Class clowns
How You Pay Affects How You Do: Financial Aid Type and Student Performance in College
Peter Cappelli & Shinjae Won
NBER Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
Students receiving financial aid pay different amounts for equivalent education and do so in different ways: Grants, which do not have to be repaid, loans, which are paid back in the future, and work-study, pay-as-you-go. We examine the effects of need-based aid independent of study ability on student outcomes – grade point average in particular – controlling for student background and attributes they had prior to college. We also analyze grades within colleges. The results suggest that students receiving need-based grants do significantly better in college than those not receiving financial aid while those paying for college with loans perform significantly worse than students receiving other forms of aid.
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Shomon Shamsuddin
Research in Higher Education, November 2016, Pages 795–822
Abstract:
Many students enroll in less selective colleges than they are qualified to attend, despite low graduation rates at these institutions. Some scholars have argued that qualified students should enroll in the most selective colleges because they have greater resources to support student success. However, selective college attendance is endogenous, so student outcomes could be due to individual ability, not institutional characteristics. Previous work on college selectivity has focused on the earnings effects of attending elite private universities, overlooking both college graduation impacts and the public institutions that educate most students. I estimate the effect of selective colleges on the probability of bachelor’s degree completion using a restricted-access national dataset and an instrumental variables approach to address the endogeneity of college choice. I find that a 100-point increase in the average SAT score for admitted students is associated with an increase in the probability of graduation by 13 percentage points. In addition, I find suggestive evidence that enrolling in a selective public college has a positive effect on degree completion. The results are robust to a series of sensitivity tests and alternate specifications. The findings suggest strong benefits to enrolling in the most selective colleges that students are qualified to attend and have important implications for decisions to pursue postsecondary education in the face of high student loan debt.
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Feeling left out, but affirmed: Protecting against the negative effects of low belonging in college
Kristin Layous et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evaluative domains such as work and school present daily threats to self-integrity that can undermine performance. Self-affirmation theory asserts that, when threatened, people can perform small but meaningful acts to reaffirm their sense of competency. For instance, brief self-affirmation writing interventions have been shown in numerous studies to boost the academic achievement of those contending with negative stereotypes in school because of their race, gender, or generational status. The current paper tested the protective effects of self-affirmation for students who have the subjective sense that they do not belong in college. Such a feeling is not as visible as race or gender but, as a pervasive part of the students' inner world, might still be as debilitating to the students' academic performance. Among a predominantly White sample of college undergraduates, students who felt a low sense of belonging declined in grade point average (GPA) over three semesters. In contrast, students who reported low belonging, but affirmed their core values in a lab-administered self-affirmation writing activity, gained in GPA over time, with the effect of affirmation sufficiently strong to yield a main effect among the sample as a whole. The affirmation intervention mitigated — and even reversed — the decline in GPA among students with a low sense of belonging in college, providing support for self-affirmation theory's contention that affirmations of personal integrity can lessen psychological threat regardless of its source.
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Parental Resources and College Attendance: Evidence from Lottery Wins
George Bulman et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
We examine more than one million children whose parents won a state lottery to trace out the effect of additional household resources on college outcomes. The analysis draws on the universe of federal tax records linked to federal financial aid records and leverages substantial variation in the size and timing of wins. The results reveal modest, increasing, and only weakly concave effects of resources: wins less than $100,000 have little influence on college-going (i.e., effects greater than 0.3 percentage point can be ruled out) while very large wins that exceed the cost of college imply a high upper bound (e.g., wins over $1,000,000 increase attendance by 10 percentage points). The effects are smaller among low-SES households. Further, while lottery wins reduce financial aid, attendance patterns are not moderated by this crowd-out. Overall, the results suggest that households derive consumption value from college and, in the current policy environment, do not generally face binding borrowing constraints.
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Will more higher education improve economic growth?
Eric Hanushek
Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Winter 2016, Pages 538-552
Abstract:
Calls for expanded university education are frequently based on arguments that more graduates will lead to faster growth. Empirical analysis does not, however, support this general proposition. Differences in cognitive skills — the knowledge capital of countries — can explain most of the differences in growth rates across countries, but just adding more years of schooling without increasing cognitive skills historically has had little systematic influence on growth.
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Hanley Chiang, Melissa Clark & Sheena McConnell
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
Teach For America (TFA) is an important but controversial source of teachers for hard-to-staff subjects in high-poverty U.S. schools. We present findings from the first large-scale experimental study of secondary math teachers from TFA. We find that TFA teachers are more effective than other math teachers in the same schools, increasing student math achievement by 0.07 standard deviations over one school year. Addressing concerns about the fact that TFA requires only a two-year commitment, we find that TFA teachers in their first two years of teaching are more effective than more experienced non-TFA teachers in the same schools.
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School Size and Student Achievement: Does One Size Fit All?
Laura Crispin
Eastern Economic Journal, September 2016, Pages 630–662
Abstract:
I estimate value-added education production functions and control for a wide range of educational inputs associated with school size in order to establish the role of school size in the educational process. I estimate separately for urban, suburban, and rural schools to account for the distinct differences in the educational process by location. I find that for urban and rural schools, the size–achievement relationship is U-shaped, indicating that achievement is highest in the smallest and largest schools. My findings suggest that one size does not fit all, but that relatively small and relatively large schools may benefit students in most locations.
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Do high school STEM courses prepare non-college bound youth for jobs in the STEM economy?
Robert Bozick, Sinduja Srinivasan & Michael Gottfried
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our study assesses whether high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses provide non-college bound youth with the skills and training necessary to successfully transition from high school into the STEM economy. Specifically, our study estimates the effects that advanced math, advanced science, engineering, and computer science courses in high school have on the probability that non-college bound youth will obtain employment in the STEM economy and on wages within two years of graduating from high school. Our findings indicate that STEM coursework is unrelated with the probability of securing a job in the STEM economy and is unrelated with wages two years post high school graduation.
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Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education?
Joshua Goodman, Julia Melkers & Amanda Pallais
NBER Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
Though online technology has generated excitement about its potential to increase access to education, most research has focused on comparing student performance across online and in-person formats. We provide the first evidence that online education affects the number of people pursuing formal education. We study the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Online M.S. in Computer Science, the earliest model to combine the inexpensive nature of online education with a highly-ranked degree program. Regression discontinuity estimates exploiting an admissions threshold unknown to applicants show that access to this online option substantially increases overall enrollment in formal education, expanding the pool of students rather than substituting for existing educational options. Demand for the online option is driven by mid-career Americans. By satisfying large, previously unmet demand for mid-career training, this single program will boost annual production of American computer science master’s degrees by about seven percent. More generally, these results suggest that low-cost, high-quality online options may open opportunities for populations who would not otherwise pursue education.
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Examining the Impact of Early Childhood School Investments on Neighborhood Crime
Arelys Madero-Hernandez et al.
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study tested the hypothesis that investments in early childhood schools have short-term crime reducing effects in neighborhoods. Time series data from the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were analyzed to evaluate the effects of an early childhood school built in the neighborhood of Kendall-Whittier as part of a larger neighborhood revitalization plan, on violent and property crime. Results revealed that after controlling for city-wide crime trends and monthly fluctuations, violent crime declined significantly in Kendall-Whittier. Further analysis indicated that the possible crime-reducing effects of school investments on violent crime spread beyond Kendall-Whittier, and no displacement was found. The results for property crime were mixed. The study demonstrates the use of clustering analysis, a useful tool in neighborhood-level research to identify comparison neighborhoods. The findings shed light on the possibility that investments in early childhood schools can yield results in a shorter term than anticipated, making them a desirable component of urban revitalization.
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Public School Quality Valuation Over the Business Cycle
Stuart Gabriel et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
Over the years 2000 to 2013, the Los Angeles real estate market featured a boom, a bust, and then another boom. We use this variation to test how the hedonic valuation of school quality varies over the business cycle. Following Black (1999), we exploit a regression discontinuity design at elementary school attendance boundaries to test for how the implicit price of school quality changes. We find that the capitalization of school quality is counter-cyclical. While good schools always command a price premium, this premium grows during the bust. Possible mechanisms for these findings include consumers "trading down" from private to public schools during contractions as well as the effects of reduced household mobility during downturns in raising the value of the public school option.
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Born on the wrong day? School entry age and juvenile crime
Briggs Depew & Ozkan Eren
Journal of Urban Economics, November 2016, Pages 73–90
Abstract:
Kindergarten entry age is known to impact schooling outcomes. Less is known, however, about the role of school starting age on economic outcomes outside of the classroom. In this paper we use administrative data from Louisiana to analyze the effect of school starting age on juvenile crime. We find that late school entry by one year reduces the incidence of juvenile crime for young black females, particularly in high crime areas. The mediating effects of late school entry for this subgroup appear to be driven by reductions in non-felony offenses. We propose age related differences in human capital accumulation as a potential explanation for our findings.
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Weighing the Military Option: The Effects of Wartime Conditions on Investments in Human Capital
Brian Duncan, Hani Mansour & Bryson Rintala
University of Colorado Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
Military service is an important vehicle through which young Americans invest in their human capital. Using internal military data, we show that county-level exposure to U.S. combat casualties during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars decreased the supply of new soldiers in that county, and changed the observable characteristics of soldiers who enlisted in that county. Using data from the American Community Survey, we find that exposure to casualties at a young age (17-18) increases the probability of dropping out from high school, and decreases the probability of attaining a college degree. The results suggest that increasing access to higher education and skill training positively impacts the human capital investments of marginal students.
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The Effects of Head Start Duration on the Behavioral Competence of Socially Disadvantaged Children
Minjong Youn
Journal of Community Psychology, November 2016, Pages 980–996
Abstract:
This study examined the influence of Head Start duration on teacher-reported children's approaches to learning, behavioral problems, and cooperative classroom behaviors at the end of kindergarten. Propensity score matching was used to create comparable samples of children who experienced different durations of Head Start. Analysis of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey showed that children who attended 2 years of Head Start showed a higher level of approaches to learning (effect size [ES] = .53), cooperative classroom behaviors (ES = .35), and fewer problematic behaviors (ES = -.43) in kindergarten. The effects of 2 years of attendance of Head Start were most prominent for children raised in families with high-risk factors and for Black children, particularly with improvement in approaches to learning. This finding supports the argument that a longer exposure from an earlier age to a preschool program may contribute to improving school readiness for children from economically disadvantaged families.
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The Competitive Effects of Online Education
David Deming, Michael Lovenheim & Richard Patterson
NBER Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
We study the impact of online degree programs on the market for U.S. higher education. Online degree programs increase the competitiveness of local education markets by providing additional options in areas that previously only had a small number of brick-and-mortar schools. We show that local postsecondary institutions in less competitive markets experienced relative enrollment declines following a regulatory change in 2006 that increased the market entry and enrollment of online institutions. Impacts on enrollment were concentrated among private non-selective institutions, which are likely to be the closest competitors to online degree programs. We also find increases in per-student instructional spending among public institutions. Our results suggest that by increasing competitive pressure on local schools, online education can be an important driver of innovation and productivity in U.S. higher education.
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Performance Standards in Need-Based Student Aid
Judith Scott-Clayton & Lauren Schudde
NBER Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
College attendance is a risky investment. But students may not recognize when they are at risk for failure, and financial aid introduces the possibility for moral hazard. Academic performance standards can serve three roles in this context: signaling expectations for success, providing incentives for increased student effort, and limiting financial losses. Such standards have existed in federal need-based aid programs for nearly 40 years in the form of Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements, yet have received virtually no academic attention. In this paper, we sketch a simple model to illustrate not only student responses to standards but also the tradeoffs faced by a social planner weighing whether to set performance standards in the context of need-based aid. We then use regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs to examine the consequences of SAP failure. In line with theoretical predictions, we find heterogeneous effects in the short term, with negative impacts on persistence but positive effects on grades for students who remain enrolled. After three years, the negative effects appear to dominate. Effects on credits attempted are 2–3 times as large as effects on credits earned, suggesting that standards increase the efficiency of aid expenditures. But it also appears to exacerbate inequality in higher education by pushing out low-performing low-income students faster than their equally low-performing, but higher-income peers.
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Cognitive Priming and Cognitive Training: Immediate and Far Transfer to Academic Skills in Children
Bruce Wexler et al.
Scientific Reports, September 2016
Abstract:
Cognitive operations are supported by dynamically reconfiguring neural systems that integrate processing components widely distributed throughout the brain. The inter-neuronal connections that constitute these systems are powerfully shaped by environmental input. We evaluated the ability of computer-presented brain training games done in school to harness this neuroplastic potential and improve learning in an overall study sample of 583 second-grade children. Doing a 5-minute brain-training game immediately before math or reading curricular content games increased performance on the curricular content games. Doing three 20-minute brain training sessions per week for four months increased gains on school-administered math and reading achievement tests compared to control classes tested at the same times without intervening brain training. These results provide evidence of cognitive priming with immediate effects on learning, and longer-term brain training with far-transfer or generalized effects on academic achievement.
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Laurie Miller Brotman et al.
JAMA Pediatrics, forthcoming
Importance: Low-income minority children living in urban neighborhoods are at high risk for mental health problems and underachievement. ParentCorps, a family-centered, school-based intervention in prekindergarten, improves parenting and school readiness (ie, self-regulation and preacademic skills) in 2 randomized clinical trials. The longer-term effect on child mental health and academic performance is not known.
Design, Setting, and Participants: This is a 3-year follow-up study of a cluster randomized clinical trial of ParentCorps in public schools with prekindergarten programs in New York City. Ten elementary schools serving a primarily low-income, black student population were randomized in 2005, and 4 consecutive cohorts of prekindergarten students were enrolled from September 12, 2005, through December 31, 2008. We report follow-up for the 3 cohorts enrolled after the initial year of implementation. Data analysis was performed from September 1, 2014, to December 31, 2015.
Interventions: ParentCorps included professional development for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers and a program for parents and prekindergarten students (13 two-hour group sessions delivered after school by teachers and mental health professionals).
Results: A total of 1050 children (4 years old; 518 boys [49.3%] and 532 girls [50.7%]) in 99 prekindergarten classrooms participated in the trial (88.1% of the prekindergarten population), with 792 students enrolled from 2006 to 2008. Most families in the follow-up study (421 [69.6%]) were low income; 680 (85.9%) identified as non-Latino black, 78 (9.8%) as Latino, and 34 (4.3%) as other. Relative to their peers in prekindergarten programs, children in ParentCorps-enhanced prekindergarten programs had lower levels of mental health problems (Cohen d = 0.44; 95% CI, 0.08-0.81) and higher teacher-rated academic performance (Cohen d = 0.21; 95% CI, 0.02-0.39) in second grade.
Conclusions and Relevance: Intervention in prekindergarten led to better mental health and academic performance 3 years later. Family-centered early intervention has the potential to prevent problems and reduce disparities for low-income minority children.