Learning the Hard Way
Education's Gambling Problem: Earmarked Lottery Revenues and Charitable Donations to Education
Daniel Jones
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
I examine the impact that lotteries introduced to support education have on voluntary contributions to education. State lotteries, and the causes they are introduced to support, are highly publicized. This provides the opportunity to assess whether donors are crowded-out by government spending of which they are almost certainly aware. Using donor-level survey data and nonprofits' tax returns, I find that donations to education-related organizations fall with the introduction of a lottery. This result is driven by donors' response to the new (highly publicized) government revenue source (rather than a decrease in nonprofit fundraising efforts).
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Eric Hanushek, Marc Piopiunik & Simon Wiederhold
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
Differences in teacher quality are commonly cited as a key determinant of the huge international student performance gaps. However, convincing evidence on this relationship is still lacking, in part because it is unclear how to measure teacher quality consistently across countries. We use unique international assessment data to investigate the role of teacher cognitive skills as one main dimension of teacher quality in explaining student outcomes. Our main identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in teacher cognitive skills attributable to international differences in relative wages of nonteacher public sector employees. Using student-level test score data, we find that teacher cognitive skills are an important determinant of international differences in student performance. Results are supported by fixed-effects estimation that uses within-country between-subject variation in teacher skills.
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Who Enters Teaching? Encouraging Evidence That the Status of Teaching Is Improving
Hamilton Lankford et al.
Educational Researcher, December 2014, Pages 444-453
Abstract:
The relatively low status of teaching as a profession is often given as a factor contributing to the difficulty of recruiting teachers, the middling performance of American students on international assessments, and the well-documented decline in the relative academic ability of teachers through the 1990s. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, a number of federal, state, and local teacher accountability policies have been implemented toward improving teacher quality over the objections of some who argue the policies will decrease quality. In this article, we analyze 25 years of data on the academic ability of teachers in New York State and document that since 1999 the academic ability of both individuals certified and those entering teaching has steadily increased. These gains are widespread and have resulted in a substantial narrowing of the differences in teacher academic ability between high- and low-poverty schools and between White and minority teachers. We interpret these gains as evidence that the status of teaching is improving.
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House Price Growth when Children are Teenagers: A Path to Higher Earnings?
Daniel Cooper & María José Luengo-Prado
Journal of Urban Economics, March 2015, Pages 54–72
Abstract:
This paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering college have an impact on their earnings as adults. Higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funding to invest in their children’s human capital but also raise housing costs. The results show that a one percentage point increase in house prices, when children are 17 years old, results in roughly 0.9 percent higher annual income for the children of homeowners, and 1.5 percent lower annual income for the children of renters. House price appreciation at age 17 also leads to higher college enrollment rates at age 19 and an increased likelihood of attendance at higher ranked colleges and universities for children of homeowners, as well as lower college enrollment rates for children of renters.
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Is there an educational penalty for being suspended from school?
Deborah Cobb-Clark et al.
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Suspension from school is a commonly used, yet controversial, school disciplinary measure. This paper uses unique survey data to estimate the impact of suspension on the educational outcomes of those suspended. It finds that while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather likely stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds. These results hold regardless of whether self-reported suspension or mother-reported suspension is considered. The absence of a clear negative causal impact of suspension on educational outcomes suggests that suspension may continue to play a role in school discipline without harming the educational prospects of those sanctioned.
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The Returns to the Federal Tax Credits for Higher Education
George Bulman & Caroline Hoxby
NBER Working Paper, January 2015
Abstract:
Three tax credits benefit households who pay tuition and fees for higher education. The credits have been justified as an investment: generating more educated people and thus more earnings and externalities associated with education. The credits have also been justified purely as tax cuts to benefit the middle class. In 2009, the generosity of and eligibility for the tax credits expanded enormously so that their 2011 cost was $25 billion. Using selected, de-identified data from the population of potential filers, we show how the credits are distributed across households with different incomes. We estimate the causal effects of the federal tax credits using two empirical strategies (regression kink and simulated instruments) which we show to be strong and very credibly valid for this application. The latter strategy exploits the massive expansion of the credits in 2009. We present causal estimates of the credits' effects on postsecondary attendance, the type of college attended, the resources experienced in college, tuition paid, and financial aid received. We discuss the implications of our findings for society's return on investment and for the tax credits' budget neutrality over the long term (whether higher lifetime earnings generate sufficient taxes to recoup the tax expenditures). We assess several explanations why the credits appear to have negligible causal effects.
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Charters Without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston
Atila Abdulkadiroğlu et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
Lottery estimates suggest oversubscribed urban charter schools boost student achievement markedly. But these estimates needn’t capture treatment effects for students who haven’t applied to charter schools or for students attending charters for which demand is weak. This paper reports estimates of the effect of charter school attendance on middle-schoolers in charter takeovers in New Orleans and Boston. Takeovers are traditional public schools that close and then re-open as charter schools. Students enrolled in the schools designated for closure are eligible for “grandfathering” into the new schools; that is, they are guaranteed seats. We use this fact to construct instrumental variables estimates of the effects of passive charter attendance: the grandfathering instrument compares students at schools designated for takeover with students who appear similar at baseline and who were attending similar schools not yet closed, while adjusting for possible violations of the exclusion restriction in such comparisons. Estimates for a large sample of takeover schools in the New Orleans Recovery School District show substantial gains from takeover enrollment. In Boston, where we can compare grandfathering and lottery estimates for a middle school, grandfathered students see achievement gains at least as large as the gains for students assigned seats in lotteries. Larger reading gains for grandfathering compliers are explained by a worse non-charter fallback.
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Leveling Up: Early Results from a Randomized Evaluation of Post-Secondary Aid
Joshua Angrist et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
Does financial aid increase college attendance and completion? Selection bias and the high implicit tax rates imposed by overlapping aid programs make this question difficult to answer. This paper reports initial findings from a randomized evaluation of a large privately-funded scholarship program for applicants to Nebraska's public colleges and universities. Our research design answers the challenges of aid evaluation with random assignment of aid offers and a strong first stage for aid received: randomly assigned aid offers increased aid received markedly. This in turn appears to have boosted enrollment and persistence, while also shifting many applicants from two- to four-year schools. Awards offered to nonwhite applicants, to those with relatively low academic achievement, and to applicants who targeted less-selective four-year programs (as measured by admissions rates) generated the largest gains in enrollment and persistence, while effects were much smaller for applicants predicted to have stronger post-secondary outcomes in the absence of treatment. Thus, awards enabled groups with historically-low college attendance to ʽlevel up,ʼ largely equalizing enrollment and persistence rates with traditionally college-bound peers, particularly at four-year programs. Awards offered to prospective community college students had little effect on college enrollment or the type of college attended.
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Stephen Billings, Eric Brunner & Stephen Ross
University of North Carolina Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
We examine housing market and residential mobility changes that occur soon after a school fails to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in Charlotte, NC. Students within attendance zones of failing schools are given priority in lotteries for oversubscribed schools, potentially increasing the attractiveness of living in a failing school attendance zone. We find that housing prices, homebuyer income and the probability of attending a non-assigned school increase in the highest quality neighborhoods within failing school attendance zones. Our results are driven largely by the behavior of new residents who exploit the school choice advantages offered by failure to achieve AYP.
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Experimentally Estimated Impacts of School Vouchers on College Enrollment and Degree Attainment
Matthew Chingos & Paul Peterson
Journal of Public Economics, February 2015, Pages 1–12
Abstract:
We provide the first experimental estimates of the long-term impacts of a voucher to attend private school by linking data from a privately sponsored voucher initiative in New York City, which awarded the scholarships by lottery to low-income families, to administrative records on college enrollment and degree attainment. We find no significant effects on college enrollment or four-year degree attainment of the offer of a voucher. However, we find substantial, marginally significant impacts for minority students and large, significant impacts for the children of women born in the United States. Negative point estimates for the children of non-minority and foreign-born mothers are not statistically significant at conventional levels. The information needed to match students to administrative data on postsecondary outcomes was available for 99 percent of the sample. We find evidence of substantial bias due to attrition in the original evaluation, which relied on data collected at follow-up sessions.
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Jeffrey Thompson & Jesse Bricker
Federal Reserve Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
This paper uses the recent 2007-09 SCF panel to examine the influence of student loans on financial distress. Families with student loans in 2007 have higher levels of financial distress than families without such loans, and these families were more susceptible to transitions to financial distress during the early stages of the Great Recession. This correlation persists once we control for a host of other demographic, work-status, and household balance sheet measures. Families with an average level of student loans were 3.1 percentage points more likely to be 60 days late paying bills and 3 percentage points more likely to be denied credit. During this same time period, families with other types of consumer debt were no more or less likely to be financially distressed. Education loans enable students to go to college and improve their employment and earnings prospects. On average, families with education loans in the 2007-09 SCF saw higher income growth between surveys. Further, the value of completing a degree is evident in the data: families without a degree but with education debt drive much of the correlations between financial distress and education loans.
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Alchian on Tenure: Some Long Awaited Empirical Evidence
William Brown
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Armen Alchian made many important contributions to our understanding of organizations. One of the most important insights was related to organizations of higher education and the existence of tenure. However, the primary empirical predictions of his explanation for tenure have remained unexplored. This paper provides some empirical evidence on these predictions. Alchian’s predictions receive strong support. The results indicate that tenure is significantly more likely to occur in nonprofit institutions than in for-profit institutions, tenure is more common in public institutions than in private nonprofit institutions, and among private nonprofit institutions the incidence of tenure is positively related to the level of endowment support and negatively related to the institution’s reliance on tuition and fees.
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Do High School Athletes Get Better Grades During the Off-Season?
Katie Schultz
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A great deal of recent research has employed instrumental variables to estimate the effect of participation in athletics on academic or labor market outcomes, finding evidence of small positive effects from participation. This research proposes several theories of how participation affects success but cannot distinguish between them. I ask a fundamentally different question, whether an athlete performs better or worse, academically, during the season in which they participate in sports, focusing on the time allocation theory of participation. Time spent on sports may substitute from time on academics or negative leisure activities, causing academic performance to improve or decline in-season, respectively. This paper finds a small negative and significant in-season effect on academic performance for varsity athletes and a small positive and significant in-season effect on academic performance for junior varsity (JV) athletes. Decreases in in-season grade point average (GPA) for varsity athletes occur through a decline in performance in English and history courses, while increases in in-season GPA for JV athletes operate through an improvement in math and science courses. Results are robust to controlling for various measures of course ease across semesters. The relatively small in-season effects suggest that estimates of the effects of participation in the rest of the literature operate primarily through mechanisms other than time allocation.
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Life in the Fast Lane: Effects of Early Grade Acceleration on High School and College Outcomes
Katie Larsen McClarty
Gifted Child Quarterly, January 2015, Pages 3-13
Abstract:
Research has repeatedly demonstrated the positive effects of acceleration for gifted and talented students. This study expands the literature by not only evaluating the impact of early grade skipping on high school and college outcomes but also examining the role of postacceleration opportunities on subsequent performance. Using a representative national sample, accelerated students were compared with older grade-level peers who had similar academic and demographic backgrounds. Results suggest that, on average, accelerated students consistently and significantly outperformed their nonaccelerated peers, both in high school and in college. Furthermore, postacceleration educational opportunities provided additional benefit; students who skipped a grade and also participated in challenging academic programs (e.g., Advanced Placement, high-ability instructional groups) demonstrated particularly high achievement. Results suggest that gifted learners profit most when acceleration is coupled with additional opportunities for advanced study.
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Grades and Rank: Impacts of Non-Financial Incentives on Test Performance
Nina Jalava, Juanna Schrøter Joensen & Elin Pellas
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does effort respond to being graded and ranked? This paper examines the effects of non-financial incentives on test performance. We conduct a randomized field experiment on more than a thousand sixth graders in Swedish primary schools. Extrinsic non-financial incentives play an important role in motivating highly skilled students to exert more effort. We find significant differences in test scores between the intrinsically motivated control group and three of four extrinsically motivated treatment groups. The only treatment not increasing test performance is criterion-based grading on an A-F scale, which is the typical grading method. Test performance is significantly higher if employing rank-based grading or giving students a symbolic reward. The motivational strengths of the non-financial incentives differ across the test score distribution, across the skill distribution, with peer familiarity, and with respect to gender. Boys are only motivated by rank-based incentives, while girls are also motivated by receiving a symbolic reward. Rank-based grading and symbolic rewards tend to crowd out intrinsic motivation for students with low skills, while girls also respond less to rank-based incentives if tested with less familiar peers.
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Joseph Altonji & Richard Mansfield
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
We consider the classic problem of estimating group treatment effects when individuals sort based on observed and unobserved characteristics that affect the outcome. Using a standard choice model, we show that controlling for group averages of observed individual characteristics potentially absorbs all the across-group variation in unobservable individual characteristics. We use this insight to bound the treatment effect variance of school systems and associated neighborhoods for various outcomes. Across four datasets, our most conservative estimates indicate that a 90th versus 10th percentile school system increases the high school graduation probability by between 0.047 and 0.085 and increases the college enrollment probability by between 0.11 and 0.13. We also find large effects on adult earnings. We discuss a number of other applications of our methodology, including measurement of teacher value-added.
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Patterns and Trends in Grade Retention Rates in the United States, 1995–2010
John Robert Warren, Emily Hoffman & Megan Andrew
Educational Researcher, December 2014, Pages 433-443
Abstract:
Although grade retention may be consequential for a number of important educational and socioeconomic outcomes, we know surprisingly little about the actual rate at which students are made to repeat grades. We build on Hauser, Frederick, and Andrew’s 2007 measure of grade retention using data from the 1995 through 2010 Current Population Surveys. We make technical improvements to their measure, provide more recent estimates, and validate the measure against external criteria. Our measure describes large disparities in grade retention rates by sex, race/ethnicity, geographic locale, and students’ socioeconomic circumstances. However, both absolute retention rates and disparities in retention rates have declined markedly since 2005. We conclude by describing how our measures might be used to model the impact of economic and policy contexts on grade retention rates.
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Performance Pay, Test Scores, and Student Learning Objectives
Ryan Balch & Matthew Springer
Economics of Education Review, February 2015, Pages 114–125
Abstract:
Austin Independent School District's (AISD) REACH pay for performance program has become a national model for compensation reform. This study analyzes the test scores of students enrolled in schools participating in the REACH program to students enrolled in schools within AISD not participating in the program. We also investigate the relationship between student learning objectives (SLOs), the program's primary measure of individual teacher performance, and teacher performance as measured by value-added student test scores. The AISD REACH program is associated with positive student test score gains in both math and reading during the initial year of implementation. Student test score gains are maintained in the second year, but we do not find any additional growth. We also find that SLOs are not significantly correlated with a teacher's value-added student test scores.
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Victor Lavy
NBER Working Paper, January 2015
Abstract:
Research in economics of education about the effectiveness of educational programs and interventions have centered primarily on standardized test scores as a measure of success. However, since the ultimate goal of education is to improve lifetime well-being, attention shifted recently to long term consequences at adulthood, for example post-secondary schooling. However, the type of educational interventions studied is still limited and much remained to be unraveled. In this paper I study the long term consequences of free school choice by taking advantage of an experiment conducted two decades ago in the city of Tel Aviv, Israel. This school choice program was very effective in improving high school attainment and cognitive achievements six years later (Lavy 2010) and now I examine whether these effects persist beyond high school. The results indicate that treated students experience significant gains in post-secondary enrollment and in completed years of education and also have higher earnings at age 30. These significant positive treatment effects reflect mainly an increase in academic education, through increased enrollment in three-years academic colleges but not in research universities, and some shift away from vocational education at adulthood. Additional gains are reductions in eligibility and recipiency of disability welfare allowances.
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When Small Words Foretell Academic Success: The Case of College Admissions Essays
James Pennebaker et al.
PLoS ONE, December 2014
Abstract:
The smallest and most commonly used words in English are pronouns, articles, and other function words. Almost invisible to the reader or writer, function words can reveal ways people think and approach topics. A computerized text analysis of over 50,000 college admissions essays from more than 25,000 entering students found a coherent dimension of language use based on eight standard function word categories. The dimension, which reflected the degree students used categorical versus dynamic language, was analyzed to track college grades over students' four years of college. Higher grades were associated with greater article and preposition use, indicating categorical language (i.e., references to complexly organized objects and concepts). Lower grades were associated with greater use of auxiliary verbs, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and negations, indicating more dynamic language (i.e., personal narratives). The links between the categorical-dynamic index (CDI) and academic performance hint at the cognitive styles rewarded by higher education institutions.
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Benjamin Castleman & Lindsay Page
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several recent low-cost interventions demonstrate that simplifying information about college and financial aid and helping students access professional assistance can generate substantial improvements in students’ postsecondary outcomes. We build on this growing literature by investigating the impact of two applications of behavioral principles to mitigate summer “melt,” the phenomenon that college-intending high school graduates fail to matriculate in college anywhere in the year following high school. One intervention utilized an automated and personalized text messaging campaign to remind college-intending students of required pre-matriculation tasks and to connect them to counselor-based support. Another employed near-aged peer mentors to provide summer outreach and support. The interventions substantially increased college enrollment among students who had less academic-year access to quality college counseling or information. Both strategies are cost-effective approaches to increase college entry among populations traditionally underrepresented in higher education and, more broadly, highlight the potential for low-cost behavioral nudges and interventions to achieve meaningful improvements in students’ educational outcomes.
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Jennifer Jennings et al.
Sociology of Education, January 2015, Pages 56-82
Abstract:
Do schools reduce or perpetuate inequality by race and family income? Most studies conclude that schools play only a small role in explaining socioeconomic and racial disparities in educational outcomes, but they usually draw this conclusion based solely on test scores. We reconsider this finding using longitudinal data on test scores and four-year college attendance among high school students in Massachusetts and Texas. We show that unexplained differences between high schools are larger for college attendance than for test scores. These differences are arguably caused by differences between the schools themselves. Furthermore, while these apparent differences in high school effectiveness increase income disparities in college attendance, they reduce racial disparities. Social scientists concerned with schools’ role in transmitting inequality across generations should reconsider the assumption that schools either increase or reduce all disparities and should direct attention to explaining why high schools’ effects on specific outcomes and groups of students appear to vary so much.
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Kristie Phillips, Elisabeth Larsen & Charles Hausman
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The liberation model hypothesizes that school choice liberates students from underperforming schools by giving them the opportunity to seek academically superior schooling options outside of their neighborhoods. Subsequently, school choice is hypothesized to diminish stratification in schools. Data from one urban school district is analyzed to test these hypotheses. We specifically examine which factors influence the propensity for parents to participate in choice, and how school choice changes the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools. We further examine how school choice influences similar changes within distinct sociogeographic areas within the district. We find that families who are zoned to more racially/ethnically and economically diverse schools in sociogeographically diverse areas are more likely to participate in school choice. We also find that intra-district choice is associated with a slight increase in social stratification throughout the district, with more substantial stratification occurring in the most demographically diverse areas and schools.
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One Size does not Fit All: Multiple Dimensions of Ability, College Attendance and Wages
María Prada & Sergio Urzúa
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
We investigate the role of mechanical ability as another dimension that, jointly with cognitive and socio-emotional, affects schooling decisions and labor market outcomes. Using a Roy model with a factor structure and data from the NLSY79, we show that the labor market positively rewards mechanical ability. However, in contrast to the other dimensions, mechanical ability reduces the likelihood of attending four-year college. We find that, on average, for individuals with high levels of mechanical and low levels of cognitive and socio-emotional ability, not attending four-year college is the alternative associated with the highest hourly wage (ages 25-30).
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Christine Wade
Children and Youth Services Review, January 2015, Pages 70–79
Abstract:
Experiences of 298 children with their caregivers in after-school programs (ASPs) were examined as predictors of social-emotional functioning across first through fifth grade. Moderating effects of previous social-emotional problems, child gender, family income, quantity of care, and program regulatable features were also estimated. On average, ASP experiences negatively predicted externalizing problems and positively predicted social self-control and assertion. Interestingly, positive ASP experiences did not predict decreased externalizing behaviors, but instead children with negative experiences had higher levels of externalizing behavior problems. Changes in ASP experiences positively predicted changes in self-control scores, but only for boys. Finally, staff experience, staff wages, and changes in child-to-caregiver ratios predicted children’s ASP experiences and levels of social-emotional development.
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Unconditional Regard Buffers Children’s Negative Self-Feelings
Eddie Brummelman et al.
Pediatrics, December 2014, Pages 1119-1126
Background: Unconditional regard refers to the feeling that one is accepted and valued by others without conditions. Psychological theory suggests that experiences of unconditional regard lead children to feel that they are valuable despite setbacks. We hypothesized that reflecting on experiences of unconditional regard would buffer children’s negative self-feelings (eg, shame, insecurity, powerlessness) in the face of setbacks. To test this hypothesis, we randomized children to reflect on experiences of unconditional regard or other experiences, and examined their response to an academic setback 3 weeks later.
Methods: Participants (11–15 years old) were randomly assigned to reflect for 15 minutes on experiences of unconditional regard (n = 91), conditional regard (n = 80), or other social experiences (n = 76). Research personnel, teachers, and classmates remained blind to condition assignment. Three weeks later, after receiving their course grades, children reported their self-feelings. Course grades were obtained from school records. Receiving low course grades represents a salient and painful real-world setback for children.
Results: Replicating previous research, children who received lower grades experienced more negative self-feelings (P < .001). As predicted, this well-established relationship was significantly attenuated among children who had reflected, 3 weeks previously, on experiences of unconditional regard (Ps < .03). Reflecting on unconditional regard specifically reduced negative self-feelings after low grades (P = .01), not after average or high grades (Ps > .17).
Conclusions: Reflecting on unconditional regard buffered children’s selves against the adverse impact of an academic setback over an extended period of time. Unconditional regard may thus be an important psychological lever to reduce negative self-feelings in youth.