Aptitude test
Teacher Quality at the High School Level: The Importance of Accounting for Tracks
Kirabo Jackson
Journal of Labor Economics, October 2014, Pages 645-684
Abstract:
Unlike in elementary school, high school teacher effects may be confounded with both selection to tracks and track-level treatments. I document confounding track effects and show that traditional tests for the existence of teacher effects are biased. After accounting for biases, high school algebra and English teachers have smaller test score effects than found in previous studies and value-added estimates are weak predictors of teachers’ future performance. Results indicate that either (a) teachers are less influential in high school than in elementary school or (b) test score effects are a weak measure of teacher quality at the high school level.
----------------------
Torberg Falch, Ole Henning Nyhus & Bjarne Strøm
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper exploits that students at age 16 in Norway are randomly selected into one compulsory exit exam in either mathematics or languages. A few days before the actual exam day, the students are notified about exam subject. The students have an intensive preparation period, and examination in mathematics relative to languages is found to decrease dropout from high school, increase enrolment in higher education, and increase enrolment in natural science and technology education programs. Overall, the causal effects seems to be somewhat stronger for males than for females, but the analysis indicates that gender differences interacts in complicated ways with prior skills in mathematics. We explore several mechanisms that might contribute to the findings.
----------------------
Learning for a bonus: How financial incentives interact with preferences
Yvonne Oswald & Uschi Backes-Gellner
Journal of Public Economics, October 2014, Pages 52–61
Abstract:
This paper investigates the effect of financial incentives on student performance and analyzes for the first time how the incentive effect in education is moderated by students’ time preferences. To examine this effect, we use real labor market incentive programs that we combine with data from experiments on time preferences. We find not only that students who are offered financial incentives for better grades have on average better first- and second-year grade point averages but also, more strikingly, that highly impatient students respond more strongly to financial incentives than relatively patient students. This finding suggests that financial incentives are most effective at the beginning of an educational program, when real labor market benefits are in the distant future.
----------------------
Are school counselors an effective education input?
Scott Carrell & Mark Hoekstra
Economics Letters, October 2014, Pages 66–69
Abstract:
We exploit within-school variation in counselors and find that one additional counselor reduces student misbehavior and increases boys’ academic achievement by over one percentile point. These effects compare favorably with those of increased teacher quality and smaller class sizes.
----------------------
The Returns to College Admission for Academically Marginal Students
Seth Zimmerman
Journal of Labor Economics, October 2014, Pages 711-754
Abstract:
I combine a regression discontinuity design with rich data on academic and labor market outcomes for a large sample of Florida students to estimate the returns to college admission for academically marginal students. Students with grades just above a threshold for admissions eligibility at a large public university in Florida are much more likely to attend any university than below-threshold students. The marginal admission yields earnings gains of 22% between 8 and 14 years after high school completion. These gains outstrip the costs of college attendance, and they are largest for male students and free-lunch recipients.
----------------------
Katharine Strunk & Andrew McEachin
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2014, Pages 281-306
Abstract:
One of the enduring problems in education is the persistence of achievement gaps between White, wealthy, native English-speaking students and their counterparts who are minority, lower-income, or English language learners. This study shows that one intensive technical assistance (TA) intervention — California’s District Assistance and Intervention Teams (DAITs) — implemented in conjunction with a high-stakes accountability policy improves the math and English performance of traditionally underserved students. Using a 6-year panel of student-level data from California, we find that the DAIT intervention significantly reduces achievement gaps between Black, Hispanic, and poor students and their White and wealthier peers. These results indicate that capacity-building TA helps to close achievement gaps in California’s lowest performing districts.
----------------------
Jilleah Welch
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Community colleges play a major role in postsecondary education, yet previous research has emphasized the impact of merit aid on four-year students rather than two-year students. Furthermore, researchers have focused on the impact of merit aid on enrollment and outcomes during college, but to my knowledge, none have yet considered the impact of aid on earnings after college. This paper utilizes discontinuities in eligibility criteria for a large merit scholarship to examine the local impact of aid on student outcomes both during college and after college. The findings suggest that reducing the cost of community college does not impact persistence, academic performance, degree completion, expected earnings, or short-term earnings after college for marginally eligible students.
----------------------
The Effect of School Construction on Test Scores, School Enrollment, and Home Prices
Christopher Neilson & Seth Zimmerman
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper provides new evidence on the effect of elementary and middle school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and school enrollment. Combining the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district with panel data on student test scores and neighborhoods of residence, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, school construction increases reading scores by 0.15 standard deviations relative to the year before building occupancy. We do not observe similar effects for math scores. School construction raised home prices in affected neighborhoods by roughly 10 percent, and led to increased public school enrollment.
----------------------
Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages
John Nestojko et al.
Memory & Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research assessed the potential effects of expecting to teach on learning. In two experiments, participants studied passages either in preparation for a later test or in preparation for teaching the passage to another student who would then be tested. In reality, all participants were tested, and no one actually engaged in teaching. Participants expecting to teach produced more complete and better organized free recall of the passage (Experiment 1) and, in general, correctly answered more questions about the passage than did participants expecting a test (Experiment 1), particularly questions covering main points (Experiment 2), consistent with their having engaged in more effective learning strategies. Instilling an expectation to teach thus seems to be a simple, inexpensive intervention with the potential to increase learning efficiency at home and in the classroom.
----------------------
A Quick and Easy Strategy to Reduce Test Anxiety and Enhance Test Performance
Myrto-Foteini Mavilidi, Vincent Hoogerheide & Fred Paas
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The negative thoughts that anxious children experience while sitting for an exam consume working memory resources at the cost of resources for performing on the exam. In a randomized field experiment (N = 117) with primary school students, we investigated the hypothesis that stimulating students to look through the problems of a math test before they start solving them would reduce anxiety, release these anxiety-related working memory resources, and lead to higher test performance than not allowing students to look ahead in the test. The results confirmed the hypothesis, indicating that the positive effects of looking ahead applied to all students, regardless of their anxiety level (low, medium, or high). The results suggest that by looking ahead in a test, less working memory resources are consumed by intrusive thoughts, and consequently, more resources can be used for performing on the test. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.
----------------------
Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students?
David Card & Laura Giuliano
NBER Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
Education policy makers have struggled for decades with the question of how to best serve high ability K‐12 students. As in the debate over selective college admissions, a key issue is targeting. Should gifted and talented programs be allocated on the basis of cognitive ability, or a broader combination of ability and achievement? Should there be a single admission threshold, or a lower bar for disadvantaged students? We use data from a large urban school district to study the impacts of assignment to separate gifted classrooms on three distinct groups of fourth grade students: non-disadvantaged students with IQ scores ≥130; subsidized lunch participants and English language learners with IQ scores ≥116; and students who miss the IQ thresholds but scored highest among their school/grade cohort in state-wide achievement tests in the previous year. Regression discontinuity estimates based on the IQ thresholds for the first two groups show no effects on reading or math achievement at the end of fourth grade. In contrast, estimates based on test score ranks for the third group show significant gains in reading and math, concentrated among lower-income and black and Hispanic students. The math gains persist to fifth grade and are also reflected in fifth grade science scores. Our findings suggest that a separate classroom environment is more effective for students selected on past achievement – particularly disadvantaged students who are often excluded from gifted and talented programs.
----------------------
The effect of private high school education on the college trajectory
Conor Coughlin & Carolina Castilla
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to estimate the effect of private secondary schooling on the average college trajectory of a student in the United States, examining college enrollment and degree attainment across the private and public sectors. We provide the first estimates of the effect of private schooling on college degree attainment using the most recent NELS survey. To account for potential non-random selection we exploit the variation in the grade spans of the students’ middle schools. Results indicate that private schooling has a significant, positive effect on college enrollment and degree attainment. The effect on college enrollment diminishes with time, suggesting that private schools influence degree attainment by getting students to college sooner.
----------------------
Information Heterogeneity and Intended College Enrollment
Zachary Bleemer & Basit Zafar
Federal Reserve Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
Despite a robust college premium, college attendance rates in the United States have remained stagnant and exhibit a substantial socioeconomic gradient. We focus on information gaps — specifically, incomplete information about college benefits and costs — as a potential explanation for these patterns. In a nationally representative survey of U.S. household heads, we show that perceptions of college costs and benefits are severely and systematically biased: 74 percent of our respondents underestimate the true benefits of college (average earnings of a college graduate relative to a non-college worker in the population), while 77 percent report public college costs that exceed actual sticker costs. There is substantial heterogeneity in beliefs, with larger biases for the more disadvantaged groups, lower-income and non-college households. We show that these biases are problematic since they (indirectly) impact the respondents’ reported intended likelihood of their (pre-college-age) child attending college. We simulate an “information intervention,” and find that were individuals to be provided with the correct population distribution of college costs and returns, the intended child’s college attendance would increase significantly, by about 0.2 of the standard deviation in the baseline intended likelihood. Importantly, as a result of the simulated intervention, gaps in college attendance by household income or parents’ education persist but decline by 30 to 50 percent.
----------------------
True for Your School? How Changing Reputations Alter Demand for Selective U.S. Colleges
Molly Alter & Randall Reback
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2014, Pages 346-370
Abstract:
There is a comprehensive literature documenting how colleges’ tuition, financial aid packages, and academic reputations influence students’ application and enrollment decisions. Far less is known about how quality-of-life reputations and peer institutions’ reputations affect these decisions. This article investigates these issues using data from two prominent college guidebook series to measure changes in reputations. We use information published annually by the Princeton Review — the best-selling college guidebook that formally categorizes colleges based on both academic and quality-of-life indicators — and the U.S. News and World Report — the most famous rankings of U.S. undergraduate programs. Our findings suggest that changes in academic and quality-of-life reputations affect the number of applications received by a college and the academic competitiveness and geographic diversity of the ensuing incoming freshman class. Colleges receive fewer applications when peer universities earn high academic ratings. However, unfavorable quality-of-life ratings for peers are followed by decreases in the college’s own application pool and the academic competitiveness of its incoming class. This suggests that potential applicants often begin their search process by shopping for groups of colleges where non-pecuniary benefits may be relatively high.
----------------------
Experimental Evidence on Distributional Effects of Head Start
Marianne Bitler, Hilary Hoynes & Thurston Domina
NBER Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the distributional effects of Head Start, using the first national randomized experiment of the Head Start program (the Head Start Impact Study). We examine program effects on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes and explore the heterogeneous effects of the program through 1st grade by estimating quantile treatment effects under endogeneity (IV-QTE) as well as various types of subgroup mean treatment effects and two-stage least squares treatment effects. We find that (the experimentally manipulated) Head Start attendance leads to large and statistically significant gains in cognitive achievement during the pre-school period and that the gains are largest at the bottom of the distribution. Once the children enter elementary school, the cognitive gains fade out for the full population, but importantly, cognitive gains persist through 1st grade for some Spanish speakers. These results provide strong evidence in favor of a compensatory model of the educational process. Additionally, our findings of large effects at the bottom are consistent with an interpretation that the relatively large gains in the well-studied Perry Preschool Program are in part due to the low baseline skills in the Perry study population. We find no evidence that the counterfactual care setting plays a large role in explaining the differences between the HSIS and Perry findings.
----------------------
Strengthening school readiness for Head Start children: Evaluation of a self-regulation intervention
Sara Schmitt et al.
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examined the efficacy of a self-regulation intervention for children experiencing demographic risk. Utilizing a randomized controlled design, analyses examined if children (N = 276 children in 14 Head Start classrooms; M age = 51.69, SD = 6.55) who participated in an 8-week self-regulation intervention demonstrated greater gains in self-regulation and academic achievement over the preschool year compared to children in a control group. In addition, indirect intervention effects on achievement outcomes through self-regulation were explored and differential intervention effects for English language learners within a sample of children from low-income families were tested. Results indicated that children in the intervention group demonstrated stronger levels of self-regulation compared to the control group in the spring of the preschool year. Group comparisons also revealed that the intervention was related to significantly higher math skills for children who were English language learners. In other words, English language learners who participated in the intervention demonstrated stronger levels of math in the spring of preschool in comparison to children in the control group and relative to English speakers who also participated in the intervention. The present study provides support for the efficacy of a school readiness intervention in promoting self-regulation and achievement in young children, especially English language learners.
----------------------
Glenn Blomquist et al.
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, July 2014, Pages 3–41
Abstract:
Much is known about private financial returns to education in the form of higher earnings. Less is known about how much social value exceeds this private value. Associations between education and socially-desirable outcomes are strong, but disentangling the effect of education from other causal factors is challenging. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the social value of one form of higher education. We elicit willingness to pay for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) directly and compare our estimate of total social value to our estimates of private value in the form of increased earnings. Our earnings estimates are based on two distinct data sets, one administrative and one from the U.S. Census. The difference between the total social value and the increase in earnings is our measure of the education externality and the private, non-market value combined. Our work differs from previous research by focusing on education at the community college level and by eliciting values directly through a stated-preferences survey in a way that yields a total value including any external benefits. Our preferred estimates indicate the social value of expanding the system exceeds private financial value by at least 25% with a best point estimate of nearly 90% and exceeds total private value by at least 15% with a best point estimate of nearly 60%.
----------------------
Amy Ellen Schwartz, Ioan Voicu & Keren Mertens Horn
Regional Science and Urban Economics, November 2014, Pages 1–10
Abstract:
While school choice has attracted much attention from policymakers and researchers, virtually all of the research has focused on the relationship between school choice and student academic performance. There is, in contrast, little work examining whether additional choice schools weaken the link between residential property values and locally zoned schools - despite the well accepted theoretical (and empirical) link between schools and housing. As school choice becomes more important in reforming urban school systems, and improving public schools is critical for attracting and retaining middle class families in urban neighborhoods, it is important to understand how increasing school choice shapes the long-term economic health and viability of the country's central cities. In this paper, we examine how choice schools affect house prices, particularly the link between the quality of locally zoned schools and surrounding housing values. Our study utilizes rich data on New York City public elementary schools geo-coded and matched to data on property sales for a fifteen-year period beginning in 1988. To identify the impact of a choice school on the capitalization of school quality into housing values first we incorporate a boundary discontinuity approach to compare the capitalization of zoned school quality into housing prices of buildings that are close to one another but in different elementary school attendance zones. We rely on smaller and smaller distances from the boundary to test the stability of our results. Second, we compare housing units that are within 3,000 feet of a choice school to housing units outside of these rings, which is traditionally considered the 'walk zone' around a school. Third, we take advantage of choice school openings to look at the capitalization rates before and after the choice school opens. We find that the proximity of alternative school choices does weaken the link between zoned schools and property values. The opening of a choice school reduces the capitalization of test scores from zoned schools into housing values by approximately one third.
----------------------
Classroom grade composition and pupil achievement
Edwin Leuven & Marte Rønning
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper exploits discontinuous grade mixing rules in Norwegian junior high schools to estimate how classroom grade composition affects pupil achievement. Pupils in mixed grade classrooms are found to outperform pupils in single grade classrooms. This finding is driven by pupils benefiting from sharing the classroom with more mature peers from higher grades. The presence of lower grade peers is detrimental for achievement. Pupils can therefore benefit from de-tracking by grade, but the effects depend crucially on how the classroom is balanced in terms of lower and higher grades. These results reconcile the contradictory findings in the literature.
----------------------
Evaluating Impacts of Performance Funding Policies on Student Outcomes in Higher Education
Amanda Rutherford & Thomas Rabovsky
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2014, Pages 185-208
Abstract:
Concerns about performance and cost efficiency have taken center stage in discussions about the funding and oversight of public universities in recent years. One of the primary manifestations of these concerns is the rise of performance funding policies, or policies that seek to directly link state appropriations to the outcomes institutions generate for students. Despite the popularity of these policies, relatively little systematic research examines their effect on student outcomes at public colleges and universities. We use data collected from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to analyze the effectiveness of performance funding policies as a mechanism for improving student graduation, persistence, and degree attainment in more than 500 postsecondary institutions in all fifty states over a span of 18 years. We find that current performance funding policies are not associated with higher levels of student performance and that these policies may in fact contribute to lower performance over a longer period of time. However, more recent policies linked to institutional base funding may produce some likelihood of long-term improvement and require additional research.
----------------------
Brittany Rhoades Cooper & Stephanie Lanza
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Head Start (HS) is the largest federally funded preschool program for disadvantaged children. Research has shown relatively small impacts on cognitive and social skills; therefore, some have questioned its effectiveness. Using data from the Head Start Impact Study (3-year-old cohort; N = 2,449), latent class analysis was used to (a) identify subgroups of children defined by baseline characteristics of their home environment and caregiver and (b) test whether the effects of HS on cognitive, and behavioral and relationship skills over 2 years differed across subgroups. The results suggest that the effectiveness of HS varies quite substantially. For some children there appears to be a significant, and in some cases, long-term, positive impact. For others there is little to no effect.
----------------------
Lee Swanson
Journal of Educational Psychology, August 2014, Pages 831-848
Abstract:
Cognitive strategies are important tools for children with math difficulties (MD) in learning to solve word problems. The effectiveness of strategy training, however, depends on working memory capacity (WMC). Thus, children with MD but with relatively higher WMC are more likely to benefit from strategy training, whereas children with lower WMC may have their resources overtaxed. Children in Grade 3 (N = 147) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) verbal strategies (e.g., underlining question sentence), (b) visual strategies (e.g., correctly placing numbers in diagrams), (c) verbal plus visual strategies, or (d) an untreated control. In line with the predictions, children with MD and higher WMC benefited from verbal or visual strategies relative to those in the control condition on posttest measures of problem solving, calculation, and operation span. In contrast, cognitive strategies decreased problem-solving accuracy in children with low WMC. Thus, improvement in problem solving and related measures, as well as the impairment in learning outcomes, was moderated by WMC.