Do the math
The Labor of Division: Returns to Compulsory High School Math Coursework
Joshua Goodman
NBER Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
Despite great focus on and public investment in STEM education, little causal evidence connects quantitative coursework to students' economic outcomes. I show that state changes in minimum high school math requirements substantially increase black students' completed math coursework and their later earnings. The marginal student's return to an additional math course is 10 percent, roughly half the return to a year of high school, and is partly explained by a shift toward more cognitively skilled occupations. Whites' coursework and earnings are unaffected. Rigorous standards for quantitative coursework can close meaningful portions of racial gaps in economic outcomes.
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General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Lifecycle
Eric Hanushek et al.
Journal of Human Resources, Winter 2017, Pages 48-87
Abstract:
Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this tradeoff, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using microdata for 11 countries from IALS, we find strong and robust support for such a tradeoff, especially in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. German Microcensus data and Austrian administrative data confirm the results for within-occupational-group analysis and for exogenous variation from plant closures, respectively.
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Demonstrated Interest: Signaling Behavior in College Admissions
James Dearden et al.
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In college admission decisions, important and possibly competing goals include increasing the quality of the freshman class and making the school more selective while attaining the targeted size of the incoming class. Especially for high-quality applicants who receive multiple competing offers, colleges are concerned about the probability that these students accept the offers of admission. As a result, applicants' contacts with admissions offices, such as campus visits, can be viewed positively by the officers as demonstrated interest in the colleges. We provide empirical evidence on the effects of demonstrated interest on admission outcomes. Specifically, we use unique and comprehensive administrative data, which include all contacts made by each applicant to the admissions office of a medium-sized highly selective university during two admission cycles. We find that an applicant who contacts the university is more likely to be admitted, and that the effect of the contact on the probability of admission is increasing in the applicant's Scholastic Assessment Test score, particularly when the contact is costly to make. We also use a numerical example to explore policies to reduce the inequity associated with the use of demonstrated interest in admission decisions, examining in particular the subsidization of costly demonstrated interest by low-income students.
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School Spending and New Construction
David Brasington
Regional Science and Urban Economics, March 2017, Pages 76-84
Abstract:
School districts that vote in favor of property tax levies may signal that they are education-oriented. Through Tiebout sorting and housing developer activity, new residents might move to such communities. New retail development may occur near these new residents, and office firms that rely on high-skilled residents might be drawn too. Using regression discontinuity we find school districts that renew property tax levies have a higher value of new construction than districts that do not renew these school expenditures. School tax levy renewal is responsible for 14% of new residential construction and 25% of new commercial construction.
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Peer Delinquency and Student Achievement in Middle School
Tom Ahn & Justin Trogdon
Labour Economics, January 2017, Pages 192-217
Abstract:
This paper studies the relationship between peer delinquency and student achievement in North Carolina middle schools. We define severity of the delinquent act using the associated punishment and calculate the average exposure to peer delinquency. Our identification strategy uses this new measure, a rich set of control variables including student, peer, and teacher characteristics, and a novel instrumental variable that captures the indirect social network impact of peer misbehavior. The instrument uses lagged delinquent behavior from students who went to 5th grade with peers of the index student's current 6th grade peers but not the index student him/herself. A 10 percent increase in the number of "major" incidents that a student at an average North Carolina school is exposed to was associated with a 6.2 percent of a standard deviation decrease in his or her standardized math score.
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Debt and Human Capital: Evidence from Student Loans
Vyacheslav Fos, Andres Liberman & Constantine Yannelis
NYU Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
This paper investigates the dynamic relation between debt and investments in human capital. We document a negative causal effect of the level of undergraduate student debt on the probability of enrolling in a graduate degree for a random sample of the universe of federal student loan borrowers in the US. We compare students (i) within school and cohort, and (ii) across cohorts within the same school at the time of a large tuition change. The latter strategy exploits the fact that students who face a tuition increase in earlier grades end up with significantly more debt than students who face the same tuition increase in later grades. We find that $4,000 in higher debt causes a two percentage point reduction in the probability of enrolling in graduate school relative to a mean of 12%. Further results suggest this effect is largely driven by credit constraints, is monotonically weaker with family income, and is attenuated for students who had compulsory personal finance training in high school. The results highlight an important trade off associated with debt-financing of human capital, and inform the debate on the effects of the large and increasing stock of student debt in the US.
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From the Delta Banks to the Upper Ranks: An Evaluation of KIPP Charter Schools in Rural Arkansas
Caleb Rose, Robert Maranto & Gary Ritter
Educational Policy, March 2017, Pages 180-201
Abstract:
Knowledge is Power Program Delta College Preparatory School (KIPP DCPS), an open-enrollment charter school, opened in 2002 in Helena, Arkansas. KIPP DCPS students have consistently outperformed their peers from neighboring districts on year-end student achievement scores, and KIPP's national reputation led Arkansas lawmakers to exempt KIPP from the state's charter school cap. Yet, skeptics of KIPP in particular, and charter schools in general, voiced a concern that the apparent KIPP advantage in student achievement may have been due to the prior academic ability of the students who selected into KIPP rather than to the KIPP school itself. Furthermore, some KIPP critics have argued that student attrition at KIPP schools accounts for the apparent KIPP advantage. Until now, no prior study has rigorously compared performance of KIPP students with traditional public school peers on matched observable academic and demographic variables or carefully considered student attrition rates at KIPP DCPS. Here, we begin by summarizing prior evaluations of KIPP schools nationally. Next, we carefully examine student attrition from 2005 through 2011, and we find that KIPP DCPS attrition resembles that found in nearby traditional public schools. Finally, using regression models that control demographic and prior academic indicators, we find that KIPP DCPS students gain significantly more each year on standardized assessments than do their matched peers. These results are important as nearly all prior empirical work on KIPP schools has been conducted in urban settings. Despite the fact that many rural students struggle academically or attend struggling schools, we know relatively little about the potential benefits of No Excuses charter schools in rural areas, such as KIPP DCPS.
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The Effects of Academic Incubators on University Innovation
Christos Kolympiris & Peter Klein
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we analyze the impact of academic incubators on the quality of innovations produced by U.S. research-intensive academic institutions. We show that establishing a university-affiliated incubator is followed by a reduction in the quality of university innovations. The conclusion holds when we control for the endogeneity of the decision to establish an incubator using the presence of incubators at peer institutions as an instrument. We also document a reduction in licensing income following the establishment of an incubator. The results suggest that university incubators compete for resources with technology transfer offices and other campus programs and activities, such that the useful outputs they generate can be partially offset by reductions in innovation elsewhere.
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Evaluating Post-Secondary Aid: Enrollment, Persistence, and Projected Completion Effects
Joshua Angrist et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
This paper reports updated findings from a randomized evaluation of a generous, privately-funded scholarship program for Nebraska public college students. Scholarship offers boosted college enrollment and persistence. Four years after award receipt, randomly-selected scholarship winners were 13 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in college. Enrollment effects were larger for groups with historically low college attendance, including nonwhite students, first-generation college-goers, and students with low high school GPAs. Scholarships shifted many students from two- to four-year colleges, reducing associate's degree completion in the process. Despite their substantial gains in four-year college enrollment, award winners from the first study cohort were slightly less likely to graduate on time than control applicants, suggesting that scholarships delay degree completion for some students. Projected graduation rates using the last cohort of pre-experimental scholarship applicants indicate that scholarships are likely to increase bachelor's degree completion within five years.
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Market Power and Incidence in Higher Education
Mahyar Kargar & William Mann
University of California Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
We estimate the degree of private colleges' market power, in order to better understand the incidence of financial aid (the Bennett Hypothesis). For identification, we exploit a 2011 tightening of credit standards in the PLUS loan program, in response to which enrollment, tuition, and expenditures all fell at colleges where a large fraction of students come from low-income households. We exploit this demand shock to estimate these colleges' marginal revenues and marginal costs, then compute markups. We find that marginal costs are roughly a third of tuition charges per student at the median, implying that colleges have substantial market power in setting their prices. We further document that market power is greater (markups are higher) at for-profit schools, and at schools in states with fewer public schools per capita. Our results contrast prior studies that estimate small markups in higher education.
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Life in shackles? The quantitative implications of reforming the educational financing system
Ben Heijdra, Fabian Kindermann & Laurie Reijnders
Review of Economic Dynamics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conduct a quantitative analysis of educational financing systems in a stochastic overlapping generations model in which human capital can be enhanced through both formal schooling and learning-by-doing. The model is calibrated to the United States economy, including a stylized version of its student loan system. We find that moving to an income-contingent educational financing system, whereby transfers to students are financed from taxes on labor income, generates aggregate welfare gains. Such a system improves risk-sharing among college graduates and incentivizes individuals to obtain more education. These positive effects overturn the negative impact from labor supply distortions. Reforming the educational financing system towards income contingency, however, generates a considerable amount of transitional dynamics, so that welfare gains and losses are distributed unevenly across generations.
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Mark Weber & Bruce Baker
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article takes advantage of a recently released national data set on school site expenditures to evaluate spending variations between traditional district operated schools and charter schools operated by for-profit versus nonprofit management firms. Prior research has revealed the revenue-enhancement, private fund-raising capacity of major nonprofit providers. For-profit providers may face greater pressure to reduce operating expenses. As such, we hypothesize that regardless of average differences in staffing expenses between district and charter schools, school site staffing expenditures are likely to be lower in for-profit than in nonprofit managed charter schools. Furthermore, school site instructional staffing expenditures may be lower yet. Applying national, then state-level models to compare spending for schools of similar size, serving similar grade ranges and students with similar attributes (income status, special education, and language proficiency status), we find these assumptions largely to be true. Specifically, on average across all settings (global model) we find that charters spend less per pupil on instructional salaries compared with districts; furthermore, for-profit charters spend less than nonprofits. Furthermore, for-profit charters spend statistically significantly less (p < .05) on instructional salaries, compared with district schools in many states.
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Marcus Winters, Dick Carpenter & Grant Clayton
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use administrative data to measure whether attending a charter school in Denver, Colorado, reduces the likelihood that students are newly classified as having a disability in primary grades. We employ an observational approach that takes advantage of Denver's Common Enrollment System, which allows us to observe each school that the student listed a preference to attend. We find evidence that attending a Denver charter school reduces the likelihood that a student is classified as having a specific learning disability, which is the largest and most subjectively diagnosed disability category. We find no evidence that charter attendance reduces the probability of being classified as having a speech or language disability or autism, which are two more objectively diagnosed classifications.
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Do anti-bullying laws work? New evidence on school safety and youth violence
Joseph Sabia & Brittany Bass
Journal of Population Economics, February 2017, Pages 473-502
Abstract:
This study is the first to comprehensively examine the effect of state anti-bullying laws (ABLs) on school safety and youth violence. Using existing data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys and the Uniform Crime Reports, and newly-collected data on school shootings, we find little evidence that the typical state ABL is effective in improving school safety and student well-being. However, this null finding masks substantial policy heterogeneity. State mandates that require school districts to implement strong, comprehensive anti-bullying policies are associated with a 7 to 13 % reduction in school violence and an 8 to 12 % reduction in bullying. In addition, our results show that strong anti-bullying policy mandates are associated with a reduction in minor teen school shooting deaths and violent crime arrests, suggesting potentially important spillover effects.
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Jason Grissom, Hajime Mitani & Richard Blissett
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many states require prospective principals to pass a licensure exam to obtain an administrative license, but we know little about the potential effects of principal licensure exams on the pool of available principals or whether scores predict later job performance. We investigate the most commonly used exam, the School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA), using 10 years of data on Tennessee test takers. We uncover substantial differences in passage rates by test-taker characteristics. In particular, non-Whites are 12 percentage points less likely than otherwise similar White test takers to attain the required licensure score. Although candidates with higher scores are more likely to be hired as principals, we find little evidence that SLLA scores predict measures of principal job performance, including supervisors' evaluation ratings or teachers' assessments of school leadership from a statewide survey. Our results raise questions about whether conditioning administrative licensure on SLLA passage is consistent with principal workforce diversity goals.
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Knowledge of Earnings Risk and Major Choice: Evidence from an Information Experiment
Alex Ruder & Michelle Van Noy
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Policymakers increasingly seek to inform students about the expected economic returns to different college majors. Less attention has been given to the earnings risk of major choice. In this paper, we use an experiment to study the impact of an information intervention by providing individuals with data that show the earnings risk of a major choice. Our intervention allows us to compare earnings risk and major preferences among a group who is informed about earnings risk compared to a group not given information about risk. Our results show that individuals who see information about earnings risk form different earnings risk estimates and preferences over majors than individuals who see median earnings only. These differences show the negative consequences of making academic major decisions when holding incorrect estimates of earnings risk, and suggest the value of including earnings risk in tools such as college scorecards to inform students.
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What Is the Long-Run Impact of Learning Mathematics During Preschool?
Tyler Watts et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study estimated the causal links between preschool mathematics learning and late elementary school mathematics achievement using variation in treatment assignment to an early mathematics intervention as an instrument for preschool mathematics change. Estimates indicate (n = 410) that a standard deviation of intervention-produced change at age 4 is associated with a 0.24-SD gain in achievement in late elementary school. This impact is approximately half the size of the association produced by correlational models relating later achievement to preschool math change, and is approximately 35% smaller than the effect reported by highly controlled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models (Claessens et al., 2009; Watts et al., 2014) using national data sets. Implications for developmental theory and practice are discussed.
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The effects of Greek affiliation on academic performance
Andrew De Donato & James Thomas
Economics of Education Review, April 2017, Pages 41-51
Abstract:
We use a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the effects of Greek affiliation on academic performance. There are strong negative effects in some periods but smaller effects in others: fraternity affiliation hurts performance by .32 standard deviations in the Freshman Spring; sorority affiliation hurts performance by .22 standard deviations in Spring semesters after Freshman year. We estimate both ceteris-paribus effects and non-ceteris-paribus effects which allow Greek affiliation to influence course choice behavior. We account for censoring of grades and show ignoring censoring leads to attenuation bias. We also document heterogeneity in treatment effects by student preparation and organization social status.