MPES Welcomes SESP Alum Claudia Persico

“The Roles of Neonatal Health and Race in Special Education Identification

Claudia Persico
Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis
University of Wisconsin – Madison

Wednesday, December 6th
3:30-4:45pm
Annenberg 303

Claudia Persico is an economics and neuroscience-oriented policy scholar with interests in inequality, education policy and early childhood health. Her research on school finance reform has recently been featured in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (“The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence From School Finance Reforms” with C. Kirabo Jackson and Rucker C. Johnson). Her current work examines the social and biological mechanisms underlying the relationships between poverty, the environment, and children’s cognitive development and health. In particular, much of her current research focuses on how early exposure to environmental pollution can cause inequality by affecting child health, development, behavior, and academic achievement, and how the conditions of poverty affect children’s likelihood of having a disability.