Hard to Teach
The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century
Matthew Kraft & Melissa Arnold Lyon
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
We examine the state of the U.S. K-12 teaching profession over the last half century by compiling nationally representative time-series data on four interrelated constructs: occupational prestige, interest among students, the number of individuals preparing for entry, and on-the-job satisfaction. We find a consistent and dynamic pattern across every measure: a rapid decline in the 1970s, a swift rise in the 1980s extending into the mid 1990s, relative stability, and then a sustained decline beginning around 2010. The current state of the teaching profession is at or near its lowest levels in 50 years. We identify and explore a range of hypotheses that might explain these historical patterns including economic and sociopolitical factors, education policies, and school environments.
The Effects of High-Performing, High-Turnover Teachers on Long-Run Student Achievement: Evidence From Teach For America
Virginia Lovison
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
An increasing share of new teachers participate in alternative preparation programs. A fundamental question is what effect these programs have on long-run student achievement. To address this question, I study Teach For America (TFA) teachers working in New York City (NYC). I first estimate within-teacher returns to experience and find that TFA alumni teachers improve at double the rate of the average NYC teacher over their first 5 years in the classroom. I then model the joint relationship between turnover and performance over time. The results suggest that the net effect of TFA hiring on long-run student achievement is positive, despite the regular churn within the TFA workforce.
Transparency and Percent Plans
Adam Kapor
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
Transparency vs. opacity is an important dimension of college admission policy. Colleges may gain useful information from a holistic review of applicants' materials, but in doing so may contribute to uncertainty that discourages potential applicants with poor information. This paper investigates the impacts of admissions transparency in the context of Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan, using survey and administrative data from Texas and a model of college applications, admissions, enrollment, grades, and persistence. I estimate that two thirds of the plan's 9.1 point impact on top-decile students' probability of attending a flagship university was due to information rather than mechanical effects. Students induced to enroll are more likely to come from low-income high schools, and academically outperform the students that they displace. These effects would be larger if complemented by financial-aid information, and are driven by transparency, not misalignment between the rules used for automatic and discretionary admissions.
Heterogeneity and Endogenous Compliance: Implications for Scaling Class Size Interventions
Karun Adusumilli, Francesco Agostinelli & Emilio Borghesan
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
This paper examines the scalability of the results from the Tennessee Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project, a prominent educational experiment. We explore how the misalignment between the experimental design and the econometric model affects researchers' ability to learn about the intervention's scalability. We document heterogeneity in compliance with class-size reduction that is more extensive than previously acknowledged and discuss its consequences for the evaluation of the experiment. Guided by this finding, we implement a new econometric framework incorporating heterogeneous treatment effects and endogenous class size determination. We find that the effect of class size on test scores differs considerably across schools, with only a small fraction of schools having significant benefits from reduced class sizes. We discuss the challenges this poses for the intervention's scalability and conclude by analyzing targeted class-size interventions.
Balancing Federalism: The Impact of Decentralizing School Accountability
Eric Hanushek, Patricia Saenz-Armstrong & Alejandra Salazar
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
Education policy, while primarily the responsibility of the state governments, involves complicated decision making at the local, state, and federal levels. The federal involvement dramatically increased with the introduction of test-based accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. But, reflecting resistance to various parts of this law, the involvement of federal policy making was substantially reduced when Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. This change in policy allows estimation of the impact of altered federalism. By looking at how states reacted to their enhanced decision-making role, we see a retreat from the use of output-based policy toward teachers, and this retreat was associated with significantly lower student achievement growth. As a result, this readjustment of federalism to decision making by lower levels appeared to lower national achievement. The snapshot of federalism impacts here is a lower bound on the effects as more states will very likely react to the flexibility of ESSA and as more school districts change their teacher force.
Assessing the Costs of Balancing College and Work Activities: The Gig Economy Meets Online Education
Esteban Aucejo, Spencer Perry & Basit Zafar
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
Balancing the demands of work and schooling is a challenging task for an increasing number of students who have to pay their way through college and for workers who intend to upgrade their skills. However, flexible learning and working environments could play an important role in easing many frictions associated with performing both activities simultaneously. Using detailed (work and study effort) data -- from a partnership between Arizona State University and Uber that allows eligible drivers to enroll in online college courses for free -- we analyze how labor supply and study efforts respond to changes in labor market conditions and college activities/tasks. Our findings indicate that a 10% increase in average weekly online college activities reduces weekly time spent on the Uber platform by about 1%, indicating a low "short run" opportunity cost of studying when working. We also show that study time is not particularly sensitive to changes in labor market conditions, where a 10% increase in average weekly pay reduces study hours by only 2%. Consistent with these results, we find that workers take advantage of their flexible schedules by changing their usual working hours when their college courses are more demanding. We do not find adverse effects of work hours on academic performance in this context, or of study hours on workplace performance (as measured by driver ratings or tips). Finally, the (elicited) value assigned to flexible working and educational formats is high among the students in our sample, who view online education as an important vehicle for increasing expected future income. Overall, this study underscores that combining flexible working and learning formats could constitute a suitable path for many (lowSES) students who work to afford an increasingly expensive college education and for workers aiming to improve their skill set.
Testing the Way Forward: The Impact of Statewide ACT or SAT Testing on Postsecondary Outcomes
Tom Swiderski
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Twenty-nine states require or allow all 11th graders to take the ACT or SAT in school, for free, eliminating access to testing as a barrier to college entry. I examine whether this affects postsecondary outcomes using state-aggregated panel data and time-varying difference-in-differences methods. I find policy adoption led to 2% increases in selective 4-year enrollments by students from treated states. However, adoption had no effect on enrollments within adopting states' selective institutions, in part because institutions enrolled fewer students from out-of-state after adoption. I also find null but directionally negative effects on the number of graduates from state institutions. Therefore, impacts are small but positive for students from adopting states, but null or negative for adopting states' institutions.
Family Composition, Race, and Teachers' Perceptions of Parent-Teacher Alliance
Emma Romell
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
Both family composition and teachers' perceptions of parents are important for student success. However, we know little about whether teachers' perceptions of parents vary by family composition. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, I show that teachers perceive single mothers with multipartner fertility and, to a lesser extent, repartnered mothers with multipartner fertility as less aligned with their school's goals than parents who have nuclear families. Socioeconomic status, children's behavior, and parents' involvement do not explain this association. I also show that white teachers' perceptions -- of both white and black parents -- drive this relationship. Further, I show that white teachers perceive black parents as less aligned with their school's goals than white parents with the same family type. By focusing on mesolevel interactions between the family and school settings, this study expands research on the implications of family composition for students' and parents' experiences at school.
Loopholes and the Incidence of Public Services: Evidence from Funding Career & Technical Education
Thomas Goldring et al.
NBER Working Paper, April 2024
Abstract:
In 2015, Michigan increased its Career and Technical Education (CTE) funding and changed its funding formula to reimburse programs-based student progression through program curricula. Although this change nearly doubled program completion rates, student enrollment and persistence were unaffected; instead, administrators accelerated student progress by reorganizing course curricula around notches in the new funding formula. As a result of response heterogeneity, 30% of the funding increase is transferred away from high-poverty districts to more affluent ones, underscoring how supply-side responses to loopholes shape the incidence of public services.
Excellence for All? University Honors Programs and Human Capital Formation
Todd Pugatch & Paul Thompson
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can public university Honors programs deliver the benefits of selective undergraduate education within otherwise nonselective institutions? We evaluate the impact of admission to the Honors College at Oregon State University, a large nonselective public university. Admission to the Honors College depends heavily on a numerical application score. Nonlinearities in admissions probabilities as a function of this score allow us to compare applicants with similar scores, but different admissions outcomes, via a fuzzy regression kink design. The first stage is strong, with take-up of Honors College programming closely following nonlinearities in admissions probabilities. To estimate the causal effect of Honors College admission on human capital formation, we use these nonlinearities in the admissions function as instruments, combined with course-section fixed effects to account for strategic course selection. Honors College admission increases course grades by 0.10 grade points on the 0 to 4 scale, or 0.14 standard deviations. Effects are concentrated at the top of the course grade distribution. However, course grades of first-generation students decrease in response to Honors admission, driven by low performance in natural science courses. Results suggest that selective Honors programs can accelerate skill acquisition for high-achieving students at public universities, but not all students benefit from Honors admission.