Pass or fail
Sean Mulholland, Aleksandar (Sasha) Tomic & Samuel Sholander
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Analyzing the peer assessment category of the US News and World Report's America's Best Colleges rankings, we find that universities fielding a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team are more highly rated by administrators and faculty at peer institutions. Universities are also more highly rated if their football team receives a greater number of votes in either the final Associated Press or Coaches' Poll. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, our estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in votes from one season to the next is associated with a peer score increase that is about equal (in absolute value terms) to the mean year-over-year peer score decline witnessed by the institutions in our sample. Performance matters even if we only focus on FBS schools.
----------------------
The Economic Value of Breaking Bad Misbehavior, Schooling and the Labor Market
Nicholas Papageorge, Victor Ronda & Yu Zheng
Johns Hopkins University Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
Prevailing research argues that childhood misbehavior in the classroom is bad for schooling and, presumably, bad overall. In contrast, we argue that childhood misbehavior reflects underlying traits that are potentially valuable in the labor market. We follow work from psychology and treat measured classroom misbehavior as reflecting two underlying non-cognitive traits. Next, we estimate a model of education decisions and labor market outcomes, allowing the impact of each of the two traits to vary by outcome. We show the first evidence that one of the traits capturing childhood misbehavior, discussed in psychological literature as the externalizing trait (and linked, for example, to aggression), does indeed reduce educational attainment, but also increases earnings. This finding highlights a broader point: non-cognition is not well summarized as a single underlying trait that is either good or bad per se. Using the estimated model, we assess competing pedagogical policies. For males, we find that policies aimed at eliminating the externalizing trait increase schooling attainment, but also reduce earnings. In comparison, policies that decrease the schooling penalty of the externalizing trait increase both schooling and earnings.
----------------------
Long-Term Impacts of Compensatory Preschool on Health and Behavior: Evidence from Head Start
Pedro Carneiro & Rita Ginja
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper provides new estimates of the medium and long-term impacts of Head Start on health and behavioral problems. We identify these impacts using discontinuities in the probability of participation induced by program eligibility rules. Our strategy allows us to identify the effect of Head Start for the individuals in the neighborhoods of multiple discontinuities. Participation in the program reduces the incidence of behavioral problems, health problems, and obesity of male children at ages 12 and 13. It lowers depression and obesity among adolescents, and it reduces engagement in criminal activities and idleness for young adults.
----------------------
Intensive College Counseling and the College Enrollment Choices of Low Income Students
Benjamin Castleman & Joshua Goodman
Harvard Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
Low income high school graduates are less likely to enroll in four-year colleges than their more advantaged peers. When they do enroll, they are more likely to choose colleges with low graduation rates and higher costs, increasing their risk of leaving college without a degree and with substantial debt. Such decision-making may be driven in part by a lack of information about the full range of college options that are available to students. We study the potential for intensive college counseling to remedy this informational barrier and improve students' college choices. Capitalizing on an arbitrary cut-off in the admissions criteria for Bottom Line, an college advising program in Massachusetts, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of intensive advising on students' college choices as well as on their overall enrollment and persistence in college. We find that intensive college advising substantially shifts towards one of the four-year colleges encouraged by the program and away from institutions the program discourages. This effect is particularly strong for students from families where English is not the first language, and for whom the informational barriers may be particularly constraining. This shift in enrollment reduces the average net price of the institutions students are attending, likely lowering their financial burden. Finally, we see suggestive evidence of increases in overall four-year college enrollment and persistence through the first two years of college. We argue that this evidence indicates that intensive college advising can generate large impacts on college enrollment decisions and may improve persistence and, ultimately, degree completion.
----------------------
Najeeb Shafiq & John Myers
American Journal of Education, November 2014, Pages 111-136
Abstract:
This study examines the Swedish national educational voucher scheme and changes in social cohesion. We conduct a statistical analysis using data from the 1999 and 2009 rounds of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's civic education study of 14-year-old students and their attitudes toward the rights of ethnic minorities and immigrants. Using regression models, we do not find evidence of a decline in civic attitudes and therefore social cohesion. We attribute the results to Sweden's voucher design and context that minimized segregation and preserved civics curricula in all schools.
----------------------
College Selectivity and Degree Completion
Scott Heil, Liza Reisel & Paul Attewell
American Educational Research Journal, October 2014, Pages 913-935
Abstract:
How much of a difference does it make whether a student of a given academic ability enters a more or a less selective four-year college? Some studies claim that attending a more academically selective college markedly improves one's graduation prospects. Others report the reverse: an advantage from attending an institution where one's own skills exceed most other students. Using multilevel models and propensity score matching methods to reduce selection bias, we find that selectivity does not have an independent effect on graduation. Instead, we find relatively small positive effects on graduation from attending a college with higher tuition costs. We also find no evidence that students not attending highly selective colleges suffer reduced chances of graduation, all else being equal.
----------------------
Sarah Cohodes & Joshua Goodman
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2014, Pages 251-285
Abstract:
We analyze a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives high-scoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the eligibility threshold finds that students are remarkably willing to forgo college quality and that scholarship use actually lowered college completion rates. These results suggest that college quality affects college completion rates. The theoretical prediction that in-kind subsidies of public institutions can reduce consumption of the subsidized good is shown to be empirically important.
----------------------
The Bridge and the Troll Underneath: Summer Bridge Programs and Degree Completion
Daniel Douglas & Paul Attewell
American Journal of Education, November 2014, Pages 87-109
Abstract:
College graduation rates in the United States are low in both real and relative terms. This has left all stakeholders looking for novel solutions while perhaps ignoring extant but underused programs. This article examines the effect of "summer bridge" programs, which have students enroll in coursework prior to beginning their first full academic year, on associate's and bachelor's degree completion. We make use of the Beyond Postsecondary (BPS) transcript data as well as data from one large university system. Our analysis utilizes propensity score matching to account for selection effects among students. We find that at community colleges and less selective 4-year colleges, students who attend bridge programs are 10 percentage points more likely to finish within 6 years. We discuss our findings in the context of how colleges might better use their existing initiatives to improve student outcomes, and in light of recent findings from a randomized controlled trial study.
----------------------
The General Equilibrium Effects of Educational Expansion
Nicola Bianchi
Stanford Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
In an effort to raise skills or promote equality, states sometimes engage in sweeping reforms that rapidly increase access to education for a significant share of their population. Such reforms are hard to evaluate because they may alter more than the outcomes of marginal students induced to enroll. They may change returns to skill, school quality, peer effects, and the educational choices of apparently inframarginal students (those who would have enrolled in the absence of the reform). I identify such general equilibrium effects by examining a dramatic 1961 Italian reform that increased university enrollment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields by more than 200 percent in a few years. The peculiar features of the reform allow me to identify students who were unaffected, directly affected, and indirectly affected. They also allow me to identify key channels through which the effects ran. Using data I collected from tax returns and hand-written transcripts on more than 27,000 students, I show that the direct effects of the reform were as intended: many more students enrolled and many more obtained degrees. However, I also find that those induced to enroll earned no more than students in earlier cohorts who were denied access to university. I reconcile these surprising results by showing that the education expansion reduced returns to skill and lowered university learning through congestion and peer effects. I also demonstrate that apparently inframarginal students were significantly affected: the most able of them abandoned STEM majors rather than accept lower returns and lower human capital.
----------------------
Philip Cook & Songman Kang
Duke University Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
Dropouts have high crime rates, but is there a direct causal link? This study, utilizing administrative data for 6 cohorts of public school children in North Carolina, demonstrates that those born just after the cut date for enrolling in public kindergarten are more likely to drop out of high school before graduation and to commit a felony offense by age 19. We present suggestive evidence that dropout mediates criminal involvement. Paradoxically, these late-entry students outperform their grade peers academically while still in school, which helps account for the fact that they are less likely to become juvenile delinquents.
----------------------
Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For-Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment
Rajeev Darolia et al.
RAND Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
This paper reports results from a resume-based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives such as public community colleges being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for-profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all.
----------------------
The Costs of Failure: Negative Externalities in High School Course Repetition
Andrew Hill
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Failure in US high school courses is common, but little is known about its effects. This paper investigates the extent to which course repeaters in high school mathematics courses exert negative externalities on their course-mates. Using individual and school-specific course fixed effects to control for ability and course selection, it shows that increasing the share of repeaters in a given course results in a moderate, significant increase in the probability of course failure for first-time course-takers. Results suggest that the negative effect is only evident when the share of repeaters reaches a threshold of five to ten percent of the total number of course-takers. The possibility that grading to a curve generates the effect cannot be ruled out, but is not fully supported in the data. Evidence is also presented that course repetition externalities may be distinct from low-ability peer effects.
----------------------
Megan Andrew
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Triggering events and the scarring, or status-dependence, process they induce are an important cornerstone of social stratification theory that is rarely studied in the context of the educational career. However, the decades-old high-stakes environment that ties many educational outcomes to a test score or other singular achievement underscores the potential importance of scarring in the contemporary educational career. In this paper, I study scarring in the educational career in the case of primary-grade retention. Using propensity score matching and sibling fixed-effects models, I evaluate evidence for primary-grade retention effects on high school completion and college entry and completion. I find consistent evidence of a causal effect of early primary school grade retention on high school completion. These effects operate largely through middle school academic achievements and expectations, suggesting that students who recover from the scar of grade retention on high school completion largely do so earlier rather than later in the educational career. Students can continue to recover from the effects of grade retention through early high school, not only through their academic achievements but through their expectations of high school completion as well. Models suggest that early primary grade retention scars the educational career mainly at high school completion, though there are important, unconditional effects on college entry and completion as a result. I conclude by placing these findings in the larger grade-retention literature and discussing future research on heterogeneities in and mechanisms of retention effects.
----------------------
Head Start's Impact Is Contingent on Alternative Type of Care in Comparison Group
Fuhua Zhai, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn & Jane Waldfogel
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data (n = 3,790 with 2,119 in the 3-year-old cohort and 1,671 in the 4-year-old cohort) from 353 Head Start centers in the Head Start Impact Study, the only large-scale randomized experiment in Head Start history, this article examined the impact of Head Start on children's cognitive and parent-reported social-behavioral outcomes through first grade contingent on the child care arrangements used by children who were randomly assigned to the control group (i.e., parental care, relative/nonrelative care, another Head Start program, or other center-based care). A principal score matching approach was adopted to identify children assigned to Head Start who were similar to children in the control group with a specific care arrangement. Overall, the results showed that the effects of Head Start varied substantially contingent on the alternative child care arrangements. Compared with children in parental care and relative/nonrelative care, Head Start participants generally had better cognitive and parent-reported behavioral development, with some benefits of Head Start persisting through first grade; in contrast, few differences were found between Head Start and other center-based care. The results have implications regarding the children for whom Head Start is most beneficial as well as how well Head Start compares with other center-based programs.
----------------------
Are Football Coaches Overpaid? Evidence from Their Employment Contracts
Randall Thomas & Lawrence Van Horn
Vanderbilt University Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
The commentators and the media pay particular attention to the compensation of high profile individuals. Whether these are corporate CEOs, or college football coaches, many critics question whether their levels of remuneration are appropriate. In contrast, corporate governance scholarship has asserted that as long as the compensation is tied to shareholder interests, it is the employment contract and incentives therein which should be the source of scrutiny, not the absolute level of pay itself. We employ this logic to study the compensation contracts of Division I FBS college football coaches during the period 2005-2013. Our analysis finds many commonalities between the structure and incentives of the employment contracts of CEOs and these football coaches. These contracts' features are consistent with what economic theory would predict. As such we find no evidence that the structure of college football coach contracts is misaligned, or that they are overpaid.
----------------------
How Much Are Public School Teachers Willing to Pay for Their Retirement Benefits?
Maria Donovan Fitzpatrick
NBER Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
Public sector employees receive large fractions of their lifetime income in the form of deferred compensation. The introduction of the opportunity provided to Illinois public school employees to purchase additional pension benefits allows me to estimate employees' willingness-to-pay for benefits relative to the cost of providing them. The results show employees are willing to pay 20 cents on average for a dollar increase in the present value of expected retirement benefits. The findings suggest substantial inefficiency in compensation and cast doubt on the ability of deferred compensation schemes to attract employees.
----------------------
Credit Status and College Investment: Implications for Student Loan Policies
Anamaria Felicia Ionescu & Nicole Simpson
Federal Reserve Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
The private market for student loans has become an important source of college financing in the United States. Unlike government student loans, the terms on student loans in the private market are based on credit status. We quantify the importance of the private market for student loans and of credit status for college investment in a general equilibrium heterogeneous life-cycle economy. We find that students with good credit status invest in more college education (compared to those with bad credit status) and that this effect is more pronounced for low-income students. Furthermore, results suggest that the relationship between credit status and college investment has important policy implications. Specifically, when borrowing limits in the government student loan program are relaxed (as implemented in 2008), college investment increases, but so does the riskiness of the pool of borrowers, leading to higher default rates in the private market for student loans. When general equilibrium effects are accounted for, the welfare gains experienced from a more generous government student loan program are negated. This compares to budget-neutral tuition subsidies that increase college investment and welfare.
----------------------
Creating Cultural Consumers: The Dynamics of Cultural Capital Acquisition
Brian Kisida, Jay Greene & Daniel Bowen
Sociology of Education, October 2014, Pages 281-295
Abstract:
The theories of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility have largely shaped the study of the effects of cultural capital on academic outcomes. Missing in this debate has been a rigorous examination of how children actually acquire cultural capital when it is not provided by their families. Drawing on data from a large-scale experimental study of schools participating in an art museum's educational program, we show that students' exposure to a cultural institution has the effect of creating ''cultural consumers'' motivated to acquire new cultural capital. We find that the experience has the strongest impact on students from more disadvantaged backgrounds. As such, our analysis reveals important aspects about the nature of cultural capital acquisition. To the extent that the evidence supporting cultural mobility is accurate, it may be because disadvantaged children can be activated to acquire cultural capital, thus compensating for family background characteristics and changing their habitus.
----------------------
Deven Carlson, Joshua Cowen & David Fleming
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, October 2014, Pages 897-922
Abstract:
This article considers the introduction of a performance measurement reform for private schools serving students who receive state-provided vouchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Drawing on unique panel data collected both before and after the reform, we show that private sector performance increased significantly when outcomes were publicly reported. We frame these results in the context of third-party provision of public services and argue that our evidence suggests that market-based competition alone may not drive nongovernmental providers to perform at optimal levels. Instead, such vendors may require performance-monitoring schemes similar to those faced by their governmental counterparts.
----------------------
Temporal effects of antecedent exercise on students' disruptive behaviors: An exploratory study
Anthony Folino, Joseph Ducharme & Naomi Greenwald
Journal of School Psychology, October 2014, Pages 447-462
Abstract:
Although a growing body of literature indicates that antecedent exercise is effective at reducing disruptive behaviors, there is a paucity of research examining the temporal effects of antecedent exercise. The present investigation involved 4 students (age range 11 to 14 years) enrolled in a self-contained special education behavior classroom due to severe aggressive, disruptive, and oppositional behaviors. In an alternating treatment design with baseline, students were first exposed to baseline conditions and then to 2 experimental conditions (i.e., an antecedent exercise condition and a control condition) in a randomized fashion. Results indicated that 30 min of moderate to intense aerobic exercise resulted in approximately 90 min of behavioral improvements. In addition, there appeared to be an inverse relation between arousal levels and behavioral difficulties. The potential utility of antecedent exercise as a treatment alternative in schools for students with severe disruptive behavior is discussed.
----------------------
Christina Weiland & Hirokazu Yoshikawa
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, September-October 2014, Pages 422-432
Abstract:
Because most public preschool programs are means tested, children enrolled in these programs accordingly have peers from predominantly low-income families who present lower cognitive skills and more behavioral problems, on average. The present study examined the role of having a higher percentage of peers from higher-SES families on gains in children's receptive vocabulary and executive function skills at the end of prekindergarten. Participants included 417 children attending a prekindergarten program that is not means tested. Findings indicated that having a higher percentage of peers from higher-SES families showed small, positive associations with greater gains in end-of-prekindergarten receptive vocabulary and executive function skills. Results are discussed in the context of current proposals to increase access to publicly funded preschool for higher-income families.
----------------------
Chih-Da Wu et al.
PLoS ONE, October 2014
Abstract:
Various studies have reported the physical and mental health benefits from exposure to "green" neighborhoods, such as proximity to neighborhoods with trees and vegetation. However, no studies have explicitly assessed the association between exposure to "green" surroundings and cognitive function in terms of student academic performance. This study investigated the association between the "greenness" of the area surrounding a Massachusetts public elementary school and the academic achievement of the school's student body based on standardized tests with an ecological setting. Researchers used the composite school-based performance scores generated by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) to measure the percentage of 3rd-grade students (the first year of standardized testing for 8-9 years-old children in public school), who scored "Above Proficient" (AP) in English and Mathematics tests (Note: Individual student scores are not publically available). The MCAS results are comparable year to year thanks to an equating process. Researchers included test results from 2006 through 2012 in 905 public schools and adjusted for differences between schools in the final analysis according to race, gender, English as a second language (proxy for ethnicity and language facility), parent income, student-teacher ratio, and school attendance. Surrounding greenness of each school was measured using satellite images converted into the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in March, July and October of each year according to a 250-meter, 500-meter, 1,000-meter, and 2000-meter circular buffer around each school. Spatial Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) estimated the impacts of surrounding greenness on school-based performance. Overall the study results supported a relationship between the "greenness" of the school area and the school-wide academic performance. Interestingly, the results showed a consistently positive significant association between the greenness of the school in the Spring (when most Massachusetts students take the MCAS tests) and school-wide performance on both English and Math tests, even after adjustment for socio-economic factors and urban residency.
----------------------
Thomas Ahn & Jacob Vigdor
NBER Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
Comparisons of schools that barely meet or miss criteria for adequate yearly progress (AYP) reveal that some sanctions built into the No Child Left Behind accountability regime exert positive impacts on students. Estimates indicate that the strongest positive effects associate with the ultimate sanction: leadership and management changes associated with school restructuring. We find suggestive incentive effects in schools first entering the NCLB sanction regime, but no significant effects of intermediate sanctions. Further analysis shows that gains in sanctioned schools are concentrated among low-performing students, with the exception of gains from restructuring which are pervasive. We find no evidence that schools achieve gains among low-performing students by depriving high-performing students of resources.
----------------------
Resisting Charters: A Comparative Policy Development Analysis of Washington and Kentucky, 2002-2012
Joseph Johnston
Sociology of Education, October 2014, Pages 223-240
Abstract:
Over the past two decades, most states have adopted laws enabling charter schools, as charter advocates successfully presented charters as the solution to core problems in urban public education. Yet some states with large urban centers, notably Washington and Kentucky, resisted this seemingly inexorable trend for years. What explains their resistance? Furthermore, why did Washington - a state with a strong teachers' union and long-standing Democratic political control (resources for charter resistance identified in prior research) - ultimately adopt charters in 2012 while Kentucky has not? I use comparative-historical narrative analysis to trace differences in charter battles in the urban centers of the two states. I find that supporters framed charters as the solution in both cases but varied in their ability to name public schools as the problem in the first place. I identify the source of the discursive resources used by opponents of charter schools in state-level ''educational ecosystems'': the cultural and institutional legacies of a range of state educational policies.