National Academy of Education awards Doctoral Candidate Paul Yoo
$27,500 Spencer Dissertation Fellowship

By Carol Jean Tomoguchi-Perez
June 26, 2023

Doctoral candidate Paul Yoo was awarded a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship from the National Academy of Education (NAEd). The highly competitive program awarded 35 fellowships this year with the goal of encouraging a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. Yoo's research interests include education and social policy, inequality, long-run effects, social mobility and research-practice partnerships​. He is interested in mechanisms of education and social systems that enable upward mobility and improve outcomes for disadvantaged populations, and how research and data can be leveraged to address issues of inequality across societal sectors, such as education, communities and housing.

Yoo's dissertation examines the long-term outcomes of virtual charter school students using novel administrative data that combines statewide education records in Oregon to IRS records on young adult earnings. Despite increasing virtual charter school enrollments, stakeholders have raised serious concerns about their quality as researchers have documented their much larger teacher-student ratios, heavier reliance on parental participation, and significant challenges of student engagement. 

Paul Yoo

The $27,500 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, analysis, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world. Learn more about Yoo and the NAEd fellows.