PhD Candidate in the Sociology of Education at New York University
Fabian Barch is a PhD Candidate in the Sociology of Education at New York University. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Education Studies and French from Washington University in St. Louis. He has been a part of multiple research teams that used large data to understand how teachers’ perceptions of work conditions relate to the racial composition of their classroom, and to explore racial disparities in exclusionary school discipline practices. His doctoral research explores the relationship between students’ experiences with housing instability and their academic performance. Fabian is a recipient of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Dissertation Grant. His research interests center around questions of educational equity and race.
Homelessness is a longstanding problem that affects well over a million US students annually. Recent qualitative scholarship has explored the academic lives of unhoused students, and documented how many unhoused students face additional barriers and disruptions to their schooling. However, large-scale, quantitative inquiry on the subject is limited. My dissertation seeks to contribute this knowledge to existing literature and fill this gap. My project leverages big data to explore the effects of homelessness on the learning outcomes of unhoused students. In it, I seek to estimate the magnitude of these disruptions on students’ learning outcomes such as test scores, attendance, and disciplinary infraction frequency.