Stephen Porter

Feb 1, 2024

Inside Higher Ed: Tenure Clock Delays, A Debatable Fix, Popular Amid Pandemic

About four in 10 assistant and associate professors at public research universities reported that the pandemic disrupted their research “a great deal,” compared to just a quarter of full professors, according to a journal article published in Teachers College Record. The authors — Professor Paul D. Umbach, Professor Stephen R. Porter and Doctoral Student Chris William from NC State's College of Education — found that “men and women were equally likely to extend,” even though 40 percent of women reported “a great deal” of disruption compared to 29 percent of men. 

Oct 31, 2018

Analysis Detects No State-Level Impacts for ‘Read to Achieve’ Initiative

North Carolina’s Read to Achieve initiative, the state program supporting reading mastery for all third-grade students, appears to have had no effect on reading scores for the first two cohorts of students exposed to the program, according to research and analysis conducted by North Carolina State University. 

Oct 22, 2018

N&O: NC State Researchers Reveal Results in Newest ‘Read to Achieve’ Study

Researchers from the NC State College of Education and Friday Institute for Educational Innovation reveal findings from North Carolina's Read to Achieve program since its inception in 2012 and suggest ways to improve the statewide initiative moving forward. 

Jun 6, 2018

Fordham Institute Flypaper: Steps Towards Examining the Academic Impact of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program

In this Fordham Institute blog post, NC State Education researchers Anna Egalite and Trip Stallings discuss how they, along with colleague Stephen Porter, coordinated with a diverse set of public and private school partners to conduct a pilot evaluation on North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship Program despite significant barriers. 

Jun 5, 2018

WUNC: Researchers Say N.C. Voucher Program Needs Closer Look Than They Can Give

Researchers at the NC State College of Education and the Friday Institute this week released the results of an unpublished evaluation of the Opportunity Scholarship, a state-funded voucher that helps low-income students attend private schools. The research came out with positive results for the voucher recipients who participated in the study – but the authors say those results come with many caveats. 

Jun 5, 2018

Working Paper Offers Initial Data on Academic Impact of N.C. School Vouchers

A new working paper that compares scores of a small volunteer group of public and private school students on the same standardized test found positive effects for voucher recipients, particularly first-year participants in the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program; but authors Anna Egalite, Trip Stallings and Stephen Porter caution against reading too much into the results. 

Jun 4, 2018

WRAL: School Voucher Study Shows Positive But Questionable Results

Three researchers in the NC State College of Education released a working paper on the impact of North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship Program. "From a policy perspective, the biggest takeaway from this paper is just how many limitations there are to conducting a high-quality evaluation of the program's academic impact, given current statutes," said Assistant Professor Anna Egalite. 

Jun 4, 2018

The Charlotte Observer: Good Test Scores But Too Much Bible: Two Views from Research on N.C. School Vouchers

The study, released by NC State Education Assistant Professor Anna Egalite, Professor Stephen Porter and Director of Policy Research Trip Stallings, found that students getting Opportunity Scholarships showed a "positive, large and statistically significant" edge on the exams, based on about 500 public and private school students who voluntarily took the same nationally-normed exam. 

Jun 4, 2018

EdNC: Researchers Release “An Impact Analysis of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement”

Assistant Professor Anna Egalite, Professor Stephen Porter and Director of Policy Research Tripp Stallings released an evaluation of the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program that shows "large positive impacts associated with voucher usage in North Carolina." 

Nov 10, 2017

NBC News: When College Classrooms Become Ideologically Segregated, Everyone Suffers

NBC News features a report Stephen R. Porter and Paul D. Umbach, experts in education policy and professors at the NC State College of Education, led a decade ago that assessed factors that predict undergraduate major choice by surveying undergraduates at an unnamed elite liberal arts college. The researchers found, after controlling for many variables, that politics were a powerful predictor of major, rivaled only by personality.