addition to that, also going back to our earlier conversation about some of the differences that we observed by teacher race, we also find that Black teachers are less likely to perceive their base pay as adequate and more likely to feel stressed about their low salaries. And we're finding that Black teachers ... out of the different racial groups that we looked at, received the smallest increases. And I think that ties back to what Elizabeth was saying earlier about some of the differences by state bargaining status because teachers who are in states where bargaining is required are more likely to receive larger increases, but we hypothesize that it may be because Black teachers are more like to be in those states where bargaining is either prohibited or maybe not required. That they're also receiving smaller pay increases. And in addition to that, also we find that because they're spending more time doing extra work but not necessarily getting compensated more for it, they're also earning less for all the extra work that they do as well. And so we kind of see a lot of these patterns like exacerbated for Black teachers.

Elizabeth Steiner

I was just gonna go back to one of the key sources of teachers' job-related stress. So when we say like, hey, what are the top three things that you say are most stressful about your job? Working long hours is one of them. And teachers report working on average like 54 hours per week when their contracts state, you know, generally 38 to 40. And so that's an additional like 14, 16 hours per week depending on your contract. And, like, think about your work week, right? Think about working an eight-hour day and think about working an additional two hours or so in each day. And imagine what that does to your time, imagine what does to stress levels. When I work that much, I feel like I get stressed and I imagine lots of other people do too. And so teachers are getting paid according to the 40-hour contracted work week. Some teachers who do additional work for their district, like Ashley was saying, they coach a sport, they sponsor a student club, they run yearbook or whatever, those teachers are perhaps getting paid for their work, although not always. They're spending six to seven hours per week-ish on those activities for which they're paid, which still leaves nine hours or so for which teachers are working, but not getting paid each week. And given the relationship between hours worked and pay, we can hypothesize that working long hours and maybe not feeling that they're compensated for that time is another reason teachers might feel dissatisfied with their pay.

Evan Banks

We've already started to get into some of the challenges that teachers face in the classroom, talking about, I believe it was, student behavior was the number one stressor. Let's talk a little bit about academics. Your survey data suggests that middle school and high school teachers are spending time on foundational reading skills like phonics and word recognition. This underscores that many American students are not proficient or advanced readers even at higher grade levels. What did you learn about challenges related to reading instruction, and what supports could help teachers and then further on help students?

Ashley Woo

I think this is something that we did find really surprising, just how many secondary teachers, so this includes middle school teachers, and then maybe most surprisingly high school teachers are still working on some of these foundational reading skills with students. So as many as like a fifth of high school teachers say that they're still working on like phonics with their students. And I think that really speaks to the need to provide secondary teachers with the kinds of resources, whether it's instructional materials, professional learning, or even in their teacher preparation, to continue to address those skills because we're finding that it's not something that is just confined to elementary school. And I think one really interesting thing that we found as well is that teachers who are serving more students of color and more English learners are even more likely at the secondary level to be teaching those foundational reading skills. I think that really speaks to the population that teachers are also serving and making sure that to the extent the teachers are serving these more vulnerable student populations that they are really getting the supports that they need to address some of these foundational literacy skills. And so we also, this past year in the most recent survey where we were asking about these topics we also asked about teachers' access to professional learning and we find that, you know, unsurprisingly if you're teaching in a secondary grade level, you're less likely to be receiving professional learning on teaching about foundational reading skills. So you know we found that about 70 percent of elementary teachers say that they receive this kind of professional learning which even I think at that point like sounds a little bit low because you could imagine like this is something that a lot of elementary school teachers need to be addressing in their instruction and for high school teachers in comparison, this is just about a quarter of high school teachers who receive that kind of professional learning. So I think again thinking about that kind of access to the kinds of supports that they would need to teach these skills in their classroom and not only that but also thinking about how helpful this professional learning was in general for even for secondary teachers who did receive that kind of professional learning, they tended to have worse perceptions of that professional learning than did elementary school teachers and that probably also makes sense because this professional learning is probably like more geared towards elementary school teachers. So I think also making sure that when high school teachers do get that kind of professional learning, it's like age appropriate for the kids that they're teaching.

Elizabeth Steiner

Another layer onto these professional learning challenges, when we survey math teachers, and in particular, elementary teachers who are generalists who teach many subjects. Like if you think back to elementary school, you were with like your class of students for probably most or all of the day, right? So as an elementary teacher, you're teaching reading, you're teaching math, you teaching science, you're teaching social studies or history. And because an elementary teacher is teaching so many subjects, there's like very high competition for professional development time. You have to have your professional development in your math curriculum and in your literacy curriculum, as Ashley was just saying. And when we ask elementary teachers about their math professional learning, at least in the last school year, '23-'24, a large share of them said, we don't get much because we're so focused on literacy. And so it makes you think about all of the things that especially elementary school teachers have to attend to in their professional learning and the responsibility that they have to lay all of these foundations for students across multiple different subjects. And it just raises a challenge for how teachers are organizing their time and to really make sure that principals and district leaders are supported to choose. High quality professional learning for teachers across multiple subject areas.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, and I think another thing I would add on to that is maybe thinking about the way these kinds of skills can be integrated and across subjects. Maybe not just for elementary school teachers, although I think I agree with you, Elizabeth. It feels really salient there because those teachers are often teaching multiple subjects. But for instance, I'm even thinking about, right now we're doing some reporting around supporting multilingual learners. And I think one of the things that also comes up is like, the need to teach language skills, even in like math and science. You know, obviously social studies is like a very natural place to think about that as well, but like kids do need those skills in your STEM subjects as well. And so I think, you know, these kinds of professional learning supports like, we can think about them in a more integrated and holistic and interdisciplinary way, I think can be helpful for addressing some of those challenges you raised.

Evan Banks

Another potential challenge for teachers that's come through in your survey responses is limitations on what they can talk about in the classroom. What did you learn when you asked teachers about restrictions on topics that are perceived to be divisive, those related to race and gender, for example?

Ashley Woo

I think one of the things that we have found to be really interesting and really important in our research is really trying to understand the diversity of experiences of different types of teachers. And I think that helps to bring a lot of nuance to the conversation. So for instance, we find kind of again and again that there are a lot teachers who are like not super keyed in on these conversations, you know, even though they are like appearing in the news media a lot. There, there are a lot of teachers who are not aware of these policies, even if they are in a state with such a policy. And of course, that varies across states, but I would say that's kind of one big picture takeaway. And then I think among the teachers that are aware of these kinds of policies, we also find a lot of different types of experiences. So for instance, there are teachers who worry that these policies may make it harder for them to teach historical content, you know, to engage in like discourse with their kids about like current events to like represent different types of people in their teaching. So we have those kinds of teachers. We also have heard from a small number of teachers that they are supportive of these kinds of restrictions because they feel like it's the place of homes and families and not of schools to be teaching about these kinds of topics. And so for us, I think we're trying to ... uncover the different types of experiences that teachers are facing, so that policymakers can use that information to inform their policy making.

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, and I think I would just add that in addition to what you said, Ashley, is that we also find that communities have lots of different priorities and experiences. And every community, every school is a community, and every community beyond the school, there's a variety of beliefs and a variety of experiences. And so even in places that might look a certain way, there is always a range of experiences, and we think it's important to capture those and to try to understand, as Ashley said, the full range of experiences of teachers across the nation and their communities.

Evan Banks

One of the things the American Life Panel does that I really like is you also ask teachers about the tools that they use in the classrooms. And recently you asked teachers about AI and whether they are using AI in the classroom and if they are using it, dhow they're using it. Is this something you're going to monitor in the future and why is it important to track over time?

Ashley Woo

Yeah, so I think this is something that we're gonna definitely try to keep tabs on in the future. So what we found in our work so far is that about a quarter of teachers nationally say that they're using AI for their instructional planning or for their teaching, and most often for their planning. Like, when we ask teachers, like, what are you doing with this AI? They talk about using AI to, kind of like create learning materials, maybe like creating math problem sets, reading materials that they can present to their students. They talk about using AI to differentiate instruction. I think that's something that's really interesting is they'll talk about like having a text and maybe using AI to lower or increase the reading level of different types of texts. And so using it as a way to kind of support the more individualized needs of their students. But at the same time, I think there are two issues that would be really important to continue to look at over time: I think one is that while teachers have highlighted all of these various ways that AI could be useful, I think they've also raised a lot of concerns about the quality of the output that they get from AI, especially when you're thinking about like a ChatGPT, their look. You know, is the information that's coming out of ChatGPT, like, is it accurate? Or they'll be like, you know. I had ChatGPT do this thing for me and I could have just done it better myself, but sometimes they're also like, you know it kind of does a first pass for me. I take that output from ChatGPT and then I kind of like tweak it further. And so there's some of that where I think teachers are, are starting to integrate it into their practice. But there are these questions about quality and making sure that the way that they're using AI is going to be in a way that enhances student learning because I think what we definitely don't want to see is that teachers are using AI to modify their instruction in a that would reduce the rigor of instruction for students, or could even, you know, on the worst kind of end of things, like provide students with inaccurate content. So I think that's one piece that's helpful for us to continue to track, and Elizabeth, did you want to say something?

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, I was just going to jump in. I think people see a lot of potential in how AI can be used in education, particularly for teaching. And as Ashley was saying, clearly lots of teachers are experimenting with it in different ways. But what we hear from principals and district leaders is that a lot of schools and districts don't have policies for it. District policy hasn't yet caught up with use, even though use isn't widespread. And I think teachers really crave that guidance from their leadership. About what uses are appropriate, how to understand what tools are the best to use, and the best ways to integrate them into their instruction and their work.

Ashley Woo

Yeah, and I definitely agree with that. So one of the things that we did ask principals is whether or not their school or district has provided guidance around the use of AI. And I think we only found that about a quarter of principals said that it was. And some also said that they were in the process of developing that guidance. And so I think, to Elizabeth's point as well, what we've also seen in our data, I think, is a kind of concerning pattern around maybe disparate levels of access and use of AI. So we find that teachers who are in low-poverty schools and principals who are low-poverty schools are more likely to use AI than their counterparts in higher-poverty schools. And in addition to that, it's also those those schools, those principals in lower-poverty schools who say that they have access or are in the process of developing guidance for AI. And so I think that what you could see potentially there is that teachers and principals in higher-poverty schools where they might really benefit from the individualization and personalization that AI could provide are less likely to be using it and maybe also eventually less likely to be receiving guidance around it even though it could really benefit them. So I think just totally agree with Elizabeth's point that I think the point around guidance and like high-quality usage is really important and that we wanna make sure that we're paying attention to how these trends play out in different schools with different levels of resources.

Elizabeth Steiner

And I think that's something we're definitely gonna continue to track in the future.

Evan Banks

Are there any other key findings in other topic areas that you want to highlight?

Elizabeth Steiner

Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, we are looking at math teaching and learning. And those are surveys of teachers and principals, too, to try to understand how teachers are affecting students' experiences in learning math and how principals are supporting teachers. Some of the things we've learned from teachers recently is that tracking in math is still very common. For reference, tracking is when students are placed into math courses by achievement level. So you might have an advanced math course, a middle math course, and a general math course. And students who are in the highest-achieving group are all taking the same course together, and so on and so forth. And there are certain efficiencies to doing it that way, especially in large schools. But it can also introduce inequities in math learning and math learning outcomes. And it's a policy that has been extremely controversial over the years, especially as regards to algebra. And so we're trying to understand how prevalent this practice is, what decision points schools are taking, what data they consider when they place students into specific classes based on their achievement levels, and how instructional practices, curricula, questioning techniques, group work, for instance, just to name a few, might differ or not differ among teachers who teach different groups of students. So that's sort of a preview of things we're looking at in the future.

Evan Banks

We've talked about a lot of different areas today, but overall, how would you say America's teachers are doing?

Elizabeth Steiner

I think we find that teachers are facing a lot of challenges. As Ashley said earlier in the conversation, teachers are doing a lot better now in many ways than they were before the pandemic. Fewer teachers say they're experiencing frequent job-related stress. Their list of stressors specifically related to COVID, like caring for their own children and hybrid learning, remember that, seemed to be less salient for them now. But they are still very stressed about long working hours and helping students meet their social and emotional needs and low pay. So even though we've seen some policy progress in some of those areas, like there are a bunch of states who have raised teacher pay in one form or another in the past couple of years. There are many states and districts, too, that are attending to the well-being of their teachers and are trying to change working conditions, institute wellness programs. Experiment with things like team teaching or other ways to make the day more flexible. We still see these very stubborn numbers around burnout, which we find a little concerning, especially relative to similar working adults. And so we see some of these things reflected in the list of stressors that don't seem to have moved too much in recent years. And of course, the recent national test results do still suggest that students are struggling academically and those challenges are still very real and very present for teachers. But as I mentioned, we're trying to closely track the policy movement in these areas and teacher retention and teacher wellbeing since the pandemic has now gotten a lot of attention. It's the focus of media conversations, it's the focus of many policy conversations and there's a lot action, honestly, in trying to improve teacher retention and make the profession more sustainable. So we really hope to use the panels over the next few years to track some of those policies and track teachers' reactions to them over time.

Evan Banks

Thank you so much, Elizabeth and Ashley, for being on the show. Really, really appreciate your time and thank you for your work.

Ashley Woo

Thank you.

Elizabeth Steiner

Thank you so much for having us. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Evan Banks

And thanks to our listeners. If you're enjoying Policy Minded, consider rating the show on your favorite podcast platform. The research we discussed today, as always, is available in our show notes at rand.org/policyminded. Thanks again to our guests today, Elizabeth Steiner and Ashley Woo. This episode was produced by Deanna Lee. Deanna, Emily Ashenfelter, and I recorded it, and I also edited today's episode. RAND's Director of Digital Outreach is Pete Wilmoth. We'll see you next time on Policy Minded. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.