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The Impacts of Expanding Access to High-Quality Preschool Education
Elizabeth Cascio & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
NBER Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
President Obama's "Preschool for All" initiative calls for dramatic increases in the number of 4 year olds enrolled in public preschool programs and in the quality of these programs nationwide. The proposed program shares many characteristics with the universal preschools that have been offered in Georgia and Oklahoma since the 1990s. This study draws together data from multiple sources to estimate the impacts of these "model" state programs on preschool enrollment and a broad set of family and child outcomes. We find that the state programs have increased the preschool enrollment rates of children from lower- and higher-income families alike. For lower-income families, our findings also suggest that the programs have increased the amount of time mothers and children spend together on activities such as reading, the chances that mothers work, and children's test performance as late as eighth grade. For higher-income families, however, we find that the programs have shifted children from private to public preschools, resulting in less of an impact on overall enrollment but a reduction in childcare expenses, and have had no positive effect on children's later test scores.
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Greg Duncan & Aaron Sojourner
Journal of Human Resources, Fall 2013, Pages 945-968
Abstract:
How much of the income-based gaps in cognitive ability and academic achievement could be closed by a two-year, center-based early childhood education intervention? Data from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP), which randomly assigned treatment to low-birth-weight children from both higher- and low-income families between ages one and three, shows much larger impacts among low- than higher-income children. Projecting IHDP impacts to the U.S. population's IQ and achievement trajectories suggests that such a program offered to low-income children would essentially eliminate the income-based gap at age three and between a third and three-quarters of the age five and age eight gaps.
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The Unrealistic Educational Expectations of High School Pupils: Is America Exceptional?
John Jerrim
Sociological Quarterly, Winter 2014, Pages 196-231
Abstract:
There is growing concern that many American teenagers hold unrealistic educational plans. This may indicate a detachment from reality, which could be detrimental to well-being in later life. But is this problem specific to certain countries like the United States, or is it common among young people from across the developed world? This article uses data from the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to investigate this issue. It shows how expected and actual college graduation rates differ across a number of countries but also that this gap is particularly large in the United States. Additional analysis suggests that this is being driven, at least in part, by the large proportion of low-achieving American children who believe they will go on to obtain a bachelor's degree. The implications of these findings are discussed in reference to educational policy and contemporary sociological debates.
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Later School Start Time Is Associated with Improved Sleep and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents
Julie Boergers, Christopher Gable & Judith Owens
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, January 2014, Pages 11-17
Objective: Chronic insufficient sleep is a growing concern among adolescents and is associated with a host of adverse health consequences. Early school start times may be an environmental contributor to this problem. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a delay in school start time on sleep patterns, sleepiness, mood, and health-related outcomes.
Method: Boarding students (n = 197, mean age = 15.6 yr) attending an independent high school completed the School Sleep Habits Survey before and after the school start time was experimentally delayed from 8:00 a.m. to 8:25 a.m.
Results: The delay in school start time was associated with a significant (29 min) increase in sleep duration on school nights. The percentage of students receiving 8 or more hours of sleep on a school night increased to more than double, from 18% to 44%. Students in 9th and 10th grade and those with lower baseline sleep amounts were more likely to report improvements in sleep duration after the schedule change. Daytime sleepiness, depressed mood, and caffeine use were all significantly reduced after the delay in school start time. Sleep duration reverted to baseline levels when the original (earlier) school start time was reinstituted.
Conclusions: A modest (25 min) delay in school start time was associated with significant improvements in sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, mood, and caffeine use. These findings have important implications for public policy and add to research suggesting the health benefits of modifying school schedules to more closely align with adolescents' circadian rhythms and sleep needs.
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Stephanie Potochnick
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
As of December 2011, 13 states have adopted an in-state resident tuition (IRT) policy that provides in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants and several other states are considering similar legislation. While previous research focuses on how IRT policies affect college entry and attainment, this study examines the effect these policies have on high school dropout behavior. Using the Current Population Survey (CPS) and difference-in-difference models, this paper examines whether IRT policies reduce the likelihood of dropping out of high school for Mexican foreign-born non-citizens (FBNC), a proxy for undocumented youth. The policy is estimated to cause an eight percentage point reduction in the proportion that drops out of high school. The paper develops an integrated framework that combines human capital theory with segmented assimilation theory to provide insight into how IRT policies influence student motivation and educational attainment at the high school level.
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Robert Bozick & Trey Miller
Population Research and Policy Review, February 2014, Pages 13-30
Abstract:
This paper examines the secondary effects of policies that extend or deny in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants. Drawing upon repeated cross-sections of 15-17-year-olds in the Current Population Survey across 1997-2010, we assess changes in high school enrollment rates among Mexican-born non-citizen youth - a proxy for the undocumented youth population. We find that Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that deny in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 49 % less likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. Conversely, Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that grant in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 65 % more likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. The enactment of these policies is unrelated to changes in school enrollment among naturalized citizens. Our findings lend support to the proposition that that the implementation of in-state tuition policies sends signals to immigrant youth about their future educational possibilities in the long-term, which in turn influences the extent to which they engage in school in the short-term.
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Kate Menken & Cristian Solorza
Educational Policy, January 2014, Pages 96-125
Abstract:
Although educational policies for emergent bilinguals in New York City schools have historically supported the provision of bilingual education, the past decade has borne witness to a dramatic loss of bilingual education programs in city schools. This study examines the factors that determine language education policies adopted by school principals, through qualitative research in 10 city schools that have eliminated their bilingual education programs in recent years and replaced them with English-only programs. Our findings draw a causal link between the pressures of test-based accountability imposed by No Child Left Behind and the adoption of English-only policies in city schools. Testing and accountability are used as the justification for dismantling bilingual education programs and create a disincentive to serve emergent bilingual students, as schools are far more likely to be labeled low performing and risk sanctions such as closure simply for admitting and educating these students.
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The Economic Value of a Law Degree
Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre
Harvard Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
Legal academics and journalists have marshaled statistics purporting to show that enrolling in law school is irrational. We investigate the economic value of a law degree and find the opposite: given current tuition levels, the median and even 25th percentile annual earnings premiums justify enrollment. For most law school graduates, the net present value of a law degree typically exceeds its cost by hundreds of thousands of dollars. We improve upon previous studies by tracking lifetime earnings of a large sample of law degree holders. Previous studies focused on starting salaries, generic professional degree holders, or the subset of law degree holders who practice law. We also include unemployment and disability risk rather than assume continuous full time employment. After controlling for observable ability sorting, we find that a law degree is associated with a 60 percent median increase in monthly earnings and 50 percent increase in median hourly wages. The mean annual earnings premium of a law degree is approximately $53,300 in 2012 dollars. The law degree earnings premium is cyclical and recent years are within historical norms. We estimate the mean pre-tax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000.
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Competition and public high school performance
Julie Harrison & Paul Rouse
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Increasing the level of school competition has been suggested as a way to improve school performance. This study examines one of the most extreme examples of such reform using data from New Zealand public high schools. In the 1990s school zoning was abolished in New Zealand and public schools competed for students, not just with private schools, but also with each other. A categorical Data Envelopment Analysis model using data on school resources and student academic performance, stratified using student socio-economic characteristics, is used to calculate efficiency scores for schools. A regression model is then used to analyse differences in these efficiency scores and their relationship to different levels of competition. The study finds average school performance tends to be higher when schools are located in areas of high competition. However, this result appears to vary depending on school size, suggesting that competition can lead to a widening in the gap between the best and worst performing schools. Long-term this is likely to result in the inefficient use of fixed public resources, as public school survival is only indirectly related to performance.
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Cognitive Skills, Student Achievement Tests, and Schools
Amy Finn et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cognitive skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic performance might also improve cognitive skills. To investigate the impact schools have on both academic performance and cognitive skills, we related standardized achievement-test scores to measures of cognitive skills in a large sample (N = 1,367) of eighth-grade students attending traditional, exam, and charter public schools. Test scores and gains in test scores over time correlated with measures of cognitive skills. Despite wide variation in test scores across schools, differences in cognitive skills across schools were negligible after we controlled for fourth-grade test scores. Random offers of enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools resulted in positive impacts of such school attendance on math achievement but had no impact on cognitive skills. These findings suggest that schools that improve standardized achievement-test scores do so primarily through channels other than improving cognitive skills.
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Encouraging Classroom Peer Interactions: Evidence from Chinese Migrant Schools
Tao Li et al.
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a randomized trial conducted with primary school students in China, we find that pairing high and low achieving classmates as benchmates and offering them group incentives for learning improved low achiever test scores by approximately 0.265 standard deviations without harming the high achievers. Offering only low achievers incentives for learning in a separate trial had no effect. Pure peer effects at the benchmate level are not sufficiently powerful to explain the differences between these two results. We interpret our evidence as suggesting that group incentives can increase the effectiveness of peer effects.
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What is behind class attendance in college economics courses?
Qihui Chen & Tade Okediji
Applied Economics Letters, Winter 2014, Pages 433-437
Abstract:
How class attendance influences students' performance remains unclear. Specifically, do students learn more in class if they attend more classes, or does class attendance create incentives for students to study harder outside class? To better understand this relationship, we designed an attendance policy in an economics course that does not significantly change students' attendance rates. Students who scored below a cut-off on the midterm exam were required to attend subsequent class lectures even though attendance had been implicitly made mandatory for all students, accounting for 10% of the course grade. Our regression discontinuity analysis suggests that our attendance policy significantly improved students' performance on the final exam, even though it had minimal impacts on their attendance rates. We also found that the policy worked via inducing students to reallocate their time spent studying other courses outside class to economics.
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Vincenzo Andrietti
International Review of Economics Education, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze data from students enrolled in an introductory macroeconomics course taught at a public university in Italy to assess the impact of lecture attendance on academic performance. Using proxy variables regressions to capture the effect of unobservable student traits possibly correlated with attendance, we still find a positive and significant effect of attendance. However, when using panel data fixed effect estimators to eliminate time-invariant individual-specific unobservables, the effect disappears. The robustness of our results to supplementary data from a major Spanish public university suggests that the positive effect of attendance commonly reported in the literature may still incorporate an impact of unobservable student traits.
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Gendering County Government and the End of 100,000 American School Districts, 1920-1970
Michael Callaghan Pisapia
Publius, Winter 2014, Pages 24-50
Abstract:
Americans abolished 100,000 school districts from 1920 to 1970, altering a policy domain that had long epitomized the decentralized character of American politics. This political development coincided with women's increased authority at the county level of government as reformers sought to overcome local, and typically male, resistance to reform. Not only did women become pivotal actors in generating legislative support for change; they came to wield new influence as the county became a central locus for administration. This gendering of county government, as women reformers undermined entrenched patterns of male political power at the local level, shows how avenues for women's political influence may open up as the administration of policy across different levels of government shifts over time.
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Do single mothers take their share?: FAFSA completion among aid-eligible female students
Melissa Radey & Leah Cheatham
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, December 2013, Pages 261-275
Abstract:
Approximately 17% of college students are single mothers, a growing and vulnerable subpopulation of women (Miller, Gault, & Thorman, 2011). Although postsecondary education promotes poverty exit, many single mothers - 40% of whom live below the poverty line - lack the financial resources for attendance. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a first step to accessing aid. This study uses data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08) to describe and analyze how student characteristics influence FAFSA application rates among low-income, aid-eligible women and consider how student status (single mother, other independent, or dependent student), race/ethnicity, and poverty level intersect to influence application rates. Descriptive findings showed that almost four-fifths of students filed FAFSAs, with 87% of single mothers doing so. Logistic regression results indicate that single mothers' FAFSA completion advantage disappears and becomes a disadvantage after considering economic and nontraditional characteristics. Significant interactions between poverty level and student status reveal that the poorest aid-eligible single mothers filed at lower than expected rates. Findings support two policy recommendations: FAFSA simplification and targeted personal application assistance.
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Teacher heterogeneity, value-added and education policy
Scott Condie, Lars Lefgren & David Sims
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the theoretical and practical implications of ranking teachers with a one-dimensional value-added metric when teacher effectiveness varies across subjects or student types. We create a theoretical framework which suggests specifc tests of the standard teacher input homogeneity assumption. Using North Carolina data we show that value-added fails to empirically meet these tests and document that this leads to a large number of teacher misrankings. Thus, critics of potential value-added teacher personnel policies are correct that such policies will terminate many of the wrong teachers. However, we derive the conditions under which such policies will improve student test scores and find that they will almost certainly be met. We then demonstrate that value-added information can also be used to improve student test scores by matching teachers to students or subjects according to their comparative advantage. These matching gains likely exceed those of a feasible, value-added based firing policy.
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Political economics of higher education finance
Rainald Borck & Martin Wimbersky
Oxford Economic Papers, January 2014, Pages 115-139
Abstract:
We study voting over higher education finance in an economy with risk averse households who are heterogeneous in income. We compare four different systems and analyse voters' preferences among them: a traditional subsidy scheme, a pure loan scheme, income contingent loans and graduate taxes. Using numerical simulations, we find that the poor prefer the subsidy scheme over the other systems, even though they pay part of the taxes. We also find that majorities for income contingent loans or graduate taxes become more likely as risk aversion rises or the income distribution gets more equal.
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Disease or utopia? Testing Baumol in education
Xin Chen & Charles Moul
Economics Letters, February 2014, Pages 220-223
Abstract:
Baumol's Cost Disease offers a compelling hypothesis of rising unit costs in stagnant sectors, but increased productivity in progressive sectors may generate the same prediction through income effects. We examine quantity (rather than expenditure) data from the U.S. educational sector to distinguish between these explanations. Our results indicate significant negative impacts of manufacturing productivity on teacher-pupil ratios.