Research
Overview
My current research agenda has three major strands:
Strand 1 focuses on racially minoritized (prospective) teachers and school leaders within the labor market.
Strand 2 explores the experiences and outcomes of immigrant and multilingual learners in schools.
Strand 3 centers the racial politics of policymaking, specifically how Asian American students, parents, and other stakeholders engage with and navigate choice policies within the U.S. education system.
Other work extends the QuantCrit literature to advance how quantitative studies in education operationalize racial and ethnic categories in light of the historical contingencies surrounding immigration across unique geographical contexts.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Xu, Shirley H., Francisco A. Santelli, Jason A. Grissom, Brendan Bartanen, and Susan K. Patrick. 2024 "(Dis)connection at Work: Racial Isolation, Job Experiences, and Teacher Turnover." American Educational Research Journal 0 (0). https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312241278597
Dissertation Project
Elitism or Erasure? How Asian Americans Frame and Mobilize Around Selective Admissions Reforms in K-12 Schools
To increase opportunity and access for historically marginalized students, education institutions in the United States have often turned to redistributive admissions policies such as affirmative action in higher education spaces. Empirically, these policies have been effective in expanding access, yet remain controversial and face continual attack from conservative opposition groups, whose latest strategy centers claims of anti-Asian discrimination. This mixed-methods dissertation explores how Asian Americans themselves perceive redistributive admissions polices including the elimination of standardized exam requirements and lottery admissions at elite public high schools, and how they are being mobilized in support of or opposition to these policies. Using in-depth interviews with Asian-identifying alumni, parents, and community members across two case sites in California and Virginia and and data from an original survey experiment, this study nuances our understandings of Asian American political identity, intra- and inter-ethnic group dynamics within the landscape of school choice, and how to account for public opinion in the process of designing and framing equity-oriented educational policies.
Selected Works in Progress
Xu, Shirley. H., Diana Quintero Castellanos, and Coral Flanagan. "Critical Juncture: The Effects of 8th grade English Learner Reclassification in Texas."
Xu, Shirley H. and Jason A. Grissom. "Identifying Barriers to and Strategies for Diversifying the Teacher Workforce: Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Investigation of Tennessee School Districts."
Santelli, Francisco A., Shirley H. Xu, and Jason A. Grissom. "Labor Market Sorting and Turnover Patterns Among School Leaders of Color in Tennessee."
Santelli, Francisco A. and Shirley H. Xu. "The Case for Considering Historical Contingency of Immigration Context in Quantitative Education Research."