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The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers
Scott Carrell, Mark Hoekstra & Elira Kuka
NBER Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
A large and growing literature has documented the importance of peer effects in education. However, there is relatively little evidence on the long-run educational and labor market consequences of childhood peers. We examine this question by linking administrative data on elementary school students to subsequent test scores, college attendance and completion, and earnings. To distinguish the effect of peers from confounding factors, we exploit the population variation in the proportion of children from families linked to domestic violence, who were shown by Carrell and Hoekstra (2010, 2012) to disrupt contemporaneous behavior and learning. Results show that exposure to a disruptive peer in classes of 25 during elementary school reduces earnings at age 26 by 3 to 4 percent. We estimate that differential exposure to children linked to domestic violence explains 5 to 6 percent of the rich-poor earnings gap in our data, and that removing one disruptive peer from a classroom for one year would raise the present discounted value of classmates' future earnings by $100,000.
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An Open Path to the Future: Perceived Financial Resources and School Motivation
Mesmin Destin
Journal of Early Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
One contributing factor to gaps in academic achievement may be that some students perceive long-term educational goals, such as college, as financially out of reach, which can make schoolwork feel meaningless even several years before college. However, information that leads students to perceive that the financial path to college is open for them (i.e., need-based financial aid) can increase school motivation. Two classroom-based field experiments expand this area of theory and research. Early adolescent students who were randomly assigned to receive information about need-based financial aid (open path condition) showed greater school motivation than those who were randomly assigned to a control condition, specifically if they came from low-asset households. In a second exploratory experiment, the open path effect was mediated by an increased likelihood that students envision a future career that includes college (education-dependent identity). Implications for the study of identity and disparities in academic achievement are discussed.
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The Effect of Institutional Expenditures on Employment Outcomes and Earnings
Amanda Griffith & Kevin Rask
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent decades, public attention on colleges has risen in response to rising college expenditures and costs. This study uses the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to investigate how spending impacts salaries and employment outcomes, controlling for selection. Our findings indicate that spending on instruction increases salaries, the probability of full-time employment, and job match, particularly for more disadvantaged students, while there are smaller benefits of spending on student services for less disadvantaged students. Spending on research has large positive impacts on salary and the probability of full-time employment, especially for disadvantaged students.
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Financial Education and the Debt Behavior of the Young
Meta Brown et al.
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Young Americans are heavily reliant on debt and have clear financial literacy shortcomings. In this paper, we study the effects of exposure to financial training on debt outcomes in early adulthood among a large and representative sample of young Americans. Variation in exposure to financial training comes from statewide changes in high school graduation requirements. Using a flexible event study approach, we find that both mathematics and financial education, by and large, decrease reliance on nonstudent debt and improve repayment behavior. Economics training, on the other hand, increases both the likelihood of holding outstanding debt and the prevalence of repayment difficulties.
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Teacher Applicant Hiring and Teacher Performance: Evidence from DC Public Schools
Brian Jacob et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2016
Abstract:
Selecting more effective teachers among job applicants during the hiring process could be a highly cost-effective means of improving educational quality, but there is little research that links information gathered during the hiring process to subsequent teacher performance. We study the relationship among applicant characteristics, hiring outcomes, and teacher performance in the Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS). We take advantage of detailed data on a multi-stage application process, which includes written assessments, a personal interview, and sample lessons, as well as the annual evaluations of all DCPS teachers, based on multiple criteria. We identify a number of background characteristics (e.g., undergraduate GPA) as well as screening measures (e.g., applicant performance on a mock teaching lesson) that strongly predict teacher effectiveness. Interestingly, we find that these measures are only weakly, if at all, associated with the likelihood of being hired, suggesting considerable scope for improving teacher quality through the hiring process.
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Long-Lasting Effects of Socialist Education
Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Paolo Masella
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political regimes influence contents of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in East Germany after reunification. Our identification strategy utilizes cutoff birth dates for school enrollment that lead to variation in the length of exposure to the socialist education system within the same birth cohort. An additional year of socialist education decreases the probability of obtaining a college degree and affects longer-term male labor market outcomes.
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Teacher Quality and Learning Outcomes in Kindergarten
Caridad Araujo et al.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math, language and executive function (EF) at the end of the year. All teachers were filmed teaching for a full day, and the videos were coded using a well-known classroom observation tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS). We find substantial classroom effects: A one-standard deviation increase in classroom quality results in 0.11, 0.11, and 0.07 standard deviation higher test scores in language, math, and EF, respectively. Teacher behaviors, as measured by the CLASS, are associated with higher test scores. Parents recognize better teachers, but do not change their behaviors appreciably to take account of differences in teacher quality.
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The Long-term Consequences of Teacher Discretion in Grading of High-stakes Tests
Rebecca Diamond & Petra Persson
Stanford Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the long-term consequences of teacher discretion in grading of high-stakes tests. Evidence is currently lacking, both on which students receive test score manipulation and on whether such manipulation has any real, long-term consequences. We document extensive test score manipulation of Swedish nationwide math tests taken in the last year before high school, by showing significant bunching in the distribution of test scores above discrete grade cutoffs. We find that teachers use their discretion to adjust the test scores of students who have “a bad test day,” but that they do not discriminate based on gender or immigration status. We then develop a Wald estimator that allows us to harness quasi-experimental variation in whether a student receives test score manipulation to identify its effect on students’ longer-term outcomes. Despite the fact that test score manipulation does not, per se, raise human capital, it has far-reaching consequences for the beneficiaries, raising their grades in future classes, high school graduation rates, and college initiation rates; lowering teen birth rates; and raising earnings at age 23. The mechanism at play suggests important dynamic complementarities: Getting a higher grade on the test serves as an immediate signaling mechanism within the educational system, motivating students and potentially teachers; this, in turn, raises human capital; and the combination of higher effort and higher human capital ultimately generates substantial labor market gains. This highlights that a higher grade may not primarily have a signaling value in the labor market, but within the educational system itself.
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School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement
Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
NBER Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
We study the impact of post-1990 school finance reforms, during the so-called "adequacy" era, on gaps in spending and achievement between high-income and low-income school districts. Using an event study design, we find that reform events -- court orders and legislative reforms -- lead to sharp, immediate, and sustained increases in absolute and relative spending in low-income school districts. Using representative samples from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, we also find that reforms cause gradual increases in the relative achievement of students in low-income school districts, consistent with the goal of improving educational opportunity for these students. The implied effect of school resources on educational achievement is large.
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Returns for a Touchdown? Universities Entering College Football
Eric Joseph Van Holm & Sandy Zook
Georgia State University Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
Between 2004 and 2014, 50 colleges have started football teams. The expansion of college football, both in terms of new locations and spending at existing programs, can be attributed in part to the belief that athletic success brings other benefits, including increases in donations, student applications, enrollment and student quality (Humphreys and Mondello 2007; Smith 2009; Tucker and Amato 1993). However, is this true for colleges with no football tradition? Given the upfront costs and long odds of on field success, is implementation of a football team enough to expect beneficial outcomes? We analyze a sample of colleges that started football programs in the last decade against a control group without the sport in order to test the short-term benefits of starting a team. Results show that while there is an immediate increase in applications to the college, the quality and retention of students declines.
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Brian Jacob et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
This paper examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, a statewide college preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2008 and later. We use a student, longitudinal database for all public school students in Michigan for the main analyses, and complement this with analyses from a state-year panel. The study employs several non-experimental approaches, including a comparative interrupted time series and a synthetic control method. Our analyses suggest that the higher expectations embodied in the MMC has had little impact on student outcomes. Looking at student performance on the ACT, the only clear evidence of a change in academic performance comes in science. Our best estimates indicate that ACT science scores improved by 0.2 points (or roughly 0.04 standard deviations) as a result of the MMC. Students who entered high school with the weakest academic preparation saw the largest improvement, gaining 0.35 points (0.15 standard deviations) on the ACT composite score and 0.73 points (0.22 standard deviations) on the ACT science score. Our estimates for high school completion are very sensitive to the sample and methodology used. Some analysis suggests a small negative impact on high school graduation for students who entered high school with the weakest academic preparation, but other analysis finds no such effect.
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Buy the Book? Evidence on the Effect of Textbook Funding on School-level Achievement
Kristian Holden
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper considers the effect of textbook funding on school-level test performance by using a quasi-experimental setting in the US. I consider a lawsuit in California that provided a one-time payment of $96.90 per student for textbooks if schools fell below a threshold of academic performance. Exploiting this variation with a regression discontinuity (RD) design, I find that textbook funding has significant positive effects on school-level achievement in elementary schools and has a high benefit-per-dollar. In contrast to elementary schools, I find no effect in middle and high schools though these estimates are very imprecise.
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Marijke Mullender-Wijnsma et al.
Pediatrics, March 2016
Objectives: Using physical activity in the teaching of academic lessons is a new way of learning. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of an innovative physically active academic intervention (“Fit & Vaardig op School” [F&V]) on academic achievement of children.
Methods: Using physical activity to teach math and spelling lessons was studied in a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Participants were 499 children (mean age 8.1 years) from second- and third-grade classes of 12 elementary schools. At each school, a second- and third-grade class were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. The intervention group participated in F&V lessons for 2 years, 22 weeks per year, 3 times a week. The control group participated in regular classroom lessons. Children’s academic achievement was measured before the intervention started and after the first and second intervention years. Academic achievement was measured by 2 mathematics tests (speed and general math skills) and 2 language tests (reading and spelling).
Results: After 2 years, multilevel analysis showed that children in the intervention group had significantly greater gains in mathematics speed test (P < .001; effect size [ES] 0.51), general mathematics (P < .001; ES 0.42), and spelling (P < .001; ES 0.45) scores. This equates to 4 months more learning gains in comparison with the control group. No differences were found on the reading test.
Conclusions: Physically active academic lessons significantly improved mathematics and spelling performance of elementary school children and are therefore a promising new way of teaching.
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Does High School Employment Develop Marketable Skills?
Russell Ormiston
Journal of Labor Research, March 2016, Pages 53-68
Abstract:
While decades of academic research have consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between high school employment and adult earnings, the literature is empirically silent in regards to why this association exists. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to examine the hypothesis that high school employment develops “marketable skills” in the form of occupation-specific human capital. By analyzing wage variation attributable to the commonality of skill portfolios across respondents’ high school and adult (age 20 and 23) occupations, this study fails to find consistent evidence that the types of skills utilized in high school employment are correlated with adult earnings. Within the framework of the human capital model, this would suggest that the positive, post-school economic gains of in-school work are largely attributable to increases in general human capital (e.g., workplace socialization, character building).
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Information and Inflation: An Analysis of Grading Behavior
Brandon Lehr
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
I study the impact on grades assigned at Occidental College, a selective private liberal arts college, following the introduction of a policy that provides information about average grades across campus to instructors each semester. Using transcript level data from 2009 to 2014, I find that after the information provision, previously below average grading courses increased grades by 0.08 grade points more than the previously above average grading courses. This finding of grade compression holds across all course levels and divisions, expect for in the sciences. With respect to students, the relative increase in grades in the previously low grading courses disproportionately benefited Black and Hispanic students relative to White and Asian students. In addition, the grade distribution shifted with previously below average grading courses increasing the share of A’s and decreasing the share of B’s and C’s following the grade information provision.
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Compensation and Employment Impact of a Full-time MBA Program
Megan Way, Yunwei Gai & Lidija Polutnik
International Advances in Economic Research, February 2016, Pages 49-63
Abstract:
The changing Master of Business Administration (MBA) marketplace and considerable direct and indirect costs for an MBA degree mean that school administrators and other stakeholders need a better understanding of what factors may influence the rate of return to their MBA programs. We investigated the potential of using analytical frameworks to identify those variables that may predict employment probabilities and starting salaries of full-time MBA graduates, in the context of a single, private MBA program. Our results suggest that for graduates of this particular program, pre-MBA salary and work experience in accounting, banking, finance, and consulting industries predicted higher post-MBA salary levels, as did having a liberal arts major as an undergraduate. Other human capital measures, such as Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) scores or elite undergraduate education, were not associated with higher employment probabilities or salary levels for this program’s students, while having an undergraduate business major was associated with lower employment probability. Although our study has limited inference to determine the value of an MBA education more generally, it has potentially important implications for administrators of MBA programs, who could gain useful insights on applying empirical analysis to their own programs. Although this process can be costly and time consuming without a supportive institutional environment, it could provide useful evidence-based guidelines for practice with substantial payoffs for both the program and the students.