Got Skills
Detrimental effects of daylight-saving time on SAT scores
John Gaski & Jeff Sagarin
Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Generating a novel scion to several obliquely related literature streams, this study examined a particular high-profile cognitive outcome of a sometimes controversial government policy, daylight-saving time. Controlling for socioeconomic status by proxy, the principal finding was a surprisingly strong negative relationship between imposition of the time policy in a geographic area and SAT scores of local high school students. The cautious conclusion is that the daylight-saving time policy should possibly be even more controversial for, at minimum, its economic implications.
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Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes
Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel Oppenheimer & Erikka Vaughan
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that disfluency - the subjective experience of difficulty associated with cognitive operations - leads to deeper processing. Two studies explore the extent to which this deeper processing engendered by disfluency interventions can lead to improved memory performance. Study 1 found that information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than easier to read information in a controlled laboratory setting. Study 2 extended this finding to high school classrooms. The results suggest that superficial changes to learning materials could yield significant improvements in educational outcomes.
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Achievement and Behavior in Charter Schools: Drawing a More Complete Picture
Scott Imberman
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
I use a long panel with broad grade coverage to establish whether charter schools affect cognitive and non-cognitive skill formation. Schools that begin as charters generate large improvements in discipline and attendance but not test scores, with the exception of math in middle schools. This suggests improvements in non-cognitive but not cognitive skills, although these improvements do not persist if students return to regular public schools. Charters that convert from regular public schools have little impact on either skill type. These results are robust to potential biases from selection off of pre-charter trends, attrition and persistence.
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Education and Catch-up in the Industrial Revolution
Sascha Becker, Erik Hornung & Ludger Woessmann
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research increasingly stresses the role of human capital in modern economic development. Existing historical evidence - mostly from British textile industries - however rejects that formal education was important for the Industrial Revolution. Our new evidence from technological follower Prussia uses a unique schoolenrollment and factory-employment database linking 334 counties from preindustrial 1816 to two industrial phases in 1849 and 1882. Using pre-industrial education as instrument for later education and controlling extensively for preindustrial development, we find that basic education is significantly associated with non-textile industrialization in both phases of the Industrial Revolution. Panel-data models with county fixed effects confirm the results.
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Jaekyung Lee
American Educational Research Journal, December 2010, Pages 800-832
Abstract:
This study examines trends in American students' growth trajectories in reading and math achievement over the past three decades. Drawing upon multiple sources of national assessment data, cohort analyses provide new evidence on the stability and change of national academic growth curves. The emerging trends imply a tripartite pattern where American students are gaining ground at the pre/early primary school level, holding ground at the middle school level, and losing ground at the high school level. National progress in reading and math achievement at the pre/early primary school level appears to be offset by declines at the high school level. The study discusses the limitations and challenges of tracking academic growth trajectories across all different levels of education over the long term. It also calls for national P-16 education policy and research efforts toward sustainable academic growth and seamless educational transition.
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How Much Do Educational Outcomes Matter in OECD Countries?
Eric Hanushek & Ludger Woessmann
NBER Working Paper, November 2010
Abstract:
Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of tertiary education cannot. Under the growth model estimates and plausible projection parameters, school improvements falling within currently observed performance levels yield very large gains. The present value of OECD aggregate gains through 2090 could be as much as $275 trillion, or 13.8 percent of the discounted value of future GDP. Extensive sensitivity analyses indicate that, while differences between model frameworks and alternative parameter choices make a difference, the economic impact of improved educational outcomes remains enormous. Interestingly, the quantitative difference between an endogenous and neoclassical model framework - with improved skills affecting the long-run growth rate versus just the steady-state income level - matters less than academic discussions suggest. We close by discussing evidence on which education policy reforms may be able to bring about the simulated improvements in educational outcomes.
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Assessing the Effects of High School Exit Examinations
Jennifer Jellison Holme, Meredith Richards, Jo Beth Jimerson & Rebecca Cohen
Review of Educational Research, December 2010, Pages 476-526
Abstract:
High school exit exams are affecting a growing majority of high school students. Although exit testing polices were enacted with the goal of improving student achievement as well as postsecondary outcomes, they also have the potential for negative effects. To better understand the effects of exit testing policies, in this article the authors systematically review 46 unique studies that pertain to four domains of expected influence: student achievement, graduation, postsecondary outcomes, and school response. The evidence reviewed indicates that exit tests have produced few of the expected benefits and have been associated with costs for the most disadvantaged students. This review suggests policy modifications that may attenuate some of the negative effects.
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The Effect of Financial Rewards on Students' Achievement: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
Edwin Leuven, Hessel Oosterbeek & Bas van der Klaauw
Journal of the European Economic Association, December 2010, Pages 1243-1265
Abstract:
This paper reports on a randomized field experiment in which first-year university students could earn financial rewards for passing all first-year requirements within one year. Financial incentives turn out to have positive effects on achievement of high-ability students, whereas they have a negative impact on achievement of low-ability students. After three years these effects have increased, suggesting dynamic spillovers. The negative effects for less-able students are consistent with results from psychology and behavioral economics showing that external rewards may be detrimental for intrinsic motivation.
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The Challenging Pupil in the Classroom: The Effect of the Child on the Teacher
Renate Houts, Avshalom Caspi, Robert Pianta, Louise Arseneault & Terrie Moffitt
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Teaching children requires effort, and some children naturally require more effort than others. In this study, we tested whether teacher effort devoted to individual children varies as a function of each child's personal characteristics. In a nationwide longitudinal study of 1,102 pairs of twins followed for 7 years, between the ages of 5 and 12 years, we asked teachers about the effort they invested in each child in our study. We found that teacher effort was a function of heritable child characteristics, that a child's challenging behavior assessed at 5 years of age predicted teacher effort toward the same child at 12 years of age, and that challenging child behavior and teacher effort share a common etiology with respect to children's genes. We found that child effects accounted for a significant proportion of variance in teacher effort, but also observed variation in effort exerted by teachers that could not be attributed to children's behavior. Treating children who exhibit challenging behavior and enhancing teachers' skills in managing such behavior could increase the time and energy teachers have to deliver their curriculum in class.
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Forced to be Rich? Returns to Compulsory Schooling in Britain
Paul Devereux & Robert Hart
Economic Journal, December 2010, Pages 1345-1364
Abstract:
Do students benefit from compulsory schooling? In an important article, Oreopoulos (2006) studied the 1947 British compulsory schooling law change and found large returns to schooling of about 15% using the General Household Survey (GHS). Re-analysing this dataset, we find much smaller returns of about 3% on average with no evidence of any positive return for women and a return for men of 4-7%. Additionally, we utilise the New Earnings Survey Panel Data-set (NESPD) that has earnings information superior to that in the GHS and find similar estimates: zero returns for women and returns of 3 to 4% for men.
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Estimating the Effects of Students' Social Networks: Does Attending a Norm-Enforcing School Pay Off?
Brian Carolan
Urban Review, December 2010, Pages 422-440
Abstract:
In an attempt to forge tighter social relations, small school reformers advocate school designs intended to create smaller, more trusting, and more collaborative settings. These efforts to enhance students' social capital in the form of social closure are ultimately tied to improving academic outcomes. Using data derived from ELS: 2002, this study employs propensity scores in the context of multilevel models to estimate the effects of a specific school-level variant of social closure, referred to as a norm-enforcing school, on students' mathematics achievement. Results estimate that attending a norm-enforcing school has no effect on 12th-grade mathematics achievement. This result questions the presumed benefits of social capital and its emphasis on norm-enforcement and social control. Policy implications are discussed in light of contemporary urban school reform initiatives that focus on reductions in school size.
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The Unequal Effect of Adequate Yearly Progress: Evidence From School Visits
Abigail Brown & Jack Clift
American Educational Research Journal, December 2010, Pages 774-798
Abstract:
The authors report insights, based on annual site visits to elementary and middle schools in three states from 2004 to 2006, into the incentive effect of the No Child Left Behind Act's requirement that increasing percentages of students make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in every public school. They develop a framework, drawing on the physics concept of an attractor basin, to relate to theoretical literatures in economics and psychology the experiences that teachers, principals, and parents are having with the law. The authors anticipate - and find evidence of - very different incentive effects of the AYP requirements on schools of different initial achievement levels.
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The effectiveness and relative importance of choice in the classroom
Erika Patall, Harris Cooper & Susan Harris
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This investigation examined the effects of providing choices among homework assignments on motivation and subsequent academic performance. Students were randomly assigned within classrooms either to receive a choice of homework options or to be assigned an option for all homework in one instructional unit. Conditions were reversed for a second instructional unit. Results revealed that when students received a choice of homework they reported higher intrinsic motivation to do homework, felt more competent regarding the homework, and performed better on the unit test compared with when they did not have a choice. In addition, a trend suggested that having choices enhanced homework completion rates compared with when no choices were given. In a second analysis involving the same students, the importance of perceived provision of choice was examined in the context of student perceptions of their teachers' support for autonomy more broadly defined. Survey data showed that the relationship between perceptions of receiving autonomy support from teachers and intrinsic motivation for schoolwork could be fully accounted for by students' perceptions of receiving choices from their teachers. The limitations and implications of the study for research and practice are discussed.
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Assignment Choice: Do Students Choose Briefer Assignments or Finishing What They Started?
Meredith Hawthorn-Embree, Christopher Skinner, John Parkhurst, Michael O'Neil & Elisha Conley
School Psychology Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 143-151
Abstract:
Academic skill development requires engagement in effortful academic behaviors. Although students may be more likely to choose to engage in behaviors that require less effort, they also may be motivated to complete assignments that they have already begun. Seventh-grade students (N = 88) began a mathematics computation worksheet, but were stopped before completing the assignment. Students were then given a choice of completing the assignment they had already begun or a new assignment containing approximately 10% less work. Significantly more students chose to complete the lower-effort assignment. Those who choose the lower-effort assignment indicated that this choice was influenced by the amount of work required. However, those who chose the assignment that they already started indicated that they chose this assignment because they wanted to finish the assignment that they had begun. These results suggest that students are more likely to choose an assignment that requires less effort than one they have started but not yet finished. Discussion focuses on enhancing basic skill fluency and directions for future researchers.