About

Sarah Komisarow is an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is also an Assistant Professor of Economics and an affiliate of the Center for Child and Family Policy. Her contact information includes her email, sarah.komisarow@duke.edu, and her office is located at 232 Rubenstein Hall, Box 90312, Durham, NC 27708. Her research focuses on public policy issues related to children and families, and she is engaged in academic activities within the Sanford School of Public Policy and the broader Duke University community.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Criminology
• Demographic economics
• Economics
• Geography
• Meteorology
• Mathematics
• Law
• Agricultural economics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of School Funding Policies and External Fundraising

  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · 2026-03-16

  articleCorresponding

  School spending matters for student outcomes, and, while public schools are primarily funded with public sources, private fundraising for individual schools has increased. In this brief, we document variation in public and private funding across Chicago’s public elementary schools by school poverty level. Federal, state, and local funding policies resulted in high-poverty schools receiving an average of $2,021 more in public per-pupil dollars compared to low-poverty schools. In contrast, while almost all schools engaged in private fundraising, the magnitude of dollars raised was $500 to $700 more per pupil at low-poverty schools compared to high-poverty schools. Private fundraising thus offset the difference in public funds by an estimated 23% to 35%.

  PublisherDOI

• Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of School Funding Policies and External Fundraising

  UNC Libraries · 2026-03-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  School spending matters for student outcomes, and, while public schools are primarily funded with public sources, private fundraising for individual schools has increased. In this brief, we document variation in public and private funding across Chicago’s public elementary schools by school poverty level. Federal, state, and local funding policies resulted in high-poverty schools receiving an average of $2,021 more in public per-pupil dollars compared to low-poverty schools. In contrast, while almost all schools engaged in private fundraising, the magnitude of dollars raised was $500 to $700 more per pupil at low-poverty schools compared to high-poverty schools. Private fundraising thus offset the difference in public funds by an estimated 23% to 35%.

  PublisherDOI

• How Mode and Message Shape Principal Responses: An Experimental Survey Study

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-05-11

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• When does crime respond to punishment?: Evidence from drug-free school zones

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2025-04-17

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• School Administrators and K-12 School Discipline

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-05-20

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Mode and Message Shape Principal Responses: An Experimental Survey Study

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-05-11

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• School Administrators and K-12 School Discipline

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-05-20

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• School-Based Health Care and Absenteeism: Evidence from Telemedicine

  UNC Libraries · 2025-04-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The prevalence of school-based health care has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based health care, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs) provide students with access to health care during the regular school day through private videoconferencing with a health care provider. We exploit variation over time in SBTC openings across schools in three rural districts in North Carolina. We find that school-level SBTC access reduces the likelihood that a student is chronically absent by 2.5 percentage points (29 percent) and reduces the number of days absent by about 0.8 days (10 percent). Relatedly, access to an SBTC increases the likelihood of math and reading test-taking by between 1.8 and 2.0 percentage points (about 2 percent). Heterogeneity analyses suggest that these effects are driven by male students. Finally, we see suggestive evidence that SBTC access reduces violent or weapons-related disciplinary infractions among students but has little influence on other forms of misbehavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of School Funding Policies and External Fundraising

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Are Friends of Schools the Enemies of Equity? The Interplay of School Funding Policies and External Fundraising

  Working paper · 2024-11-08

  reportOpen access

  School districts across the US have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. Concurrently, schools are increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. We document both funding policies and fundraising efforts in Chicago Public Schools. We find that adoption of a weighted-student funding policy reallocated more dollars to schools with high shares of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, creating a policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap. Further, almost all schools raised external funds over the study period, with most dollars raised concentrated in schools serving relatively affluent populations. We estimate that external fundraising offset the policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap between schools enrolling the lowest and highest shares of FRL-eligible students by 23-35 percent.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emily L. Pakhtigian

  Pennsylvania State University

  5 shared

• Robert Gonzalez

  4 shared

• Lisa Barrow

  3 shared

• Lauren Sartain

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  3 shared

• Steven W. Hemelt

  W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

  2 shared

• Ranae Jabri

  Duke University

  2 shared