State of Knowledge
Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers?
Eric Isenberg et al.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine access to effective teachers for low-income students in 26 geographically dispersed school districts over a 5-year period. We measure teacher effectiveness using a value-added model that accounts for measurement error in prior test scores and peer effects. Differences between the average value added of teachers of high- and low-income students are 0.005 standard deviations in English/language arts and 0.004 standard deviations in math. Differences between teachers of Black, Hispanic, and White students are also small. Rearranging teachers to obtain perfect equity would do little to narrow the sizable student achievement gap between low- and high-income students. We also show that a higher proportion of novice teachers in high-poverty schools contributes negligibly to differences in access to effective teachers.
Education in Mathematics and the Spread of COVID-19
Joshua Ping Ang & Tim Murray
Eastern Economic Journal, October 2021, Pages 571–589
Abstract:
We investigate the effect of standardized mathematics scores for young adults on the number of COVID-19 cases in the USA. We find that a one-grade-level increase in test scores led to a decrease in COVID-19 cases 30, 60, and 90 days after the first case in each county. Our findings suggest that if states and localities implement policies that increase the level of education and comprehension of mathematics at the K-12 level, that people may be better prepared to find and interpret information in a future public health crisis.
Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science
Johan Chu & James Evans
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 October 2021
Abstract:
In many academic fields, the number of papers published each year has increased significantly over time. Policy measures aim to increase the quantity of scientists, research funding, and scientific output, which is measured by the number of papers produced. These quantitative metrics determine the career trajectories of scholars and evaluations of academic departments, institutions, and nations. Whether and how these increases in the numbers of scientists and papers translate into advances in knowledge is unclear, however. Here, we first lay out a theoretical argument for why too many papers published each year in a field can lead to stagnation rather than advance. The deluge of new papers may deprive reviewers and readers the cognitive slack required to fully recognize and understand novel ideas. Competition among many new ideas may prevent the gradual accumulation of focused attention on a promising new idea. Then, we show data supporting the predictions of this theory. When the number of papers published per year in a scientific field grows large, citations flow disproportionately to already well-cited papers; the list of most-cited papers ossifies; new papers are unlikely to ever become highly cited, and when they do, it is not through a gradual, cumulative process of attention gathering; and newly published papers become unlikely to disrupt existing work. These findings suggest that the progress of large scientific fields may be slowed, trapped in existing canon. Policy measures shifting how scientific work is produced, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may be called for to push fields into new, more fertile areas of study.
College Choice, Private Options, and The Incidence of Public Investment in Higher Education
John Bound & Andrew Simon
NBER Working Paper, October 2021
Abstract:
Previous measures of the incidence of public investment in higher education focus on the transfer to public college students. This implies that the net benefits to students who do not attend public colleges is negative. However, they miss potential general equilibrium effects on the private college and labor markets. Changes in the public college market affect who private colleges admit, what prices they charge, and the number of students who enroll in any college. We show that capturing these spillovers is important for characterizing incidence using a model of higher education that we validate with quasi-experimental variation in state spending. Unlike previous measures, we find that high-income-modest-ability students especially benefit since they are only admitted to high-quality private colleges when state spending is high, and the public colleges create sufficient competitive pressure. Decreased investment also reduces educational attainment, raising the college wage premium. This exacerbates private college market power.
Asymmetry by Design? Identity Obfuscation, Reputational Pressure, and Consumer Predation in U.S. For-Profit Higher Education
Adam Goldstein & Charlie Eaton
American Sociological Review, October 2021, Pages 896-933
Abstract:
This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. We hypothesize that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all U.S. for-profit colleges, an industry characterized by widespread fraud and poor (although variable) educational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that brand multiplicity facilitates malfeasance by reducing ex ante reputational risks, colleges that are part of multi-brand companies invest less in instruction, have worse student outcomes, and are more likely to face legal and regulatory sanctions (relative to single-brand firms). Maintaining multiple outward-facing brand identities also mitigates reputational penalties in the wake of law enforcement actions, as measured by news coverage of legal actions, and by subsequent enrollment growth. The results suggest identity multiplicity plays a key role in allowing firms to furnish substandard products, even amid frequent scandals and media scrutiny. Predatory practices are facilitated not only by the inherent informational asymmetries in a given product, but also by firms’ efforts to make themselves less legible to audiences. The analysis contributes to research on higher education, organizational theory, and the sociology of markets.
The effect of reduced student loan borrowing on academic performance and default: Evidence from a loan counseling experiment
Andrew Barr, Kelli Bird & Benjamin Castleman
Journal of Public Economics, October 2021
Abstract:
Student loan borrowing for higher education has emerged as a top policy concern. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the impact of an outreach campaign that prompted loan applicants at a large community college to make informed and active borrowing decisions. The intervention led students to reduce their unsubsidized loan borrowing by 7 percent. This resulted in worse academic performance, and increased the likelihood of loan default during the five years after the intervention occurred. Our results suggest policy makers and higher education leaders should carefully examine the potential unintended consequences of efforts to reduce student borrowing, particularly in light of growing evidence regarding the counter-intuitive positive relationship between reduced borrowing levels and worse student academic and financial outcomes.
The Fiscal and Welfare Effects of Policy Responses to the Covid-19 School Closures
Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln et al.
NBER Working Paper, October 2021
Abstract:
Using a structural life-cycle model and data on school visits from Safegraph and school closures from Burbio, we quantify the heterogeneous impact of school closures during the Corona crisis on children affected at different ages and coming from households with different parental characteristics. Our data suggests that secondary schools were closed for in-person learning for longer periods than elementary schools (implying that younger children experienced less school closures than older children), and that private schools experienced shorter closures than public schools, and schools in poorer U.S. counties experienced shorter school closures. We then extend the structural life cycle model of private and public schooling investments studied in Fuchs-Schuendeln, Krueger, Ludwig and Popova (2021) to include the choice of parents whether to send their children to private schools, empirically discipline it with data on parental investments from the PSID, and then feed into the model the school closure measures from our empirical analysis to quantify the long-run consequences of the Covid-19 school closures on the cohorts of children currently in school. Future earnings- and welfare losses are largest for children that started public secondary schools at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. Comparing children from the top- to children from the bottom quartile of the income distribution, welfare losses are ca. 0.8 percentage points larger for the poorer children if school closures were unrelated to income. Accounting for the longer school closures in richer counties reduces this gap by about 1/3. A policy intervention that extends schools by 3 months (6 weeks in the next two summers) generates significant welfare gains for the children and raises future tax approximately sufficient to pay for the cost of this schooling expansion.
Do Career-Engaging Courses Engage Low-Income Students?
Jay Stratte Plasman, Michael Gottfried & Daniel Klasik
AERA Open, October 2021
Abstract:
Encouraging school engagement is crucial to promoting positive outcomes for high school students. One potential means to promote school engagement may be through career and technical education (CTE) coursework, which is specifically designed to be educationally engaging, particularly for vulnerable populations such as those from low-income backgrounds. Yet, little is known about whether these courses do in fact link to higher school engagement. Through analysis of the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 — a nationally representative data set — we explored the link between STEM-focused CTE (STEM-CTE) coursetaking and school engagement for low-income students. To do so, we employed an instrumental variable estimation technique and found that taking STEM-CTE courses related to higher school engagement for low-income students. We conclude with a discussion of implications for students, practitioners, and policymakers.
The Growing Importance of Universities for Patenting and Innovation
Todd Schoellman & Vladimir Smirnyagin
Federal Reserve Working Paper, August 2021
Abstract:
We document a growing link between university research and development expenditures and patenting activity in the surrounding metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) since 1980. The gap in patents per capita between MSAs with and without a research university has doubled, while the elasticity of patents per capita with respect to university R&D has tripled. We establish that this trend reflects growing knowledge spillovers from university R&D by showing that it survives controlling for MSA and university characteristics; that it holds by research/patent field; and that it is stronger in areas where universities do more basic R&D. We show that a portion of this change can be linked to the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which was designed in part to improve knowledge flows between universities and firms. The growing importance of teams for leading scientific research and reduction in corporate basic research likely also play a role.
Dual Language Education and Student Achievement
Andrew Bibler
Education Finance and Policy, Fall 2021, Pages 634–658
Abstract:
Two-way dual language (DL) classrooms enroll students of two different language backgrounds and teach curriculum in both languages. I estimate the effect of attending a DL school on student achievement using school choice lotteries from Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina, finding local average treatment effects of 0.04 and 0.05 standard deviations per year in math and reading, respectively. Attending a DL school increased test scores for English learners (ELs) and for non-ELs by a similar magnitude. The positive effects of winning the lottery to attend a DL school are substantially larger than the average effect of assignment to other magnet schools, and several peer and school characteristics are ruled out as explanations for the increased test scores. There is no statistically significant evidence that attending a DL school changed the probability of having EL status throughout elementary school.
The Forgotten 20%: Achievement and Growth in Rural Schools Across the Nation
Angela Johnson, Megan Kuhfeld & James Soland
AERA Open, October 2021
Abstract:
Leveraging achievement data measured in the fall and spring of kindergarten through eighth grade for 840,000 students attending 8,800 public schools, we report novel evidence on how achievement and growth patterns differ between rural and nonrural schools. Rural students start kindergarten slightly ahead of nonrural students but fall behind by middle school. The divergence is driven by larger summer losses for rural students. In both rural and nonrural schools, we provide additional evidence that Black–White achievement gaps widen during the school year. These findings highlight the importance of seasonal learning patterns in interpreting rural school performance.
The Price of COVID-19 Risk in a Public University
Duha Altindag, Samuel Cole & Alan Seals
Auburn University Working Paper, October 2021
Abstract:
We study a “market” for occupational COVID-19 risk at Auburn University, a large public school in the US. The university’s practices in Spring 2021 caused approximately half of the face-to-face classes to have enrollments above the legal capacity allowed by state law, which followed CDC’s social distancing guidelines. Our results suggest that the politically less powerful instructors, such as graduate student teaching assistants and adjunct instructors, as well as women, were systematically recruited to deliver their courses in riskier classrooms. Using an IV strategy in which the instrument for classroom risk is constructed based on classroom features, such as the setup and furniture, we show that instructors who taught at least one risky class were paid more than those who exclusively taught safe courses. We estimate a COVID-19 risk premium of $8,400 per class.
The Impact of Principal Attrition and Replacement on Indicators of School Quality
Marcus Winters, Brian Kisida & Ikhee Cho
Education Finance and Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Transitions to a new principal are common, especially within urban public schools, and potentially highly disruptive to a school's culture and operations. We use longitudinal data from New York City to investigate if the effect of principal transitions differs by whether the incoming principal was hired externally or promoted from within the school. We take advantage of variation in the timing of principal transitions within an event-study approach to estimate the causal effect of principal changes. Changing principals has an immediate negative effect on student test scores that is sustained over several years regardless of whether hired internally or externally. However, externally hired principals lead to an increase in teacher turnover and a decline in perceptions of the school's learning environment, whereas transitions to an internally promoted principal have no such effects. This pattern of results raises important questions about leadership transitions and the nature of principal effects on school quality.
The Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools Program and High School Completion
Michelle Yin, Garima Siwach & Yulia Belyakova
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite an increase in special education enrollment, a stark gap in high school completion between students with and without disabilities persists. This study examined the impact of Unified Champion Schools (UCS), a Special Olympics program designed to foster social inclusion through three components — Unified Sports, Inclusive Youth Leadership, and Whole School Engagement — on high school graduation rates. Using a novel dataset and a difference-in-differences design, we found that implementing the UCS program increased the graduation rate by 1.1 percentage points for all students and 1.4 percentage points for students with disabilities. The increase in schooling outcomes for students with disabilities in UCS schools also was found to be positively correlated with perceptions about a more socially inclusive school environment.