Better Students
The market-level effects of charter schools on student outcomes: A national analysis of school districts
Feng Chen & Douglas Harris
Journal of Public Economics, December 2023
Abstract:
We study the total, market-level effects of charter schools, and their mechanisms, on a national level and across multiple outcomes. Using a generalized difference-in-differences method, we find that increasing the charter market share by 10 percentage points increases math and ELA elementary/middle test scores of the entire geographic district in which they locate by 0.01 standard deviations and increases the high school graduation rate by 1-2 percentage points. The effects are concentrated in larger, urban districts. The main mechanism appears to be the participant effect, though competitive effects are increasing in the participant effect and driven partly by the closure of low-performing traditional public schools. Causal interpretation of these findings is reinforced by analysis of potential endogeneity of charter school location and timing using placebo analysis and other methods. This study improves understanding of the array of charter mechanisms and their effects on multiple outcomes, on a national basis.
Retention and Educational Inequalities in the U.S.
Miriam Clark & Benjamin Gibbs
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many U.S. schools utilize grade retention (repeating grades when not meeting academic benchmarks) to allow more time for students to learn grade level material. However, some research suggests retention may increase inequalities and not help students progress. We use national data (Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study 2014-2017) and logistic regression to examine what predicts the likelihood of elementary school retention and whether retention is associated with long term outcomes. We find that race and family income did not predict who was most likely to be retained. As expected, boys were more likely to be retained than girls. Most importantly, we show that, of students in major metropolitan areas, retention did not predict long-term academic outcomes (regardless of race, sex, or familial income). Retention did predict long-term exclusionary discipline outcomes for Black students only supporting the School to Prison Pipeline framework.
The increasing penalty to occupation-education mismatch
Hugh Cassidy & Amanda Gaulke
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
College-educated workers in jobs unrelated to their degree generally receive lower wages compared to well-matched workers. Our analysis of data from the National Survey of College Graduates shows that although the rate of this mismatch declined only slightly (18%-17%), the wage penalty increased by 56% between 1993 and 2019. Changes in the composition of field of study over time, as well as declining returns to "excess" education above what is required for the occupation both help to explain the increasing penalty, especially for women. Mismatch has become more closely associated with lower-return occupations for men but not women.
Academic mobility in U.S. public schools: Evidence from nearly 3 million students
Wes Austin et al.
Journal of Public Economics, December 2023
Abstract:
We use administrative panel data from seven states covering nearly 3 million students to document and explore variation in "academic mobility," a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their public schooling careers. We find that student ranks are highly persistent during elementary and secondary education-that is, academic mobility is limited in U.S. schools on the whole. Still, there is non-negligible variation in the degree of upward mobility across some student subgroups as well as individual school districts. On average, districts that exhibit the greatest upward academic mobility serve more socioeconomically advantaged populations and have higher value-added to student achievement.
COVID-19 and Grade Inflation: Analysis of Undergraduate GPAs During the Pandemic
Jonathan Tillinghast, James Mjelde & Anna Yeritsyan
SAGE Open, November 2023
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic required adaptation to a new learning environment creating challenges for students and instructors. A reduction in student-teacher contact and the lack of supervision should have led to a decline in students' academic performance. Nonetheless, studies report increases in grades during the pandemic. Yet, limited information is available regarding the persistence of this impact. This study utilizes a hierarchical mixed effect model to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on university grades. Using unique class-level data containing chronological variables and institutional, instructor, and student characteristics, spanning Fall 2010 to Spring 2021 of 7,852 undergraduate classes, it is shown class average grade point averages (GPAs) in the College of Agriculture at Texas A&M University increased for the three semesters most impacted by COVID-19. Average class GPAs increased by 0.22 points in Spring 2020 because of COVID-19 and then approximately 0.18 points in the subsequent next two semesters. The negative effect of class size decreased during COVID-19, implying online classes have different size effects than traditional classes. Additionally, the positive effect of SAT scores on grades decreased. One implication of this study is that COVID-19 may not only have a direct, significant, impact on GPAs but may also indirectly affect GPAs through altering the effects of variables on GPAs. The causal mechanisms by which the changes occurred are an area for further research.
Politics, Covid, and In-Person Instruction During the First Year of the Pandemic
David Houston & Matthew Steinberg
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In spring 2020, nearly every U.S. public school closed at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing evidence suggests that local political partisanship was a better predictor of in-person instruction than Covid case and death rates in fall 2020. We replicate and extend these analyses using data collected over the entirety of the 2020-21 academic year. We affirm that local political partisanship was an important initial predictor of county-level in-person instruction rates. We also demonstrate that, under certain conditions, Covid case and death rates were meaningfully associated with initial rates of in-person instruction. We reveal that partisanship became less predictive -- and prior average student achievement became more predictive -- of in-person instruction as the school year continued. We then leverage data from two nationally representative surveys of Americans' attitudes toward education and identify an as-yet-undiscussed factor that predicts in-person instruction: public support for increasing teachers' salaries.
The Effect of Public Science on Corporate R&D
Ashish Arora et al.
NBER Working Paper, November 2023
Abstract:
We study the relationships between corporate R&D and three components of public science: knowledge, human capital, and invention. We identify the relationships through firm-specific exposure to changes in federal agency R&D budgets that are driven by the political composition of congressional appropriations subcommittees. Our results indicate that R&D by established firms, which account for more than three-quarters of business R&D, is affected by scientific knowledge produced by universities only when the latter is embodied in inventions or PhD scientists. Human capital trained by universities fosters innovation in firms. However, inventions from universities and public research institutes substitute for corporate inventions and reduce the demand for internal research by corporations, perhaps reflecting downstream competition from startups that commercialize university inventions. Moreover, abstract knowledge advances per se elicit little or no response. Our findings question the belief that public science represents a non-rival public good that feeds into corporate R&D through knowledge spillovers.
On the Causal Effect of Fame on Citations
Jonathan Brogaard et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Papers published in finance and economics journals whose first authors are famous have more citations than papers whose second or third authors are famous. As a paper ages, its citation rate varies most with variation in the fame of the first author and less so with the fame of second and third authors. Author order is alphabetical, so these patterns are unrelated to underlying quality. The magnitudes we find are large; a three-author paper written by the most prolific author in economics and his two research assistants would increase, on average, its percentile rank by 30 percentage points if the prolific author was first rather than second or third. The effect is especially pronounced in three, rather than two, author papers, suggesting that burying a famous author in the "et al." reduces citations the most.
Increased Schooling Reduces Hospitalization Later in Life: New Evidence with Optimal Instruments from the United States
Dahai Yue et al.
American Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the causal effect of education on hospitalization. We apply novel techniques to estimate a sparse model that uses the least absolute selection and shrinkage operator (LASSO) regression with a data-driven penalty to construct optimal cross-validated instrumental variables and select a parsimonious set of controls. This method yields consistent and more efficient estimates relative to conventional instrumental variable procedures and overcomes the limitations of previous studies using compulsory schooling laws in the United States. We also use an approach for a valid inference that allows instruments to be only plausibly exogenous. Using the 1992-2016 Health and Retirement Study, our results suggest that an additional year of schooling in early life lowers the likelihood of two-year hospitalizations later in life by 2.6 percentage points (or about 9.5%). This estimate is robust to different model specifications and plausible amounts of imperfect exogeneity and is similar to the local treatment effect among potential compliers.
Human Capital and the Managerial Revolution in the United States: Evidence from General Electric
Tom Nicholas
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper estimates the returns to human capital accumulation during the first era of mega-firms in the United States by linking employees at General Electric -- a canonical enterprise associated with the "visible hand" of managerial hierarchies -- to the 1940 census. I find large returns to higher education through seniority in the hierarchy, span of control, earnings, and selection into management training, using the proximity of land-grant colleges and historical universities to birth states for identification. The findings highlight the human capital determinants of the managerial revolution at a prominent firm, driven by earlier public investments in the US education system.
Investing in the Teacher Workforce: Experimental Evidence on Teachers' Preferences
Virginia Lovison & Cecilia Hyunjung Mo
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Inadequate compensation is often viewed as the root of teacher workforce challenges despite teacher reports that working conditions matter more. Using an original discrete choice experiment with a national sample of 1,030 U.S. teachers, we found that support staff -- special education specialists, counselors, and nurses -- play an essential role in shaping teachers' employment preferences. Teachers value access to these support staff more than they value a 10% increase to their own salary. We also assessed teachers' preferences regarding childcare subsidies and find that teachers treat a 10% salary increase and a childcare benefit of similar value as near perfect substitutes. To test the durability of these findings, we replicated our study 2 years later and found nearly identical results.