Wise up
David Scott Yeager et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2014, Pages 867-884
Abstract:
The belief that personality is fixed (an entity theory of personality) can give rise to negative reactions to social adversities. Three studies showed that when social adversity is common - at the transition to high school - an entity theory can affect overall stress, health, and achievement. Study 1 showed that an entity theory of personality, measured during the 1st month of 9th grade, predicted more negative immediate reactions to social adversity and, at the end of the year, greater stress, poorer health, and lower grades in school. Studies 2 and 3, both experiments, tested a brief intervention that taught a malleable (incremental) theory of personality - the belief that people can change. The incremental theory group showed less negative reactions to an immediate experience of social adversity and, 8 months later, reported lower overall stress and physical illness. They also achieved better academic performance over the year. Discussion centers on the power of targeted psychological interventions to effect far-reaching and long-term change by shifting interpretations of recurring adversities during developmental transitions.
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Successful Schools and Risky Behaviors Among Low-Income Adolescents
Mitchell Wong et al.
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objectives: We examined whether exposure to high-performing schools reduces the rates of risky health behaviors among low-income minority adolescents and whether this is due to better academic performance, peer influence, or other factors.
Methods: By using a natural experimental study design, we used the random admissions lottery into high-performing public charter high schools in low-income Los Angeles neighborhoods to determine whether exposure to successful school environments leads to fewer risky (eg, alcohol, tobacco, drug use, unprotected sex) and very risky health behaviors (eg, binge drinking, substance use at school, risky sex, gang participation). We surveyed 521 ninth- through twelfth-grade students who were offered admission through a random lottery (intervention group) and 409 students who were not offered admission (control group) about their health behaviors and obtained their state-standardized test scores.
Results: The intervention and control groups had similar demographic characteristics and eighth-grade test scores. Being offered admission to a high-performing school (intervention effect) led to improved math (P < .001) and English (P = .04) standard test scores, greater school retention (91% vs 76%; P < .001), and lower rates of engaging in ?1 very risky behaviors (odds ratio = 0.73, P < .05) but no difference in risky behaviors, such as any recent use of alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. School retention and test scores explained 58.0% and 16.2% of the intervention effect on engagement in very risky behaviors, respectively.
Conclusions: Increasing performance of public schools in low-income communities may be a powerful mechanism to decrease very risky health behaviors among low-income adolescents and to decrease health disparities across the life span.
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Will Dobbie & Roland Fryer
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses data from three prominent exam high schools in New York City to estimate the impact of attending a school with high-achieving peers on college enrollment and graduation. Our identification strategy exploits sharp discontinuities in the admissions process. Applicants just eligible for an exam school have peers that score 0.17 to 0.36 standard deviations higher on eighth grade state tests and that are 6.4 to 9.5 percentage points less likely to be black or Hispanic. However, exposure to these higher-achieving and more homogeneous peers has little impact on college enrollment, college graduation, or college quality.
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What Is a Summer Job Worth? The Impact of Summer Youth Employment on Academic Outcomes
Jacob Leos-Urbel
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper estimates the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on school attendance and other educational outcomes in the following school year for a large sample of low-income high school students. The program provides summer jobs and training to youth aged 14 to 21, and due to high demand allocates slots through a lottery. Analyses focusing on 36,550 students who applied in 2007 indicate that SYEP produces small increases in attendance in the following school year, with larger increases for students who may be at greater educational risk: those aged 16 and older with low baseline school attendance. For this group, SYEP also increases the likelihood of attempting and passing statewide high school math and English examinations. Findings suggest that although SYEP's explicit goals focus on workforce readiness rather than academics, the program fosters engagement and success in school.
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Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation
David Yeager et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many important learning tasks feel uninteresting and tedious to learners. This research proposed that making such tasks meaningful by promoting a prosocial, self-transcendent purpose could improve academic self-regulation. This proposal was supported in four studies with over 2,000 adolescents and young adults. Study 1 documented a correlation between a self-transcendent purpose for learning and both trait and behavioral measures of academic self-regulation. Those with more of a purpose for learning persisted longer on a boring task rather than give in to a tempting alternative. Many months later, they were also more likely to remain in college. Study 2 addressed causality. It showed that a brief, one-time psychological intervention promoting a self-transcendent purpose for learning could improve high school science and math GPA over several months. Studies 3 and 4 were short-term experiments that explored possible mechanisms. They showed that the self-transcendent purpose manipulation could increase deeper learning behavior on tedious test review materials (Study 3), and sustain self-regulation over the course of an increasingly-boring task (Study 4). More self-oriented motives for learning - such as the desire to have an interesting or enjoyable career - did not consistently produce the same benefits (Studies 1 and 4).
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The Effect of School Closings on Student Achievement
Quentin Brummet
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many school districts across the country are shutting schools, but school closing policies remain a very controversial issue. The current study investigates the effects of school closing policies on student achievement by examining over 200 school closings in Michigan. Relative to the previous literature, the analysis uses a broader set of school closings to thoroughly investigate heterogeneity in treatment effects based on the performance level of the closed school. The results indicate that, on average, school closings in Michigan did no persistent harm to the achievement of displaced students. Moreover, students displaced from relatively low-performing schools experience achievement gains. The displacement of students and teachers creates modest negative spillover effects on the receiving schools, however. Hence, the closing of low-performing schools may generate some achievement gains for displaced students, but not without imposing spillover effects on a large number of students in receiving schools.
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The Slowdown in American Educational Attainment
Elisa Keller
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming
Abstract:
Relative to those for high school graduates, lifetime earnings for college graduates are higher for more recent cohorts. At the same time, across successive cohorts born after 1950, there is a stagnation in the fraction of high school graduates that go on to complete a college degree. What explains this phenomenon? I formulate a life-cycle model of human capital accumulation in college and on the job, where successive cohorts decide whether or not to acquire a college degree as well as the quality of their college education. Cohorts differ by the sequence of rental price per unit of human capital they face and by the distribution of initial human capital across individuals. My model reproduces the observed pattern in college attainment for the 1920 to 1970 birth cohorts. The stagnation in college attainment is due to the decrease in the growth rate of the rental price per unit of human capital commencing in the 1970s. My model also generates about 80% of the increase in lifetime earnings for college graduates relative to those for high school graduates observed across cohorts.
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Grading Standards and Education Quality
Raphael Boleslavsky & Christopher Cotton
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We consider a game in which schools compete to place graduates by investing in education quality and by choosing grading policies. In equilibrium, schools strategically adopt grading policies that do not perfectly reveal graduate ability to evaluators (including employers and graduate schools). We compare equilibrium outcomes when schools grade strategically to equilibrium outcomes when evaluators perfectly observe graduate ability. With strategic grading, grades are less informative, and evaluators rely less on grades and more on a school's quality when assessing graduates. Consequently, under strategic grading, schools have greater incentive to invest in quality, and this can improve evaluator welfare.
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Judith Scott-Clayton & Veronica Minaya
NBER Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
Student employment subsidies are one of the largest types of federal employment subsidies, and one of the oldest forms of student aid. Yet it is unclear whether they help or harm students' long term outcomes. We present a framework that decomposes overall effects into a weighted average of effects for marginal and inframarginal workers. We then develop an application of propensity scores, which we call conditional-counterfactual matching, in which we estimate the overall impact, and the impact under two distinct counterfactuals: working at an unsubsidized job, or not working at all. Finally, we estimate the effects of the largest student employment subsidy program - Federal Work-Study (FWS) - for a broad range of participants and outcomes. Our results suggest that about half of FWS participants are inframarginal workers, for whom FWS reduces hours worked and improves academic outcomes, but has little impact on future employment. For students who would not have worked otherwise, the pattern of effects reverses. With the exception of first-year GPA, we find scant evidence of negative effects of FWS for any outcome or subgroup. However, positive effects are largest for lower-income and lower-SAT subgroups, suggesting there may be gains to improved targeting of funds.
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School and family effects on educational outcomes across countries
Richard Freeman & Martina Viarengo
Economic Policy, July 2014, Pages 395-446
Abstract:
This study analyses the link between student test scores and the school students attend, the policies and practices of the schools, students' family background and their parents' involvement in their education using data from the 2009 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment. We find that (1) a substantial proportion of the variation of test scores within countries is associated with the school students attend; (2) a sizeable proportion of the school fixed effects is associated with school policies and teaching practices beyond national policies or other mechanisms that sort students of differing abilities among schools; (3) school fixed effects are a major pathway for the link between family background and test scores. The implication is that what schools do is important in the level and dispersion of test scores, suggesting the value of further analysis of what goes on in schools to pin down causal links between policies and practices and test score outcomes.
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Yusuke Jinnai
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effects of charter schools on student achievement at neighboring traditional schools. The study shows that charter school entry does not induce indirect impact on non-overlapping grades but generates positive direct impact on overlapping grades. I also demonstrate that such positive effects would have been significantly undervalued in prior studies, since they do not distinguish between the two impacts.
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Expanding the School Breakfast Program: Impacts on Children's Consumption, Nutrition and Health
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach & Mary Zaki
NBER Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
School meals programs are the front line of defense against childhood hunger, and while the school lunch program is nearly universally available in U.S. public schools, the school breakfast program has lagged behind in terms of availability and participation. In this paper we use experimental data collected by the USDA to measure the impact of two popular policy innovations aimed at increasing access to the school breakfast program. The first, universal free school breakfast, provides a hot breakfast before school (typically served in the school's cafeteria) to all students regardless of their income eligibility for free or reduced-price meals. The second is the Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program that provides free school breakfast to all children to be eaten in the classroom during the first few minutes of the school day. We find both policies increase the take-up rate of school breakfast, though much of this reflects shifting breakfast consumption from home to school or consumption of multiple breakfasts and relatively little of the increase is from students gaining access to breakfast. We find little evidence of overall improvements in child 24-hour nutritional intake, health, behavior or achievement, with some evidence of health and behavior improvements among specific subpopulations.
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Student Age and the Collegiate Pathway
Michael Hurwitz, Jonathan Smith & Jessica Howell
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a rich data set of all SAT test takers from the 2004 through 2008 high school graduation cohorts, we investigate the impact of state-specific school age-of-entry laws on students' pathways into and through college. We document that these laws do not impact the probability that a student takes the SAT; however, we find strong evidence that students who are expected to be the oldest in their school cohorts based on their state residency and birthdays have a greater probability of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam and tend to take more AP exams. We also find that relatively younger students are more likely to attend two-year colleges before attending four-year colleges and are less likely to have earned bachelor's degrees four years beyond high school graduation, but eventually catch up to their older peers six years beyond high school graduation.
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Jesse Cunha & Trey Miller
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper develops a general methodology for measuring the value added of institutions of higher education using commonly-available administrative data. Our approach recognizes the data limitations and selection problems inherent in higher education, and highlights the challenges these issues pose for education policy. Combining information from different administrative sources in the state of Texas, we follow the universe of Texas college applicants from the time of application (pre-enrollment) through public college and into the labor market. In specifications that do not control for selection, we find large, significant differences across colleges in terms of persistence, graduation, and earnings; however, these differences decrease substantially when we control for selection. In light of the growing interest in using value-added measures in higher education for both funding and incentivizing purposes, our methodology offers unique evidence and lessons for policy makers.
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Intensive Math Instruction and Educational Attainment: Long-Run Impacts of Double-Dose Algebra
Kalena Cortes, Joshua Goodman & Takako Nomi
NBER Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
We study an intensive math instruction policy that assigned low-skilled 9th graders to an algebra course that doubled instructional time, altered peer composition and emphasized problem solving skills. A regression discontinuity design shows substantial positive impacts of double-dose algebra on credits earned, test scores, high school graduation and college enrollment rates. Test score effects under-predict attainment effects, highlighting the importance of long-run evaluation of such a policy. Perhaps because the intervention focused on verbal exposition of mathematical concepts, the impact was largest for students with below average reading skills, emphasizing the need to target interventions toward appropriately skilled students.
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Justin Ross, Joshua Hall & William Resh
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, July 2014, Pages 623-649
Abstract:
Public managers who operate within cross-jurisdictional governance regimes face substantial difficulties in facilitating network collaboration. Scholars have long suggested that noncongruence of geographic borders can create coordination problems among the political communities within polycentric administrative units. A frequently reoccurring example of such coordination problems arises in cases where municipalities and school districts have noncongruent borders, creating fiscal externalities in residential development land use decisions. Using GIS data from 611 Ohio school districts and 1,585 municipalities in 2000, we calculate the degree of noncongruence between school district and municipal territory to test for evidence that noncongruence of municipal-school district borders influences school district class size. The results indicate that schools with noncongruent borders do experience substantively larger class sizes. Furthermore, these effects seem to increase with the degree of noncongruence. Our findings are robust to model specification and consistent across OLS and treatment effects regression estimates. Policy implications for state-encouraged consolidation of school districts are discussed as well as theoretical and empirical implications of noncongruent jurisdictional borders for governance studies more generally.
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Joseph Craig & Scott Savage
International Review of Economics Education, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four classes of the same Industrial Organization class were compared. The test group was taught by the instructor dressed in business attire, while the comparison group was taught by the instructor dressed casually. Results show that the attendance for test students was 8.50 percentage points higher than comparison students and this increase is associated with an improvement in their final exam score of 0.69 percentage points. Final exam scores for test students were 2.33 percentage points higher than comparison students. Together, the indirect and direct effects indicate that the total effect on learning from instructor attire is 3.02 percentage points.
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High-Stakes Choice: Achievement and Accountability in the Nation's Oldest Urban Voucher Program
John Witte et al.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article considers the impact of a high-stakes testing and reporting requirement on students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools. We describe how such a policy was implemented during the course of a previously authorized multi-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which provided us with data on voucher students before and after the reform, as well as on public school students who received no new policy treatment. Our results indicate substantial growth for voucher students in the first high-stakes testing year, particularly in mathematics, and for students with higher levels of earlier academic achievement. We discuss these results in the context of both the school choice and accountability literatures.
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Flaking Out: Student Absences and Snow Days as Disruptions of Instructional Time
Joshua Goodman
NBER Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
Despite the fact that the average American student is absent more than two weeks out of every school year, most research on the effect of instructional time has focused not on attendance but on the length of the school day or year. Student and school fixed effects models using Massachusetts data show a strong relationship between student absences and achievement but no impact of lost instructional time due to school closures. I confirm those findings in instrumental variables models exploiting the fact that moderate snowfall induces student absences while extreme snowfall induces school closures. Prior work ignoring this non-linearity may have mis-attributed the effect of absences to such snow days. Each absence induced by bad weather reduces math achievement by 0.05 standard deviations, suggesting that attendance can account for up to one-fourth of the achievement gap by income. That absences matter but closures do not is consistent with a model of instruction in which coordination of students is the central challenge, as in Lazear (2001). Teachers appear to deal well with coordinated disruptions of instructional time like snow days but deal poorly with disruptions like absences that affect different students at different times.
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The Effects of an Anti-grade-Inflation Policy at Wellesley College
Kristin Butcher, Patrick McEwan & Akila Weerapana
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2014, Pages 189-204
Abstract:
Average grades in colleges and universities have risen markedly since the 1960s. Critics express concern that grade inflation erodes incentives for students to learn; gives students, employers, and graduate schools poor information on absolute and relative abilities; and reflects the quid pro quo of grades for better student evaluations of professors. This paper evaluates an anti-grade-inflation policy that capped most course averages at a B+. The cap was biding for high-grading departments (in the humanities and social sciences) and was not binding for low-grading departments (in economics and sciences), facilitating a difference-in-differences analysis. Professors complied with the policy by reducing compression at the top of the grade distribution. It had little effect on receipt of top honors, but affected receipt of magna cum laude. In departments affected by the cap, the policy expanded racial gaps in grades, reduced enrollments and majors, and lowered student ratings of professors.
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Lisa Barrow et al.
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2014, Pages 563-599
Abstract:
We evaluate the effect of performance-based incentive programs on educational outcomes for community college students from a random assignment experiment at three campuses. Incentive payments over 2 semesters were tied to meeting two conditions - enrolling at least half-time and maintaining a C or better grade point average. Eligibility increased the likelihood of enrolling in the second semester after random assignment and total number of credits earned. Over 2 years, program group students completed nearly 40% more credits. We find little evidence that program eligibility changed types of courses taken but some evidence of increased academic performance and effort.
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When Opportunity Knocks, Who Answers? New Evidence on College Achievement Awards
Joshua Angrist, Philip Oreopoulos & Tyler Williams
Journal of Human Resources, Summer 2014, Pages 572-610
Abstract:
We evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first-and second-year college students studying at a Canadian commuter college. The award scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by upperclassmen. Program engagement appears to have been high but overall treatment effects were small. The intervention increased the number of courses graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students but generated no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger for a subsample of applicants who correctly described the program rules.
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Steven Dieterle et al.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
The federal government's Race to the Top competition has promoted the adoption of test-based value-added measures (VAMs) of performance as a component of teacher evaluations throughout many states, but the validity of these measures has been controversial among researchers and widely contested by teachers' unions. A key concern is the extent to which nonrandom sorting of students to teachers may bias the results and lead to a misclassification of teachers as high or low performing. In light of potential for bias, it is important to assess the extent to which evidence of sorting can be found in the large administrative data sets used for VAM estimation. Using a large longitudinal data set from an anonymous state, we find evidence that a nontrivial amount of sorting exists - particularly sorting based on prior test scores - and that the extent of sorting varies considerably across schools, a fact obscured by the types of aggregate sorting indices developed in prior research. We also find that VAM estimation is sensitive to the presence of nonrandom sorting. There is less agreement across estimation approaches regarding a particular teacher's rank in the distribution of estimated effectiveness when schools engage in sorting.
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When Incentives Matter Too Much: Explaining Significant Responses to Irrelevant Information
Thomas Ahn & Jacob Vigdor
NBER Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
When economic agents make decisions on the basis of an information set containing both a continuous variable and a discrete signal based on that variable, theory suggests that the signal should have no bearing on behavior conditional on the variable itself. Numerous empirical studies, many based on the regression discontinuity design, have contradicted this basic prediction. We propose two models of behavior capable of rationalizing this observed behavior, one based on information acquisition costs and a second on learning and imperfect information. Using data on school responses to discrete signals embedded in North Carolina's school accountability system, we find patterns of results inconsistent with the first model but consistent with the second. These results imply that rational responses to policy interventions may take time to emerge; consequently evaluations based on short-term data may understate treatment effects.
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Peer Effects in Early Childhood Education: Testing the Assumptions of Special-Education Inclusion
Laura Justice et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
There has been a push in recent years for students with disabilities to be educated alongside their typically developing peers, a practice called inclusion. In this study, we sought to determine whether peer effects operate within early-childhood special-education (ECSE) classrooms in which preschoolers with disabilities are educated alongside typical peers. Peer effects specific to language growth were assessed for 670 preschoolers (mean age = 52 months) in 83 ECSE classrooms; 55% of the children had disabilities. We found that the average language skills of classmates, as assessed in the fall of the year, significantly predicted children's language skills in the spring (after controlling for their relative skill level in the fall); in addition, there was a significant interactive effect of disability status (i.e., the presence or absence of a disability) and peers' language skills. Peer effects were the least consequential for children without disabilities whose classmates had relatively strong language skills, and the most consequential for children with disabilities whose classmates had relatively poor language skills.
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Daphna Bassok, Maria Fitzpatrick & Susanna Loeb
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Universal preschool policies introduced in Georgia and Oklahoma offer an opportunity to investigate the impact of government intervention on provision of childcare. Since Georgia used a voucher-like program and Oklahoma utilized its existing public schools, the two states offer a case study of how government provision compares to government subsidization alone. Using a synthetic control group difference-in-difference estimation framework, we examine the effects of universal preschool on childcare providers. In both states there is an increase in the number of formal childcare centers. With the voucher-like program in Georgia, the overall increase in care is partly driven by an increase in the supply of formal childcare in the private sector and partly driven by new publicly-provided preschools. However, there is substantial crowd-out of private consumption of preschool. In Oklahoma, where universal preschool is publicly provided, the increase in the number of childcare providers occurred only in the public sector. The expansion of publicly-provided care seems to be driven largely by movement of employees from private centers to public settings. As such, this case-study comparison suggests that government subsidization through funding was more effective at expanding preschool than government provision.
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Ming Ming Chiu & Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Classmates can influence a student's academic achievement through immediate interactions (e.g., academic help, positive attitudes toward reading) or by sharing tangible or intangible family resources (books, stories of foreign travel). Multilevel analysis of 141,019 fourth-grade students' reading achievements in 33 countries showed that classmates' family factors (parent socioeconomic status [SES], home educational resources) were more strongly related to a student's reading achievement than were classmates' characteristics (parent ratings of past literacy skills, attitudes toward reading). However, these classmate links to reading achievement differed across students (e.g., high-SES classmates benefited high-SES students more than low-SES students). Also, links between classmates' past reading achievement and a student's current reading achievement were stronger in countries that were richer, were more collectivist, or avoided uncertainty less. These findings show how an ecological model of family and classmate microsystems, classmate family mesosystem, and country macrosystem can help provide a comprehensive account of children's academic achievement.
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Andrew Plunk et al.
Educational Researcher, June/July 2014, Pages 230-241
Abstract:
Mathematics and science course graduation requirement (CGR) increases in the 1980s and 1990s might have had both intended and unintended consequences. Using logistic regression with Census and American Community Survey (ACS) data (n = 2,892,444), we modeled CGR exposure on (a) high school dropout, (b) beginning college, and (c) obtaining any college degree. Possible between-groups differences were also assessed. We found that higher CGRs were associated with higher odds to drop out of high school, but results for the college-level outcomes varied by group. Some were less likely to enroll, whereas others who began college were more likely to obtain a degree. Increased high school dropout was consistent across the population, but some potential benefit was also observed, primarily for those reporting Hispanic ethnicity.
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Does Participation in 4-H Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Florida
Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & Troy Timko
University of Florida Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
We examine the effect of participation in 4-H, the largest youth development program in the United States, on standardized test scores. We do this by utilizing grade-level longitudinal data on Florida's school districts from the Florida Department of Education combined with 4-H participation statistics from Florida 4-H. Specifically, we analyze the effect of the extent of 4-H participation for third through tenth grade on the mathematics and reading subtests of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). We use a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach to control for potential confounders of the causal relationship at the level of school districts, grades, and years. Our results indicate that the extent of 4-H participation at the district-grade-year level is positively and significantly related to several measures of performance on the FCAT test.