Human Capital
Does High School Quality Matter? Evidence from Admissions Data
Daniel Berkowitz & Mark Hoekstra
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of attending elite private high school on college placement using admissions data from the most selective high school in a large metropolitan area. To overcome omitted variable bias, we limit the sample to admitted applicants and control directly for the scores assigned by admissions based on in-depth analyses of the applicants and their families. In addition, we control for a wide set of covariates including student and family characteristics and entrance exam scores. Results indicate that attending selective private high school rather than other public and private high schools causes students to attend more selective universities. Effects are driven by gains for girls and students from lower-income neighborhoods.
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Constrained after college: Student loans and early career occupational choices
Jesse Rothstein & Cecilia Elena Rouse
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the early 2000 s, a highly selective university introduced a "no-loans" policy under which the loan component of financial aid awards was replaced with grants. We use this natural experiment to identify the causal effect of student debt on employment outcomes. In the standard life-cycle model, young people make optimal educational investment decisions if they are able to finance these investments by borrowing against future earnings; the presence of debt has only income effects on future decisions. We find that debt causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose low-paid "public interest" jobs. We also find some evidence that debt affects students' academic decisions during college. Our estimates suggest that recent college graduates are not life-cycle agents. Two potential explanations are that young workers are credit constrained or that they are averse to holding debt. We find suggestive evidence that debt reduces students' donations to the institution in the years after they graduate and increases the likelihood that a graduate will default on a pledge made during her senior year; we argue this result is more likely consistent with credit constraints than with debt aversion.
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Short-Run Impacts of Accountability on School Quality
Jonah Rockoff & Lesley Turner
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2010, Pages 119-147
Abstract:
In the fall of 2007, New York City began using student tests and other measures to assign each school a grade (A to F), and linked grades to rewards and consequences, including possible school closure. These grades were released in late September, arguably too late for schools to make major changes in programs or personnel, and students were tested again in January (English) and March (math). Despite this time frame, regression discontinuity estimates indicate that receipt of a low grade significantly increased student achievement, more so in math than English, and improved parental evaluations of school quality.
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Complex Systems View of Educational Policy Research
S. Maroulis et al.
Science, 1 October 2010, Pages 38-39
Abstract:
Education researchers have struggled for decades with questions such as "why are troubled schools so difficult to improve?" or "why is the achievement gap so hard to close?" We argue here that conceptualizing schools and districts as complex adaptive systems, composed of many networked parts that give rise to emergent patterns through their interactions (1), holds promise for understanding such important problems. Although there has been considerable research on the use of complex systems ideas and methods to help students learn science content (2), only recently have researchers begun to apply these tools to issues of educational policy.
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Only the Names Have Been Changed: Ability Grouping Revisited
Jo Worthy
Urban Review, November 2010, Pages 271-295
Abstract:
In this paper, I employ a study of 25 sixth grade teachers of "regular" and "honors" language arts classes in a large urban district as a vehicle for discussing ability grouping. Despite not being asked any questions about grouping or differentiation, differences in students and instruction among the two class levels was a major focus of the teachers' responses. Most of the teachers' descriptions of students in regular classes were remarkably similar to negative descriptions from ability grouping and tracking research of the 1970s and 1980s, and the instruction they described was comparably limiting. The findings suggest that, among these teachers, euphemistic terms such as regular and "grade level," have replaced clear-cut terms used in the past ("basic" and "low"), making class leveling systems more confusing. Navigating this system is especially difficult for parents with social, cultural, and/or academic capital that does not match well with that of most school personnel. Implications for research and practice are addressed.
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Fabian Waldinger
Journal of Political Economy, August 2010, Pages 787-831
Abstract:
I investigate the effect of faculty quality on PhD student outcomes. To address the endogeneity of faculty quality I use exogenous variation provided by the expulsion of mathematics professors in Nazi Germany. Faculty quality is a very important determinant of short- and long-run PhD student outcomes. A one-standard-deviation increase in faculty quality increases the probability of publishing the dissertation in a top journal by 13 percentage points, the probability of becoming a full professor by 10 percentage points, the probability of having positive lifetime citations by 16 percentage points, and the number of lifetime citations by 6.3.
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School Competition and Efficiency with Publicly Funded Catholic Schools
David Card, Martin Dooley & Abigail Payne
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2010, Pages 150-176
Abstract:
We study competition between two publicly funded school systems in Ontario, Canada: one that is open to all students, and one that is restricted to children of Catholic backgrounds. A simple model of competition between the competing systems predicts greater effort by school managers in areas with more Catholic families who are willing to switch systems. Consistent with this insight, we find significant effects of competitive pressure on test score gains between third and sixth grade. Our estimates imply that extending competition to all students would raise average test scores in sixth grade by 6 percent to 8 percent of a standard deviation.
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Douglas Ready
Sociology of Education, October 2010, Pages 271-286
Abstract:
Over the past several decades, research has documented strong relationships between social class and children's cognitive abilities. These initial cognitive differences, which are substantial at school entry, increase as children progress through school. Despite the robust findings associated with this research, authors have generally neglected the extent to which school absenteeism exacerbates social class differences in academic development among young children. Using growth-curve analyses within a three-level hierarchical linear modeling framework, this study employs data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) to examine the links between children's social class, school absences, and academic growth during kindergarten and first grade. Results suggest that the effects of schooling on cognitive development are stronger for lower socioeconomic status (SES) children and that the findings associated with theories of summer learning loss are applicable to literacy development during early elementary school. Indeed, although they continue to achieve at lower absolute levels, socioeconomically disadvantaged children who have good attendance rates gain more literacy skills than their higher SES peers during kindergarten and first grade.
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The Effects of Quarter of Birth on Academic Outcomes at the Elementary School Level
Erin Robertson
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses public schools data to examine the effects of age on student academic achievement in light of recent trends to delay children's entry into kindergarten. To avoid problems of endogeneity, students' quarters of birth is employed as an instrument for age at entry. In particular, the effects of students' quarters of birth on math and reading standardized test scores and grade retention at the elementary school level are estimated. Evidence of benefits to being among the oldest in one's age-grade cohort is found. Interestingly, over time, the youngest students begin to perform approximately on par with the oldest students, creating a u-shaped pattern to the data.
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Alejandra Mizala & Florencia Torche
International Journal of Educational Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the socioeconomic stratification of achievement in the Chilean voucher system using a census of 4th and 8th graders, a multilevel methodology, and accounting for unobserved selectivity into school sector. Findings indicate that the association between the school's aggregate family socioeconomic status (SES) and test scores is much greater in the private-voucher sector than in the public one, resulting in marked socioeconomic stratification of test scores in the Chilean voucher system. We also find that the amount of tuition fees paid by parents in private-voucher schools has no bearing on test scores, after controlling for the socioeconomic makeup of the school. Implications of these findings for educational inequality in the context of a universal voucher system are discussed.
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Oscar Jimenez-Castellanos
Urban Review, November 2010, Pages 351-371
Abstract:
This study examines the relationship between educational resources (fiscal, personnel and facilities) and school achievement within a large urban/suburban elementary school district. A sequential mixed methods approach reveals inequitable resource allocation trends and patterns between schools within a school district by producing different student outcomes. The educational resources positively correlated to higher school achievement are: higher teacher salaries, newer schools, more multi-purpose space per pupil and less portable classrooms. Without question, White students receive more of these resources than Latino students, low-income students and English Language learners. This study also conducts a multiple comparative case study analysis comparing between Title I and non-Title I schools, within Title I schools and within non-Title I schools. The study contains policy and practice implications to improve opportunity and school achievement in urban/suburban school districts.
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Neighborhoods and Schools as Competing and Reinforcing Contexts for Educational Attainment
Ann Owens
Sociology of Education, October 2010, Pages 287-311
Abstract:
Scholars hypothesize that both neighborhood and school contexts influence educational attainment, but few have considered both contexts simultaneously. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the author analyzes how school and neighborhood contexts are jointly related to high school and college graduation. She finds that the absolute level of neighborhood resources positively predicts earning a bachelor's degree, while relative neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) compared to school peers' neighborhood SES predicts high school graduation. Interactions between school and neighborhood characteristics reveal that low odds of educational attainment among students from lower-SES neighborhoods are reduced even more when a student attends school with more white and high-SES peers. Conversely, the high odds of educational attainment among students from higher-SES neighborhoods are further enhanced by attending school with more white and high-SES peers. Findings suggest that neighborhood SES may be a basis for relative deprivation within schools. Policy makers need to determine how students from different neighborhoods are integrated into a school's structure and culture in order for policies that mix students from different neighborhood backgrounds to succeed. Attending a high-SES, largely white school does not eliminate (and may even exacerbate) the disadvantages of coming from a low-SES neighborhood.
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Joshua Hall & Justin Ross
Public Finance Review, November 2010, Pages 710-737
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that Tiebout-style fiscal competition among local governments reduces the likelihood of adopting income taxes. This literature has not yet considered the impact of yardstick competition on tax instrument choice. This article uses spatial econometrics to test for yardstick competition in the decision to adopt an income tax. The results, based on Ohio school district data, indicate that school districts are more likely to adopt an income tax if their neighbors have already done so. While a negative correlation of Tiebout competition on district income tax adoption persists, controlling for spatial dependence reduces the statistical significance of the effect.
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Ofer Malamud & Abigail Wozniak
NBER Working Paper, October 2010
Abstract:
We examine whether higher education is a causal determinant of geographic mobility using variation in college attainment induced by draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War. We use national and state-level induction risk to identify both educational attainment and veteran status among cohorts of affected men observed in the 1980 Census. Our 2SLS estimates imply that the additional years of higher education significantly increased the likelihood that affected men resided outside their birth states later in life. Most estimates suggest a causal impact of higher education on migration that is larger in magnitude but not significantly different from OLS. Our large reduced-form estimates for the effect of induction risk on out-of-state migration also imply that the Vietnam War led to substantial geographic churning in the national labor market. We conclude that the causal impact of college completion on subsequent mobility is large and provide evidence on a range of mechanisms that may be responsible for the relationship between college education and mobility.
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Are College Graduates More Responsive to Distant Labor Market Opportunities?
Abigail Wozniak
Journal of Human Resources, Fall 2010, Pages 944-970
Abstract:
Are highly educated workers better at locating in areas with high labor demand? To answer this question, I use three decades of U.S. Census data to estimate a McFadden-style model of residential location choice. I test for education differentials in the likelihood that young workers reside in states experiencing positive labor demand shocks at the time these workers entered the labor market. I find effects of changes in state labor demand on college graduate location choice that are several times greater than for high school graduates. Nevertheless, medium-run wage effects of entry labor market conditions for college graduates equal or exceed those of less-educated workers.