Studies
Single-Sex Classes & Student Outcomes: Evidence from North Carolina
Michael Strain
Economics of Education Review, October 2013, Pages 73-87
Abstract:
The effects of single-sex education are hotly contested, both in academic and policy circles. Despite this heated debate, there exists little credible empirical evidence of the effect of a U.S. public school's decision to offer single-sex classrooms on the educational outcomes of students. This study seeks to fill this hole. Using administrative records for third through eighth graders in North Carolina public schools, the paper finds evidence that the offering of single-sex mathematics courses is associated with lower performance on end-of-grade math exams, and finds no evidence that the offering of single-sex reading scores increases performance on reading exams. Robustness checks are conducted. While the mathematics results are robust to the checks, the reading results fail an important check, and the baseline reading results should be interpreted with this in mind. Evidence of significant heterogeneity in the effect across schools is also presented.
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Classroom Sex Composition and First-Grade School Outcomes: The Role of Classroom Behavior
Erin Pahlke, Carey Cooper & Richard Fabes
Social Science Research, November 2013, Pages 1650-1658
Abstract:
Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (N=21,409; 10,452 girls and 10,957 boys; mean age=7.24 years), the association between first-grade classroom sex composition (CSC), measured as the percentage of female students, and end of the year academic (reading, mathematics) and socio-emotional (externalizing problems, internalizing problems, self-control, interpersonal skills) outcomes was examined. Using multilevel modeling techniques and controlling for prior achievement levels, CSC was positively associated with children's reading achievement at the end of first grade; students performed better in reading in classes with a higher percentage of female students. CSC was also associated with three of the socio-emotional outcomes; controlling for prior levels, students in classrooms with a higher percentage of girls had better self-control and interpersonal skills and fewer internalizing problems. Classroom behavior mediated the effects of CSC on reading achievement and the socio-emotional outcomes. Implications for the composition of first-grade classrooms are discussed.
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Joshua Angrist et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
We use admissions lotteries to estimate the effects of attendance at Boston's charter high schools on college preparation, college attendance, and college choice. Charter attendance increases pass rates on the high-stakes exam required for high school graduation in Massachusetts, with especially large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored college scholarship. Charter attendance has little effect on the likelihood of taking the SAT, but shifts the distribution of scores rightward, moving students into higher quartiles of the state SAT score distribution. Boston's charter high schools also increase the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, the number of AP exams taken, and scores on AP Calculus tests. Finally, charter attendance induces a substantial shift from two- to four-year institutions, though the effect on overall college enrollment is modest. The increase in four-year enrollment is concentrated among four-year public institutions in Massachusetts. The large gains generated by Boston's charter high schools are unlikely to be generated by changes in peer composition or other peer effects.
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Irma Arteaga et al.
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Until the last year, public funding for preschool education had been growing rapidly over a decade with most state programs providing one year of preschool for four year olds. Fewer three year olds are enrolled in preschool. To investigate the importance of enrollment duration, this study is the first to estimate long-term dosage effects of years of preschool. We use data from a cohort of 1,500 students in the Chicago Longitudinal Study who enrolled in the Chicago Public Schools in the mid-1980s. Many of these students participated in a high-quality preschool program called Child-Parent Centers (CPC) for one or two years. To address selection with multiple treatments, we employ inverse propensity score weighting. Relative to children who attended one year of CPC preschool, the two-year group is significantly less likely to receive special education or be abused or neglected or to commit crimes. The findings provide support for the long-term benefits of greater exposure to preschool.
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High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment
Gregory Palardy
American Educational Research Journal, August 2013, Pages 714-754
Abstract:
Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study examines the association between high school socioeconomic segregation and student attainment outcomes and the mechanisms that mediate those relationships. The results show that socioeconomic segregation has a strong association with high school graduation and college enrollment. Controlling for an array of student and school factors, students who attend high socioeconomic composition (SEC) schools are 68% more likely to enroll at a 4-year college than students who attend low SEC schools. Two mediating mechanisms were examined, including socioeconomic-based peer influences and school effects. The results indicate the association between SEC and attainment is due more to peer influences, which tend to be negative in the low SEC setting. However, school practices that emphasize academics also play a major role, particularly in mediating the relationship between SEC and 4-year college enrollment. These findings suggest that integrating schools is likely necessary to fully addressing the negative consequences of attending a low SEC school.
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Susan Dynarski, Joshua Hyman & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We used the random assignment in Project STAR (the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment) to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We found that assignment to a small class increases students' probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among black students. Among students enrolled in the poorest third of schools, the effect is 7.3 percentage points. Smaller classes increased the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shifted students toward high-earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), business, and economics. We found that test-score effects at the time of the experiment were an excellent predictor of long-term improvements in postsecondary outcomes.
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Dennis Epple et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
We develop a new general equilibrium model of the market for higher education that captures the coexistence of public and private universities, the large degree of quality differentiation among them, and the tuition and admission policies that emerge from their competition for students. We use the model to examine the consequences of federal and state aid policies. We show that private colleges game the federal financial aid system, strategically increasing tuition to increase student aid, and using the proceeds to spend more on educational resources and to compete for high-ability students. Increases in federal aid have modest effects in increasing college attendance, with nearly half of the increased federal aid offset by reduced institutional aid and increased university educational expenditures. A reduction in state subsidies coupled with increases in tuition at public schools substantially reduces attendance at those universities, with mainly poor students exiting, and with only moderate switching into private colleges.
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Educating bright students in urban schools
Kalena Cortes, Wael Moussa & Jeffrey Weinstein
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our study analyzes the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, a college-preparatory educational program designed for higher-achieving students, on high school academic achievement in Chicago Public Schools. We exploit exogenous variation in the offering of the program across schools over time with a difference-in-differences framework. We estimate a positive effect of the program on the probability of obtaining a B average or better in coursework, with most of the effect accruing to performance in mathematics. Most importantly, the program led to a decrease in the likelihood of high school dropout and an increase in the probability of high school graduation.
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The Determinants of Mismatch Between Students and Colleges
Eleanor Wiske Dillon & Jeffrey Andrew Smith
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort to examine mismatch between student ability and college quality. Mismatch has implications for the design of state higher education systems and for student aid policy. The data indicate substantial amounts of both undermatch (high ability students at low quality colleges) and overmatch (low ability students at high quality colleges). Student application and enrollment decisions, rather than college admission decisions, drive most mismatch. Financial constraints, information, and the public college options facing each student all affect the probability of mismatch. More informed students attend higher quality colleges, even when doing so involves overmatching.
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Rajashri Chakrabarti
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, July 2013, Pages 349-394
Abstract:
This article compares two alternative voucher designs implemented in the U.S. The Milwaukee program was a "voucher shock" program that made low-income students eligible for vouchers. The Florida program was an accountability-tied voucher program that faced failing schools with "threat of vouchers" and stigma. In the context of a formal theoretical model, the study argues that the threatened schools will improve under the Florida-type program and this improvement will exceed that of the corresponding treated schools under the Milwaukee-type program. Using school-level scores from Florida and Wisconsin, and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy in trends, it then finds strong support in favor of these predictions.
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Distributional Effects of a School Voucher Program: Evidence from New York City
Marianne Bitler et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
We use quantile treatment effects estimation to examine the consequences of a school voucher experiment across the distribution of student achievement. In 1997, the School Choice Scholarship Foundation granted $1,400 private school vouchers to a randomly-selected group of low-income New York City elementary school students. Prior research indicates that this program had no average effect on student achievement. If vouchers boost achievement at one part of the distribution and hurt achievement at another, zero or small mean effects may obscure theoretically important but offsetting program effects. Drawing upon prior research related to Catholic schools and school choice, we derive three hypotheses regarding the program's distributional consequences. Our analyses suggest that the program had no significant effect at any point in the skill distribution.
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Are There Catholic School Effects in Ontario, Canada?
Scott Davies
European Sociological Review, August 2013, Pages 871-883
Abstract:
Spearheaded by James Coleman three decades ago, two generations of American social scientists have investigated whether students in Catholic schools achieve more than students in public schools, net of their demographics, prior achievement, and school resources. Though this research tradition has not reached a consensus in the United States, it provides a viable framework for analyzing school sector effects in other nations. I search for Catholic school effects in Ontario, Canada, arguing that the province's funding and governance arrangements and student populations make Catholic and public schools more readily comparable than they are in the United States. Data come from a variety of regression, multi-level and propensity score matching models for Grade 3 reading, writing, and math achievement for more than 55,000 elementary students, which represent over one-half of the provincial cohort of English language students. This article finds modest total Catholic school effects and estimates net effects to range from zero to 12 per cent of a standard deviation, controlling for demographics and kindergarten school readiness. These effects are deemed small by several empirical benchmarks and inconsistent with Coleman's thesis.
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Seniority Provisions in Collective Bargaining Agreements and the "Teacher Quality Gap"
Lora Cohen-Vogel, Li Feng & La'Tara Osborne-Lampkin
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2013, Pages 324-343
Abstract:
For at least two decades, studies have demonstrated that the least experienced and credentialed teachers are concentrated in poor, minority, and low-performing schools. Some blame provisions in collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) between teachers unions and school districts that favor senior teachers. Seniority preference rules, they say, exacerbate the "teacher quality gap" by allowing experienced teachers to transfer. Using data from Florida, the authors analyze whether and how CBAs influence the distribution of teacher quality within school districts, paying special attention to staffing rules that grant preferences to senior teachers. They find little evidence that the within-district variation in teacher quality between more and less disadvantaged schools in Florida is explained by the determinativeness of union contract rules.
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Benjamin Castleman & Bridget Terry Long
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Gaps in average college success among students of differing backgrounds have persisted in the United States for decades. One of the primary ways governments have attempted to ameliorate such gaps is by providing need-based grants, but little evidence exists on the impacts of such aid on longer-term outcomes such as college persistence and degree completion. We examine the effects of the Florida Student Access Grant (FSAG) using a regression-discontinuity strategy and exploiting the cut-off used to determine eligibility. We find grant eligibility had a positive effect on attendance, particularly at public four-year institutions. We also extend the literature by investigating the impact of aid on college success and find that eligibility for FSAG increased early persistence and the cumulative number of college-level credits students earned in their first four years. Most importantly, we find that FSAG increased the likelihood of bachelor's degree receipt within six years at a public college or university by 4.6 percentage points, which translates into a 22 percent increase among students near the eligibility cut-off. The results are robust to sensitivity analyses.
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Choice in a World of New School Types
J.S. Butler et al.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
As school choice options have evolved over recent years, it is important to understand what family and school factors are associated with the enrollment decisions families make. Use of restricted-access data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study allowed us to identify household location from a nationally representative sample of students and to match households to the actual schools attended and other nearby schools. This matching is significant as previous research generally has not been able to link individual households to school enrollment decisions. Using these data, we examined the role that socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity play in school enrollment decisions. One of our more interesting results suggests that the newest public alternative, charter schools, attracts families with higher socioeconomic status than those that traditional public schools attract. The attraction of charter schools, however, unlike traditional public schools, appears to be racially and ethnically neutral. Families do not choose a charter school because of its racial or ethnic composition, nor do race and ethnicity within a household influence its choice of charter schools. Other socioeconomic factors influencing charter school choice are more similar to factors explaining private school choice than to those factors explaining the choice of traditional public schools. The findings suggest that policies governing the design of charter schools should focus on broader socioeconomic diversity rather than race only.
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Does offering more science at school increase the supply of scientists?
Stijn Broecke
Education Economics, Summer 2013, Pages 325-342
Abstract:
This paper estimates the effects of an education policy (Triple Science) in England aimed at increasing the take-up and attainment of young people in science subjects. The effect of the policy is identified by comparing two adjacent cohorts of pupils in schools that offer Triple Science to one cohort, but not to the other. The results suggest some large and significant effects on later subject choice and attainment, and these appear to be particularly strong for boys and pupils from more deprived backgrounds.
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Are Some Degrees Worth More than Others? Evidence from College Admission Cutoffs in Chile
Justine Hastings, Christopher Neilson & Seth Zimmerman
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
We use administrative data from Chile from 1985 through 2011 to estimate the returns to postsecondary admission as a function of field of study, course requirements, selectivity, and student socioeconomic status. Our data link high school and college records to labor market earnings from federal tax forms. We exploit hundreds of regression discontinuities from the centralized, score-based admissions system to estimate the causal impacts of interest. Returns are positive and significant only among more-selective degrees. Returns are highly heterogeneous by field of study, with large returns in health, law and social science, as well as selective technology and business degrees. We find small to negative returns in arts, humanities and education degrees. We do not find evidence that vocational curriculum focus increases returns for less selective degrees. We do not find differential outcomes for students coming from low- versus high-socioeconomic backgrounds admitted to selective degrees.
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Dara Shifrer, Rebecca Callahan & Chandra Muller
American Educational Research Journal, August 2013, Pages 656-682
Abstract:
Placement of some students into the courses needed only for high school graduation and others into those that prepare them for college constitutes academic stratification. This study uses data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to investigate whether students labeled with learning disabilities complete fewer academic courses by the end of high school compared to their peers who are not labeled. Results indicate large disparities in completion of college preparatory coursework, especially in math, science, and foreign language, even net of students' academic preparation for high school and their cognitive and noncognitive skills. The evidence supports the possibility that school processes contribute to the poorer course-taking outcomes of students labeled with learning disabilities.
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Raising teacher education levels in Head Start: Exploring programmatic changes between 1999 and 2011
Daphna Bassok
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Between 1999 and 2011, the percentage of Head Start teachers nationwide with an Associate's Degree or higher more than doubled from 38 to 85%. Over the same period, the percentage of teachers with a BA also rose rapidly from 23 to 52%. This paper uses within-program fixed-effects models and a 13-year panel of administrative data on all Head Start programs in the United States to explore whether programs that experienced increases in teacher education experienced changes with respect to comprehensive service provision, staffing choices and the racial composition of the staff. I find no evidence that programs that raised their teachers' education levels sacrificed health or social services. However, programs with gains in teacher education did see some increases in child-teacher ratios, turnover, and racial divergence between children and staff, which may be associated negatively with young children's development.
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Kevin Lang & Russell Weinstein
NBER Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
Using the Beginning Postsecondary Student Survey and Transcript Data, we find no statistically significant differential return to certificate or Associates degrees between for-profits and not-for-profits. Point estimates suggest a slightly lower return to a for-profit certificate and a slightly higher return to a for-profit Associates degree, largely because more students at not-for-profits earn a BA, making them less likely to have only an Associates degree. There is considerable variation in the return to certificates/degrees across majors, including many with negligible or negative returns. Differences across fields are large relative to differences across institution types.