Jason Jabbari, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a two-year $352,943 grant from Arnold Ventures to evaluate the impact of the Cristo Rey Network’s professional work-based learning model on social mobility and racial equity.
The Cristo Rey Network, which serves low-income students, combines college-preparatory curriculum with a corporate work-study program in which students work one day per week at a local corporation.
Jabbari, along with Shaun Dougherty of Boston College, Lauren Russell of the University of Pennsylvania, and Fahvyon Jimenez of Jimenez Strategy & Analytics, will work with a variety of administrative datasets to compare college and employment outcomes of Cristo Rey graduates to similar non-attending applicants.
“By leveraging historical application and transcript data, we’ll be able to provide the first causal evidence of this unique school model, which could provide implications for scaling up this type of innovative school model in St. Louis,” Jabbari said.
Jabbari serves as the faculty director at the Clark-Fox Policy Institute and leads the Center for Education Research, Practice, and Policy Partnerships, where he examines how policies and practices relate to excellence in academic and economic trajectories.
