Course requirements
College on the Cheap: Consequences of Community College Tuition Reductions
Jeffrey Denning
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effects of community college tuition on college enrollment. I exploit quasi-experimental variation from discounts for community college tuition in Texas that were expanded over time and across geography for identification. Community college enrollment in the first year after high school increased by 5.1 percentage points for each $1,000 decrease in tuition which implies an elasticity of –0.29. Lower tuition also increased transfer from community colleges to universities. Marginal community college enrollees induced to attend by reduced tuition have similar graduation rates as average community college enrollees.
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Measuring Inflation in Grades: An Application of Price Indexing to Undergraduate Grades
Rey Hernández-Julián & Adam Looney
Economics of Education Review, December 2016, Pages 220–232
Abstract:
Rising average grades at American universities have prompted fears of ‘grade inflation.’ This paper applies the methods used to estimate price inflation to examine the causes of rising grades. We use rich data from a large public university to decompose the increase in average grades into those components explained by changes in student characteristics and course choices, and the unexplained component, which we refer to as ‘inflation.’ About one-quarter of the increase in grades from 1982 to 2001 was driven by changes in the courses selected by students; enrollment shifted toward historically ‘easier-grading’ departments over time, mechanically increasing average grades. An additional one-quarter of the increase is attributable to increases in the observable quality of students, such as average SAT scores. Less than half of the increase in average grades from 1982 to 2001 appears to arise from the unexplained factors, or ‘inflation.’ These results add to the evidence suggesting that differences in relative grades across departments discourage students from studying in low-grading departments, like math, physics, or engineering.
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Rodney Andrews & Kevin Stange
NBER Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
This paper assesses the importance of price regulation and price discrimination to low-income students' access to opportunities in public higher education. Following a policy change in the state of Texas that shifted tuition-setting authority away from the state legislature to the governing board of each public university, most institutions raised sticker prices and many began charging more for high-return undergraduate majors, such as business and engineering. We use administrative data on Texas public university students from 2000 to 2009 matched to earnings records, financial aid, and new measures of tuition and resources at a program level to assess how deregulation affected the representation of disadvantaged students in high-return institutions and majors in the state. We find that poor students actually shifted towards higher-return programs following deregulation, relative to non-poor students. Deregulation facilitated more price discrimination by increasing grant aid for low-income students and also enabled supply-side enhancements such as more spending per student, which may have partially offset the detrimental effects of higher sticker price. The Texas experience suggests that providing institutions more autonomy over pricing and increasing sticker prices need not diminish the opportunities available to disadvantaged students.
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Parental Responses to Public Investments in Children: Evidence from a Maximum Class Size Rule
Peter Fredriksson, Björn Öckert & Hessel Oosterbeek
Journal of Human Resources, Fall 2016, Pages 832-868
Abstract:
We study differential parental responses to variation in class size induced by a maximum class size rule in Swedish schools. In response to an increase in class size: (1) only high-income parents help their children more with homework; (2) all parents are more likely to move their child to another school; and (3) only low-income children find their teachers harder to follow when taught in a larger class. These findings indicate that public and private investments in children are substitutes, and help explain why the negative effect of class size on achievement in our data is concentrated among low-income children.
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Kenneth Dodge et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
North Carolina's Smart Start and More at Four (MAF) early childhood programs were evaluated through the end of elementary school (age 11) by estimating the impact of state funding allocations to programs in each of 100 counties across 13 consecutive years on outcomes for all children in each county-year group (n = 1,004,571; 49% female; 61% non-Latinx White, 30% African American, 4% Latinx, 5% other). Student-level regression models with county and year fixed effects indicated significant positive impacts of each program on reading and math test scores and reductions in special education and grade retention in each grade. Effect sizes grew or held steady across years. Positive effects held for both high- and low-poverty families, suggesting spillover of effects to nonparticipating peers.
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Shifting College Majors in Response to Advanced Placement Exam Scores
Christopher Avery et al.
NBER Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
Mapping continuous raw scores from millions of Advanced Placement examinations onto the 1 to 5 integer scoring scale, we apply a regression discontinuity design to understand how students’ choice of college major is impacted by receiving a higher integer score despite similar exam performance to students who earned a lower integer score. Attaining higher scores increases the probability that a student will major in that exam subject by approximately 5 percent (0.64 percentage points), with some individual exams demonstrating increases in major choice by as much as 30 percent. These direct impacts of a higher score explain approximately 11 percent of the unconditional 64 percent (5.7 percentage points) gap in the probability of majoring in the same subject as the AP exam when attaining a 5 versus a 4. We estimate that a substantial portion of the overall effect is driven by behavioral responses to the positive signal of receiving a higher score.
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Laurie Miller Brotman et al.
JAMA Pediatrics, December 2016, Pages 1149-1155
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.
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Wolfgang Stroebe
Perspectives on Psychological Science, November 2016, Pages 800-816
Abstract:
In this article, I address the paradox that university grade point averages have increased for decades, whereas the time students invest in their studies has decreased. I argue that one major contributor to this paradox is grading leniency, encouraged by the practice of university administrators to base important personnel decisions on student evaluations of teaching. Grading leniency creates strong incentives for instructors to teach in ways that would result in good student evaluations. Because many instructors believe that the average student prefers courses that are entertaining, require little work, and result in high grades, they feel under pressure to conform to those expectations. Evidence is presented that the positive association between student grades and their evaluation of teaching reflects a bias rather than teaching effectiveness. If good teaching evaluations reflected improved student learning due to effective teaching, they should be positively related to the grades received in subsequent courses that build on knowledge gained in the previous course. Findings that teaching evaluations of concurrent courses, though positively correlated with concurrent grades, are negatively related to student performance in subsequent courses are more consistent with the assumption that concurrent evaluations are the result of lenient grading rather than effective teaching. Policy implications are discussed.
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Timothy Gronberg, Dennis Jansen & Lori Taylor
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research on the relative efficiency of charter schools focused on schools that serve a general student population. In Texas, as in many other states, some charter schools have been designed specifically to serve students who are at risk of dropping out of school. Such “alternative education campuses” may have very different cost and efficiency profiles than schools designed to serve students in regular education programs. In this article, we estimate a translog stochastic cost frontier model using panel data for alternative public high school campuses in Texas over the five-year period 2007–2011, and find that alternative education high school campuses operated by charter schools are systematically more efficient than alternative education high school campuses operated by traditional public school districts. Policies that encourage the formation of alternative education charter campuses may thus be a sensible component of strategies to combat the pervasive and pernicious problem of high school dropouts.
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The Effects of Public Unions on Compensation: Evidence from Wisconsin
Andrew Litten
University of Michigan Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
This paper seeks to identify the effect that public sector unions have on compensation. Specifically, I look the compensation premium associated with teachers’ unions in Wisconsin. In 2011, Wisconsin passed a landmark law (Act 10) which significantly lowered the bargaining power of all public sector unions in the state. Using an event study framework, I exploit plausibly exogenous timing differences based on contract renewal dates, which caused districts to be first exposed to the new regulations in different years. I find that the reduction in union power associated with Act 10 reduced total teacher compensation by 8%, or $6,500. Roughly two-thirds of this decline is driven through reduced fringe benefits. Subgroup analysis shows that the most experienced and highest paid teachers benefit most from unionization. I supplement the event study approach with synthetic control and regression discontinuity methods to find that regulatory limits on contract terms, rather than other mechanisms such as state financial aid cuts or union decertification, are driving the results.
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Thomas Sav
International Advances in Economic Research, November 2016, Pages 397–408
Abstract:
A stochastic cost frontier with inefficiency effects is estimated to investigate the impacts of decreases in state funding support on the operating efficiency of public colleges and universities in the U.S. Panel data for 378 institutions spanning 10 academic years, 2004 through 2013, captures the efficiency effects of declines in state funding from 32 % to 23 %. There are several improvements over early work of like kind that was, however, confined to four academic years, 2005 through 2008, and could not account for the accelerated effects of state funding decreases that followed the financial crisis. Inefficiency effects are extended to include both private giving as a substitute revenue source and federally funded Pell Grants. Empirical results are robust and support the notion that government does matter. Decreases in state funding create inefficiency in producing public higher education. Results also suggest the same for private giving and Pell Grant support, although the former was statistically weak at best. On the cost side, the results, not surprisingly, indicate that university administrators held costs down with hiring increases in non-tenure track faculty and staff relative to tenure track and tenured faculty.
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Laws, Educational Outcomes, and Returns to Schooling: Evidence from the Full Count 1940 Census
Karen Clay, Jeff Lingwall & Melvin Stephens
NBER Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
This paper uses a new dataset on state compulsory attendance, continuation school, and child labor laws with the 1940 full count Census of Population to estimate the returns to schooling for native-born white men in the 1885-1912 birth cohorts. IV estimates of returns to schooling range from 0.064 to 0.079. Quantile IV estimates show that the returns to schooling were largest for the lowest quantiles, and were generally monotonically decreasing for higher quantiles. These findings suggest that early schooling laws may have contributed to the Great Compression by increasing education levels for white men at the bottom of the distribution.
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Roland Fryer
Journal of Public Economics, December 2016, Pages 109–121
Abstract:
This paper describes a field experiment in Oklahoma City Public Schools in which students were provided with free cellular phones and daily information about the link between human capital and future outcomes via text message in one treatment and minutes to talk and text as an incentive in a second treatment. Students' reported beliefs about the relationship between education and outcomes were influenced by the information treatment. However, there were no measurable changes in student effort, attendance, suspensions, or state test scores, though there is evidence that scores on college entrance exams four years later increased. The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a model in which students have present-bias or lack knowledge of the educational production function, though other explanations are possible.
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Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments
Damon Clark et al.
Purdue University Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
Will college students who set goals for themselves work harder and perform better? In theory, setting goals can help time-inconsistent students to mitigate their self-control problem. In practice, there is little credible evidence on the causal effects of goal setting for college students. We report the results of two field experiments that involved almost four thousand college students in total. One experiment asked treated students to set goals for performance in the course; the other asked treated students to set goals for a particular task (completing online practice exams). We find that performance-based goals had no discernible impact on course performance. In contrast, task-based goals had large and robust positive effects on the level of task completion, and task-based goals also increased course performance. Further empirical analysis indicates that the increase in task completion induced by setting task-based goals caused the increase in course performance. We also find that task-based goals were more effective for male students. We develop new theory that reinforces our empirical results by suggesting two key reasons why task-based goals might be more effective than performance-based goals: overconfidence and uncertainty about performance. Since task-based goal setting is low-cost, scaleable and logistically simple, we conclude that our findings have important implications for educational practice and future research.
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To Be or Not to Be EL: An Examination of the Impact of Classifying Students as English Learners
Ilana Umansky
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2016, Pages 714-737
Abstract:
Across the United States, students who are deemed not to be proficient in English are classified as English learners (ELs). This classification entitles students to specialized services but may also result in stigmatization and barriers to educational opportunity. This article uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of EL classification in kindergarten on students’ academic trajectories. Furthermore, it explores whether the effect of EL classification differs for students in English immersion versus bilingual programs. I find that among language-minority students who enter kindergarten with relatively advanced English proficiency, EL classification results in a substantial negative net impact on math and English language arts test scores in Grades 2 through 10. This effect, however, is concentrated in English immersion classrooms.
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Performance Information and Personnel Decisions in the Public Sector: The Case of School Principals
Julie Berry Cullen et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
Firms and other organizations establish the criteria under which employees will be judged and the performance measures made available to supervisors, the board of directors and other stakeholders, and these structures almost certainly influence behavior and organization outcomes. Any divergence of the chosen performance metric from an ideal measurement of productivity may lead to suboptimal outcomes, particularly in the public sector where outside interest groups may rely more heavily on easily accessible ratings than better-informed insiders. In the case of public education, federal and state accountability systems provide considerable information about student outcomes and rate schools on that basis. However, the No Child Left Behind accountability legislation’s focus on pass rates rather than learning and achievement growth introduces the possibility that inadequate information and a flawed structure each compromise public school quality. This study of school principal labor market outcomes investigates the relationship between principal labor market success and a set of performance measures that differ on the basis of accessibility to stakeholders and link with true principal productivity. The results from the empirical analysis provide evidence that information and design deficiencies introduce a lack of alignment between incentives and principal productivity and adversely affect the quality of education in Texas public schools.
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College Curriculum, Diverging Selectivity, and Enrollment Expansion
Michael Kaganovich & Xuejuan Su
Indiana University Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
We analyze the impact of expansion of higher education on student outcomes in the context of competition among colleges which differentiate themselves horizontally by setting curricular standards. When public or economic pressures compel less selective colleges to lower their curricular demands, low-ability students benefit at the expense of medium-ability students. This reduces competitive pressure faced by more selective colleges, which therefore adopt more demanding curricula to better serve their most able students. This stylized model of curricular product differentiation in higher education offers an explanation for the diverging selectivity trends of American colleges. It also appears consistent with the U-shaped earnings growth profile we observe among college-educated workers in the U.S.
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Do educational vouchers reduce inequality and inefficiency in education?
Metin Akyol
Economics of Education Review, December 2016, Pages 149–167
Abstract:
Policy debates around the topic of educational vouchers as an approach to improve the public educational system are still ongoing and a consensus on the potential benefits or drawbacks has not been reached yet. This paper models the distributional processes entailed by two alternative educational voucher systems, universal and target vouchers, by using an agent-based model of a highly heterogeneous school district. Using this approach allows to track which students actually switch schools and thereby evaluate peer effects. At the same it is possible to model an endogenous reaction of public schools in order to assess their reaction to increased competition. The results indicate an ambiguous effect of universal vouchers on low-income students. The introduction has a negative peer effect on students in low-performing schools due to “cream skimming”, i.e. highly motivated students leaving the schools. In contrast, students who switch to better schools observe a positive effect. The negative effects are partly alleviated by low- performing schools improving their educational services as a response to a decline in enrollment. When examining target vouchers which are a function of student ability, the paper shows that they allow the school district to benefit from the increased competition while avoiding the deterioration of the peer group.
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Multigenerational Head Start Participation: An Unexpected Marker of Progress
Elise Chor
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
One-quarter of the Head Start population has a mother who participated in the program as a child. This study uses experimental Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) data on 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 2,849) to describe multigenerational Head Start families and their program experiences. In sharp contrast to full-sample HSIS findings, Head Start has large, positive impacts on cognitive and socioemotional development through third grade among the children of former participant mothers, including improved mathematics skills and reductions in withdrawn and aggressive behavior. Evidence suggests that differences in program impacts between single- and multigenerational Head Start families are driven largely by differences in family resources and home learning environments.
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Authoritative School Climate, Number of Parents at Home, and Academic Achievement
Francis Huang, Katie Eklund & Dewey
Cornell School Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
School climate is widely recognized as an important factor in promoting student academic achievement. The current study investigated the hypothesis that a demanding and supportive school climate, based on authoritative school climate theory, would serve as a protective factor for students living with 1 or no parents at home. Using a statewide sample of 56,508 middle school students from 415 public schools in 1 state, results indicated that student perceptions of disciplinary structure, academic demandingness, and student support all had positive associations with student self-reported grade point average (GPA). In addition, findings showed that academic expectations and student support were more highly associated with GPA for students not living with any parent. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
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Kindergarten redshirting: Motivations and spillovers using census-level data
Kevin Fortner & Jade Marcus Jenkins
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Winter 2017, Pages 44–56
Abstract:
Kindergarten redshirting may affect a child’s own outcomes and also has implications for school administration, classroom management, and peer learning. We use statewide micro-level census data to examine selection into redshirting, potential spillover effects, and its association with third grade outcomes. We find evidence of both negative and positive selection into redshirting, where children with disabilities are much more likely to be redshirted. We find small positive associations between redshirting and both math and reading achievement in third grade for students without identified disabilities. However, redshirting students with an identified disability score statistically significantly lower on mathematics assessments compared to similar non-redshirting students with identified disabilities. We do not find evidence of spillover effects from redshirting when students attend third grade classes with higher proportions of redshirted children.