Cum Laude
Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data
Stacy Dale & Alan Krueger
Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2014, Pages 323-358
Abstract:
We estimate the labor market effect of attending a highly selective college, using the College and Beyond Survey linked to Social Security Administration data. We extend earlier work by estimating effects for students that entered college in 1976 over a longer time horizon (from 1983 through 2007) and for a more recent cohort (1989). For both cohorts, the effects of college characteristics on earnings are sizeable (and similar in magnitude) in standard regression models. In selection-adjusted models, these effects generally fall to close to zero; however, these effects remain large for certain subgroups, such as for black and Hispanic students.
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Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement
Jacob Vigdor, Helen Ladd & Anderika Martinez
Economic Inquiry, July 2014, Pages 1103–1119
Abstract:
Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between rich and poor? Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? We use administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that document broad racial and socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use. Using within-student variation in home computer access, and across-ZIP code variation in the timing of the introduction of high-speed Internet service, we also demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest, but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed Internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
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A Major Choice: An Examination of Higher Education and Ability-Adjusted Income
Katharina Ley Best & Jussi Keppo
University of Michigan Working Paper, January 2014
Abstract:
We compare annual post-college income across student groups defined by ability levels, school quality, and major using individual-level data from the NLSY 1997. We condition on student ability (quality of the top school admitted to), and study major and school choice together. Elite institution attendance increases post-college income by almost $8,000. Some of this increase is driven by longer working hours. Major choice has a bigger impact on income than school choice. Students majoring in engineering, computer-related fields, and business earn more than humanities and arts majors even after adjusting for ability and hours worked ($23,000 more for top students).
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Scholarly Culture and Academic Performance in 42 Nations
M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley & Joanna Sikora
Social Forces, June 2014, Pages 1573-1605
Abstract:
Exposure to books and high culture provides important academic advantages. But the reasons for this are hotly disputed. Elite closure theory posits that culture merely signals children's elite status to gatekeepers who then grant them unjust advantages. But other theories suggest that scholarly culture provides cognitive skills that improve academic performance, which schools justly reward. We attempt to adjudicate between these theories using data on academic performance from 42 national samples with 200,144 cases from OECD's PISA. We find that a key aspect of scholarly culture, the number of books in the family home, exerts a strong influence on academic performance in ways consistent with the cognitive skill hypothesis, regardless of the nation's ideology, political history, or level of development.
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Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson & Claudia Persico
NBER Working Paper, May 2014
Abstract:
The school finance reforms (SFRs) that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused some of the most dramatic changes in the structure of K–12 education spending in U.S. history. We analyze the effects of these reforms on the level and distribution of school district spending, as well as their effects on subsequent educational and economic outcomes. In Part One, using a newly compiled database of school finance reforms and a recently available long panel of annual school district data on per-pupil spending that spans 1967–2010, we present an event-study analysis of the effects of different types of school finance reforms on per-pupil spending in low- and high-income school districts. We find that SFRs have been instrumental in equalizing school spending between low- and high-income districts and many reforms do so by increasing spending for poor districts. While all reforms reduce spending inequality, there are important differences by reform type: adequacy-based court-ordered reforms increase overall school spending, while equity-based court-ordered reforms reduce the variance of spending with little effect on overall levels; reforms that entail high tax prices (the amount of taxes a district must raise to increase spending by one dollar) reduce long-run spending for all districts, and those that entail low tax prices lead to increased spending growth, particularly for low-income districts. In Part Two, we link the spending and reform data to detailed, nationally-representative data on children born between 1955 and 1985 and followed through 2011 (the Panel Study of Income Dynamics) to study the effect of the reform-induced changes in school spending on long-run adult outcomes. These birth cohorts straddle the period in which most of the major school finance reform litigation accelerated, and thus the cohorts were differentially exposed, depending on place and year of birth. We use the timing of the passage of court-mandated reforms as an exogenous shifter of school spending across cohorts within the same district. Event-study and instrumental variable models reveal that a 20 percent increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public school for children from poor families leads to about 0.9 more completed years of education, 25 percent higher earnings, and a 20 percentage-point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty; we find no effects for children from non-poor families. The magnitudes of these effects are sufficiently large to eliminate between two-thirds and all of the gaps in these adult outcomes between those raised in poor families and those raised in non-poor families. We present several pieces of evidence to support a causal interpretation of the estimates.
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The Impact of Student Loan Debt on Small Business Formation
Brent Ambrose, Larry Cordell & Shuwei Ma
Pennsylvania State University Working Paper, March 2014
Abstract:
Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy and account for approximately half of the private-sector economy and 99% of all businesses. To start a small business, individuals need access to capital. Given the importance of an entrepreneur’s personal debt capacity in financing a start-up business, student loan debt, which cannot be discharged via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects later in life and may impact the ability of future small business owners to raise capital. This study examines the impact of growth in student debt on net small business formation. We find a significant and economically meaningful negative correlation between changes in student loan debt and net business formation for the smallest group of small businesses, those employing 1-4 employees. This is important since these small businesses depend the most heavily on personal debt to finance new business formation. Based on our model, a one standard deviation increase in student debt reduces 1-4 employee businesses by 25 percent on average between 2000 and 2010. The effect on larger firm formation is not significant, which we interpret to mean that these firms have greater access to outside finance.
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Sweden’s School Choice Reform and Equality of Opportunity
Karin Edmark, Markus Frölich & Verena Wondratschek
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study analyses whether the Swedish school choice reform, enacted in 1992, had differential effects for students from different socio-economic backgrounds. We use detailed geographical data on students’ and schools’ locations to construct measures of the degree of potential choice. This allows us to study the effects of choice opportunities among public schools, whereas previous studies have focused on newly opened private schools. Our results indicate that students from a socio-economically disadvantaged or immigrant background did not benefit less from more school choice than those from more advantaged backgrounds. If anything, students from low-income families benefited slightly more than those from higher-income families. However, the differences between groups of students are very small, as are the overall effects of the reform.
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Jessica McCrory Calarco
Social Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper argues that inequalities can be more clearly understood by combining tool kit theories of culture that stress convergence between institutional expectations and individual behavior with symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes the interpretive and situational nature of behavior. I base these arguments on an ethnographic analysis of student responses to ambiguous expectations around help-seeking. Teachers’ shifting expectations created interpretive moments, to which middle-class and working-class students responded differently. Through a logic of entitlement, middle-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reward and tried to seek assistance. Through a logic of appeasement, working-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reprimand and sought to placate teachers by avoiding requests. Teacher responses to student behavior varied across situations but helped to perpetuate inequalities. Such findings suggest that the activation of tool kit resources and the stratified profits that result are more interpretive and situational than scholars typically acknowledge.
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Why Do Charter Schools Fail? An Analysis of Charter School Survival in New Jersey
Julia Schwenkenberg & James Vanderhoff
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Charter school competition can only work as a policy to improve public education if schools that do not contribute to this goal are allowed to fail. We estimate survival regressions to assess the effects of various factors on the probability of school failure. We find that students' test scores are the most important determinant of survival: a one standard deviation increase reduces the probability of failure by 76%. Higher expenditures per student and a longer wait list result in smaller, but significant, reductions. Enrollment, average performance in the host district, and student demographics do not significantly affect school survival.
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National High School Graduation Rate: Are Recent Birth Cohorts Taking More Time to Graduate?
Myungkook Joo & Jeounghee Kim
Education and Urban Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
Debates about the national high school graduation rate have heated up as various national high school graduation estimates based on the Common Core of Data (CCD) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) do not coincide with one another partially due to different assumptions about graduation age. This study found that (a) while graduation rate by age 18 declined, the rate by age 24 remained relatively constant, creating larger differences between the CCD- and CPS-based rates and that (b) males and minorities particularly take more time to obtain a high school degree among the recent birth cohorts.
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Third-grade retention and reading achievement in Texas: A nine year panel study
Jon Lorence
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The academic performance of over 38,000 Texas students who failed the state’s 1994 reading test was examined through their sophomore year in high school. Propensity score matching resulted in strata with retained and promoted students of comparable observed characteristics. Reading scores were analyzed using a two-level hierarchical linear model. Same grade comparisons show that third graders failing the state-mandated reading test who repeated the grade consistently outperformed in later grades the socially promoted children who also failed the third grade test. Additional analyses indicate that alternative explanations for the findings such as omitted variables, regression to the mean, differential panel attrition and cohort effects are not supported. The results are consistent with findings from other recent studies which suggest that grade retention in third grade may help increase student achievement.
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Far transfer to language and math of a short software-based gaming intervention
Andrea Paula Goldin et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 April 2014, Pages 6443-6448
Abstract:
Executive functions (EF) in children can be trained, but it remains unknown whether training-related benefits elicit far transfer to real-life situations. Here, we investigate whether a set of computerized games might yield near and far transfer on an experimental and an active control group of low-SES otherwise typically developing 6-y-olds in a 3-mo pretest–training–posttest design that was ecologically deployed (at school). The intervention elicits transfer to some (but not all) facets of executive function. These changes cascade to real-world measures of school performance. The intervention equalizes academic outcomes across children who regularly attend school and those who do not because of social and familiar circumstances.
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The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking
Pam Mueller & Daniel Oppenheimer
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.
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Scott Hinze & David Rapp
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Academic testing has received substantial support as a useful educational activity with robust retention benefits, given that tests can promote retrieval practice. However, testing can also instantiate performance-related pressure and anxiety that may misappropriate the resources responsible for producing learning benefits. The current project examined the effects of performance pressure on retrieval practice. In two experiments, we instantiated performance pressure with either high-stakes or low-stakes quizzes, and assessed memory and comprehension of content on both quizzes and final tests. Quiz performance was equivalent under high-stakes and low-stakes conditions, demonstrating that learners adapted to high-pressure quizzes. However, final test performance was better after low-stakes versus high-stakes quizzes, and only low-stakes quizzes led to a performance advantage over a rereading control group. Participants additionally exhibited some sensitivity to the difficulty of retrieving under pressure. These data highlight the benefits of retrieval practice but indicate that they can be disrupted under pressure-driven conditions.
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Sudhish Srikanth et al.
Journal of Early Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined the influence of physical and psychosocial variables on math and reading achievement test scores. Between 1 and 5 months prior to taking annual standardized reading and math tests, a sample of (N = 1,211) sixth through eight graders (53.7% girls; 57.2% White) self-reported levels of physical activity, academic self-beliefs, general self-esteem, and social support and participated in objective testing to obtain measures of body composition (body mass index [BMI]) and cardiorespiratory fitness. Socioeconomic status (SES) and state-based reading and math achievement test scores were provided by the school district. Regression analyses revealed that SES, academic self-beliefs, and cardiorespiratory fitness were the consistent predictors of the students’ performance in reading and math; perceived social support from family and friends and higher levels of self-esteem were related to higher reading scores for the boys only. Our findings support schools re-examining policies that have limited students’ involvement in physical education classes.
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An International Comparison of Achievement Inequality in Within- and Between-School Tracking Systems
Anna Chmielewski
American Journal of Education, May 2014, Pages 293-324
Abstract:
Secondary school tracking is organized in some countries on a course-by-course basis within schools and in other countries as explicit academic and vocational streaming, often in separate school buildings. This article is the first to compare these two forms of tracking, using student-level tracking data across the United States and 19 other developed countries. Results indicate that course-by-course tracking is less segregated by socioeconomic status (SES) than is academic/vocational streaming. Yet both forms of tracking have comparable achievement gaps between tracks. Among students in the same track, SES disparities in achievement are larger in course-by-course tracking than in academic/vocational streaming.
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Michael LeGower & Randall Walsh
NBER Working Paper, April 2014
Abstract:
Following the example of the Kalamazoo Promise initiated in 2005, place-based "Promise'' scholarship programs have proliferated over the past 8 years. These programs guarantee money towards the costs of attendance at selected colleges and universities provided that a student has resided and attended school within a particular public school district continuously for at least the four years prior to graduation. While some early programs have been studied in isolation, the impact of such programs in general is not well understood. In addition, although there is substantial and controversial variation from the original program's design, there is no direct evidence on how outcomes vary along with these design choices. We use a difference-in-difference approach to compare the evolution of both school enrollments and residential real estate prices around the announcement of these programs within the affected Promise zone and in the surrounding area. Taken together, our estimates suggest that these scholarships have important distributional effects that bear further examination. In particular, while estimates indicate that public school enrollments increase in Promise zones relative to their surrounding areas following Promise announcements, schools associated with merit-based programs experience increases in white enrollment and decreases in non-white enrollment. Furthermore, housing price effects are larger in neighborhoods with high quality schools and in the upper half of the housing price distribution, suggesting higher valuation by high-income households. These patterns lead us to conclude that such scholarships are primarily affecting the behavior of households living above the median income for whom they present the greatest value and that merit-based versions disproportionately impact white households.
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Class-size effects in secondary school
Karl Fritjof Krassel & Eskil Heinesen
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze class-size effects on academic achievement in secondary school in Denmark exploiting an institutional setting where pupils cannot predict class size prior to enrollment, and where post-enrollment responses aimed at affecting realized class size are unlikely. We identify class-size effects combining a regression discontinuity design with control for lagged achievement and school fixed effects. Using administrative registry data, we find statistically significant negative effects of class size on academic achievement.
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Daniel Long
Educational Policy, May 2014, Pages 351-392
Abstract:
Educational reformers use international evidence to argue that increasing the number of days in school and the length of the school day will improve academic achievement. However, the international data used to support these claims (1999 Third International Math and Science Survey and 2000 Program for International Student Assessment) show no correlation between time in school and achievement. In this article, the author re-examines the effects of instructional time using improved measures of instructional time, a more extensive data set (2006 Program for International Student Assessment), and a more nuanced multilevel model. The author finds mixed evidence of a positive effect of subject-specific instructional time on achievement, controlling for socioeconomic status, school characteristics, and country-level traits. The author finds no effect of the length of the school year on academic achievement and that sample selection and the specific uses of time in school have a strong influence on conclusions about the effectiveness of instructional time.
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Universal factors of student achievement in high-performing Eastern and Western countries
Jihyun Lee
Journal of Educational Psychology, May 2014, Pages 364-374
Abstract:
This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South Korea, Hong Kong China, Singapore, and Japan; 5 top-performing Western countries, including Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands; and the 3 “superpower” countries of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ten extensively studied achievement-related attitudinal and behavioral variables — including attitudes toward school, enjoyment, learning strategies, reading habits, and reading strategies — were investigated. Overall, when comparing the East and West across the 10 variables, there were small to medium effect sizes, with Cohen’s d ranging from 0.04 to 0.47, which resulted in salient differences between the 2 regions. More important, there were striking similarities across all 13 countries in their “best” predictor of reading achievement — either enjoyment of reading or utilization of reading strategies to efficiently summarize the text. Enjoyment of reading in particular was a strong predictor at both individual and country levels. This study concludes that what motivates human learning is invariant across countries with vastly different educational, cultural, and language systems.
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Rusi Sun & Gregg Van Ryzin
American Review of Public Administration, May 2014, Pages 324-338
Abstract:
Performance management is widely assumed to be an effective strategy for improving outcomes in the public sector. However, few attempts have been made to empirically test this assumption. Using data on New York City public schools, we examine the relationship between performance management practices by school leaders and educational outcomes, as measured by standardized test scores. The empirical results show that schools that do a better job at performance management indeed have better outcomes in terms of both the level and gain in standardized test scores, even when controlling for student, staffing, and school characteristics. Thus, our findings provide some rare empirical support for the key assumption behind the performance management movement in public administration.
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Trading the Television for a Textbook?: High School Exit Exams and Student Behavior
Timothy Diette & Sara Helms
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Approximately half of the states in the United States have some form of high school exit exam. One purpose of the exit exams is to create a clear bar which students must pass in order to graduate. Effective exit exams may encourage marginal students to spend additional time on schooling in order to pass the exam. This study exploits state-level variations in timing of implementation to understand how students have responded to the state exit exams. This study uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS captures, in detail, how individuals spend their day. We find that exit exams are associated with an increase in the amount of time that students spend on educational activities by almost 20 minutes per day in the months in which exams are typically given. The increase comes mainly from an increase in time spent in school and not time spent outside of school on education-related activities. The additional time for education appears to be a trade-off with time spent watching television, which shows a significant drop in exam months for students facing exams.
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Higher education structure and education outcomes: Evidence from the USA
Cory Koedel
Education Economics, May/June 2014, Pages 237-256
Abstract:
This paper documents substantial differences across states in their higher education (HE) structures and highlights several empirical relationships between these structures and individuals’ HE outcomes. Not surprisingly, individuals who are exposed to more-fractionalized HE structures are more likely to attend small public universities and less likely to attend large public universities. Exposure to more-fractionalized structures is also associated with increased degree attainment and increased exits from the in-state public-university system (to private and out-of-state public universities). These findings highlight potentially important tradeoffs related to state policy on HE structure.
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Arya Ansari & Adam Winsler
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Within the United States, there are a variety of early education models and curricula aimed at promoting young children’s pre-academic, social, and behavioral skills. This study, using data from the Miami School Readiness Project (Winsler et al., 2008, 2012), examined the school readiness gains of low-income Latino (n = 7,045) and Black (n = 6,700) children enrolled in 2 different types of Title-1 public school pre-K programs: those in programs using the Montessori curriculum and those in more conventional programs using the High/Scope curriculum with a literacy supplement. Parents and teachers reported on children’s socio-emotional and behavioral skills with the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (Lebuffe & Naglieri, 1999), whereas children’s pre-academic skills (cognitive, motor, and language) were assessed directly with the Learning Accomplishment Profile–Diagnostic (Nehring, Nehring, Bruni, & Randolph, 1992) at the beginning and end of their 4-year-old pre-K year. All children, regardless of curriculum, demonstrated gains across pre-academic, socio-emotional, and behavioral skills throughout the pre-K year; however, all children did not benefit equally from Montessori programs. Latino children in Montessori programs began the year at most risk in pre-academic and behavioral skills, yet exhibited the greatest gains across these domains and ended the year scoring above national averages. Conversely, Black children exhibited healthy gains in Montessori, but they demonstrated slightly greater gains when attending more conventional pre-K programs. Findings have implications for tailoring early childhood education programs for Latino and Black children from low-income communities.
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Nathanael Okpych & Mark Courtney
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Each year tens of millions of federal dollars are invested to promote secondary and postsecondary educational attainment among older youth in foster care. Despite the presumption that this is a sound investment, as indicated by copious research from studies of the general U.S. population, research examining the payoff among youth transitioning to adulthood from state care has been sparse. In the present study, we analyze the relationship between educational attainment and employment outcomes among youth exiting care. Drawing on data from a large, multi-state study of youth transitioning from foster care, findings indicate that increased education, and particularly degree completion, is associated with greater earnings and lower employment rates. Compared to young adults matched on educational attainment from a nationally representative study, youth formerly in foster care earn about half and the employment rate is 20 points lower. However, increased levels of education have larger benefits for youth who exited care than youth from the general population, and at higher levels of attainment the two groups have similar employment rates and earnings gaps become less pronounced. Among youth formerly in care, results from regression analyses indicate that, compared to individuals with no high school credential, a GED or certificate of completion predicts no benefits in earnings or likelihood of being employed; a diploma predicts an earnings benefit; and some college, a two-year degree, and a four-year degree or greater predict large benefits in earnings and likelihood of employment. We conclude by briefly discussing implications for policy, practice, and future research.