Andrew Penner
banner
andrewpenner.bsky.social
Andrew Penner
@andrewpenner.bsky.social

Professor of Sociology and administrative data infrastructure enthusiast at UC Irvine. My book (Schooled & Sorted) examines the role of categorization in education and how we can create more egalitarian categories.

Education 29%
Political science 29%

Yet one more way that we are failing children.
The accompanying editorial tells the sad truth that is largely being ignored
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
The accompanying editorial tells the sad truth that is largely being ignored
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

We subsequently looked at a few of the images I have published, but none were deemed as cool as the Banff data🙃

Kiddo was incredulous and excited when I noted that making pictures to help people understand the world better was my job, and said I could publish this. Kiddo then suggested a division of labor where they would bring me other tidbits like this for me to publish😍

Baby’s first data visualization—was reading a book about the Banff wildlife crossings and wanted to understand the preferences of different animals.
A new article in AERJ observed the relationship between school choice policy and school segregation, finding that White and Asian families disproportionately used the choice system to avoid schools with large concentrations of Black students. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...
Structuring Choice Policy, School Segregation and the Two-Staged School Choice Process - Deven Carlson, Thurston Domina, James Carter, Rachel M. Perera, Vitaly Radsky, Andrew McEachin, 2025
School choice is both an important tool for school desegregation policy and an enabler of racial segregation. In this paper, we used a two-stage model of comple...
journals.sagepub.com

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

The Power of Attorney flourished when more Americans saw incarcerated people as more than their crimes.

Their career would be unthinkable today: Leaving prison under armed guards to play hundreds of concerts and record in major studios.
The Prison Soul Band That Opened for Stevie Wonder
The band The Power of Attorney flourished when more Americans saw incarcerated people as more than their crimes.
www.themarshallproject.org

For me as a graduate student, @isa-rc28.bsky.social modeled the kind of large-scale, big team, data intensive, methodologically rigorous, theoretically meaningful research that I aspired to do, and so it was especially meaningful to have our work recognized by this award!

It was such an honor to receive this award from @isa-rc28.bsky.social
on behalf of @oliviergodechot.bsky.social and other coauthors.
The winner of this year’s significant contribution award goes to

The great separation: Top earner segregation at work in advanced capitalist economies

O Godechot, et al
American Journal of Sociology 130 (2), 439-495, 2024

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Reposted by Olivier Godechot

As @oliviergodechot.bsky.social notes, in some ways this could be seen as an example of "big" science:
coauthors: 29
years it took: 9
countries: 12
pages (w/ appendices): 111
observations: 1,164,687,821

But it can be summarized in one 5-word sentence: Top earners increasingly work together. PERIOD.

Reposted by Olivier Godechot

So excited to receive this award on behalf of @oliviergodechot.bsky.social and 27 other coauthors!
Congrats to @andrewpenner.bsky.social and a host of co-authors on winning the award for significant scholarship from @isa-rc28.bsky.social, presented by RC president @jenniebrand.bsky.social.

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

Congrats to @andrewpenner.bsky.social and a host of co-authors on winning the award for significant scholarship from @isa-rc28.bsky.social, presented by RC president @jenniebrand.bsky.social.

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

The winner of this year’s significant contribution award goes to

The great separation: Top earner segregation at work in advanced capitalist economies

O Godechot, et al
American Journal of Sociology 130 (2), 439-495, 2024

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

Attending #ESS2025 & interesting in donuts, education, and/ inequality?

Join us next Friday, 8AM for an author (me, @emilykpenner.bsky.social , @andrewpenner.bsky.social) meets critics (@rachelefish.bsky.social, @johndiamondphd.bsky.social, @jenjennings.bsky.social) discussion!

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

.@t-h-a-d.bsky.social @andrewpenner.bsky.social @emilykpenner.bsky.social's book argues for reclaiming absolute goods (vs positional goods) as the desired outcomes of public ed.

I've asked students to pick 2 domains to focus on & explain why. Truly moving responses. Will share when compiled.

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

Every jailhouse lawyer knows Dee Farmer’s name, even if they don’t know who she is.

What most of them don’t know is that the person who paved the road for them was a transgender woman who filed her suit from a federal prison cell, in an era when her gender identity was considered a mental illness.
In Prison, She Changed Constitutional Law. Meet the Trans Woman Behind the Case.
Farmer v. Brennan is one of the most cited Supreme Court cases of all time. Few people know just how revolutionary Dee Farmer was.
www.themarshallproject.org
Short piece about our @nature.com paper on the immigrant-native pay gap in The Conversation! Also broad coverage in (so far) German, Dutch, and Spanish central news outlets today!
Immigrants in Europe and North America earn 18% less than natives – here’s why
Immigrants struggle to access higher-paying jobs, meaning their skills often go to waste.
theconversation.com

And you can read more of our thoughts at The Conversation.
Immigrants in Europe and North America earn 18% less than natives – here’s why
Immigrants struggle to access higher-paying jobs, meaning their skills often go to waste.
theconversation.com

Reposted by Roddy Theobald

Very excited for the latest paper from the international administrative data network I am a part of!

Led by @aresherman.bsky.social we show that 75% of pay differences between immigrants and native-born workers arise because of sorting into different jobs, with 25% due to unequal pay within jobs.
IN OTHER NEWS: check out our new COIN paper on immigrant--native pay gaps in advanced economies published in @nature.com this afternoon! Specifically, we study the relative contribution of within-job unequal pay vs between-job segregation to earnings disparities across immigrant generations. 1/9
Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs - Nature
Data from nine European and North American countries reveal that the disparity in earnings between immigrants and natives is largely a result of segregation of immigrant workers into lower-paying jobs...
www.nature.com

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

NBER @nber.org · May 31
Universal school masking reduced weekly COVID-19 deaths by 0.57 per 100k people. 50 percent of districts removed mask requirements by spring 2022 contributing to 9 percent of COVID deaths that year, from Guzman, Imberman, Filosa, Kilbride, and Malkus https://www.nber.org/papers/w33849

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

AERA: I'm looking forward to sharing a paper co-authored with @alexfreidus.bsky.social and @ericaoturner.bsky.social on how families of disabled children made school choices during the pandemic. Should be a stellar symposium on school choice for marginalized families! 8am Sunday in Meeting Room 712.

I love this assignment so much and can’t wait to use it (with attribution) the next time I teach Sociology of Education!
.@t-h-a-d.bsky.social @andrewpenner.bsky.social @emilykpenner.bsky.social's book argues for reclaiming absolute goods (vs positional goods) as the desired outcomes of public ed.

I've asked students to pick 2 domains to focus on & explain why. Truly moving responses. Will share when compiled.

This made my day, and I love these answers so much!

I tell my students that one of the reasons that I remain an optimist is because of how thoughtful and creative they are.

Looking forward to seeing what else your students come up with 💜

So excited to present some great undergrad honors theses from UCI LIFTED students at #psa2025

Thanks to everyone who came for the great questions, and to the session organizers who helped make this happen!
If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

Okay, but how do you feel about steakholders?

I mean, nobody can get upset about researchers who want to communicate with folks carrying around slabs of red meat, right? 🥩

Reposted by Andrew M. Penner

Students in the top 1% of the income distribution are highly isolated in affluent school enclaves.

💥6%💥 of these top 1% percentile kids’ peers are ALSO in the top income percentile.

💥20%💥 are in the top 5 income percentiles.

💥Nearly 50%💥come from the top 20 income percentiles.