Learning
Florencia Torche
American Journal of Sociology, November 2011, Pages 763-807
Abstract:
A quarter century ago, an important finding in stratification research showed that the intergenerational occupational association was much weaker among college graduates than among those with lower levels of education. This article provides a comprehensive assessment of the "meritocratic power" of a college degree. Drawing on five longitudinal data sets, the author analyzes intergenerational mobility in terms of class, occupational status, earnings, and household income for men and women. Findings indicate that the intergenerational association is strong among those with low educational attainment; it weakens or disappears among bachelor's degree holders but reemerges among those with advanced degrees, leading to a U-shaped pattern of parental influence. Educational and labor market factors explain these differences in mobility: parental resources influence college selectivity, field of study, and earnings more strongly for advanced-degree holders than for those with a bachelor's degree alone.
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Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Premia in the United States, 1960-2000
Pedro Carneiro & Sokbae Lee
American Economic Review, October 2011, Pages 2309-2349
Abstract:
This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the average quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 6 percentage points in the college premium. A standard demand and supply framework can qualitatively account for the trend in the college and age premia over this period, but substantial quantitative adjustments are needed to account for changes in quality.
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A Punitive Environment Fosters Children's Dishonesty: A Natural Experiment
Victoria Talwar & Kang Lee
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study compared the lie-telling behavior of 3- and 4-year-old West African children (N = 84) from either a punitive or a nonpunitive school. Children were told not to peek at a toy when left alone in a room. Most children could not resist the temptation and peeked at the toy. When the experimenter asked them if they had peeked, the majority of the punitive school peekers lied about peeking at the toy while significantly fewer nonpunitive school children did so. The punitive school children were better able to maintain their deception than nonpunitive school children when answering follow-up questions. Thus, a punitive environment not only fosters increased dishonesty but also children's abilities to lie to conceal their transgressions.
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"I Need Help!" Social Class and Children's Help-Seeking in Elementary School
Jessica McCrory Calarco
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
What role do children play in education and stratification? Are they merely passive recipients of unequal opportunities that schools and parents create for them? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities? Through a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse, public elementary school, I show that children's social-class backgrounds affect when and how they seek help in the classroom. Compared to their working-class peers, middle-class children request more help from teachers and do so using different strategies. Rather than wait for assistance, they call out or approach teachers directly, even interrupting to make requests. In doing so, middle-class children receive more help from teachers, spend less time waiting, and are better able to complete assignments. By demonstrating these skills and strategies, middle-class children create their own advantages and contribute to inequalities in the classroom. These findings have implications for theories of cultural capital, stratification, and social reproduction.
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The Impact of Tuition Increases on Enrollment at Public Colleges and Universities
Steven Hemelt & Dave Marcotte
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2011, Pages 435-457
Abstract:
In this paper we review recent increases in tuition at public institutions and estimate impacts on enrollment. We use data on all U.S. public 4-year colleges and universities from 1991 to 2006 and illustrate that tuition increased dramatically beginning in the early part of this decade. We examine impacts of such increases on total enrollment and credit hours, and estimate differences by type of institution. We estimate that the average tuition and fee elasticity of total headcount is -0.0958. At the mean, a $100 increase in tuition and fees would lead to a decline in enrollment of about 0.25 percent, with larger effects at Research I universities. We find limited evidence that especially large tuition increases elicit disproportionate enrollment responses.
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General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Life-Cycle
Eric Hanushek, Ludger Woessmann & Lei Zhang
NBER Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
Policy debates about the balance of vocational and general education programs focus on the school-to-work transition. But with rapid technological change, gains in youth employment from vocational education may be offset by less adaptability and thus diminished employment later in life. To test our main hypothesis that any relative labor-market advantage of vocational education decreases with age, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using micro data for 18 countries from the International Adult Literacy Survey, we find strong support for the existence of such a trade-off, which is most pronounced in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. Results are robust to accounting for ability patterns and to propensity-score matching.
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Time to work or time to play: The effect of student employment on homework, sleep, and screen time
Charlene Marie Kalenkoski & Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use detailed time-diary information on high school students' daily activities from the 2003-2008 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) to investigate the effects of employment on the time a student spends on homework and other major activities. Time-diary data are more detailed and accurate than data derived from responses to "usual activity" survey questions underlying other analyses and capture the immediate effects of working that may well accumulate over time to affect future outcomes. Our results suggest that employment decreases the time that high school students spend on homework, which is human-capital building, on all days, but also decreases screen time on non-school days, which may be considered unproductive time. Employed teens get more than the recommended amount of sleep on school days, and only slightly less on non-school days.
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Expected future earnings, taxation, and university enrollment: A microeconometric model with uncertainty
Frank Fossen & Daniela Glocker
International Tax and Public Finance, December 2011, Pages 688-723
Abstract:
Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from starting to work right away. We estimate the ex-ante future paths of the expectation and variance of after-tax income for German high-school graduates, accounting for nonrandom selection. The enrollment model takes into account university dropout and unemployment risks. Consistently with expectations, the estimation results indicate that higher expected returns to a tertiary education increase the probability of university enrollment, whereas higher uncertainty among graduates decreases enrollment rates. A simulation based on the estimated model indicates that a revenue-neutral, flat-rate tax reform with an unchanged basic tax allowance would increase enrollment rates for men in Germany.
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Susan Dynarski, Joshua Hyman & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
NBER Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We use the random assignment in the Project STAR experiment to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We find that assignment to a small class increases the probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among blacks. Among those with the lowest ex ante probability of attending college, the effect is 11 percentage points. Smaller classes increase the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shift students towards high-earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and medicine), business and economics. We confirm the standard finding that test score effects fade out by middle school, but show that test score effects at the time of the experiment are an excellent predictor of long-term improvements in postsecondary outcomes. We compare the costs and impacts of this intervention with other tools for increasing postsecondary attainment, such as Head Start and financial aid, and conclude that early investments are no more cost effective than later investments in boosting adult educational attainment.
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Child Care and School Performance in Denmark and the United States
Gosta Esping-Andersen et al.
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Child care and early education policies may not only raise average achievement but may also be of special benefit for less advantaged children, in particular if programs are high quality. We test whether high quality child care is equalizing using rich longitudinal data from two comparison countries, Denmark and the United States. In Denmark, we find that enrollment in high-quality formal care at age 3 is associated with higher cognitive scores at age 11. Moreover, the findings suggest stronger effects for the lowest-income children and for children at the bottom of the test score distribution. In the US case, results are different. We find that enrollment in school or center based care is associated with higher cognitive scores at school entry, but the beneficial effects erode by age 11, particularly for disadvantaged children. Thus, the US results do not point to larger and more lasting effects for disadvantaged children. This may be because low income children attend poorer quality care and subsequently attend lower quality schools.
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Judith Scott-Clayton
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2011, Pages 506-527
Abstract:
Since 1964, the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program has provided funds to subsidize the wages of student employees, but it has never been studied directly. I use an instrumental variables difference-in-difference framework with administrative data from West Virginia to identify causal effects, comparing eligible and ineligible students across institutions with higher and lower FWS availability and using differences in FWS availability to instrument for actual FWS participation. I find no evidence that FWS participation improves academic outcomes for the full sample, but this masks significant negative effects for women and some significant positive effects for men. Although results should be interpreted cautiously given limitations of the sample, they represent the first direct, quasi-experimental evidence regarding the effect of the program.
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Laura Justice et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
With an increasing number of young children participating in preschool education, this study determined whether peer effects are present in this earliest sector of schooling. Specifically, this work examined whether peer effects were influential to preschoolers' growth in language skills over an academic year and whether peer effects manifest differently based on children's status in reference to their peers. Peer effects were assessed for 338 children in 49 classrooms. A significant interaction between the language skills of children's classmates and children's fall language skills indicated that peer effects were strongest for children with low language skills who were in classrooms that served children with relatively low skill levels, on average. Findings further showed that reference status, or children's relative standing to their peers, has the greater consequence for children with very low language skills in relation to their peers.
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Does Attending Elite Colleges Pay in China?
Hongbin Li et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate the return to attending elite colleges in China using 2010 data on fresh college graduates. We find that the gross return to attending elite colleges is as high as 26.4 percent, but this figure declines to 10.7 percent once we control for student ability, major, college location, individual characteristics, and family background. The wage premium is larger for female students and students with better-educated fathers. We also find that the human capital and experiences accumulated in elite colleges can explain almost all the wage premium.
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"Staffing to the Test": Are Today's School Personnel Practices Evidence Based?
Lora Cohen-Vogel
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2011, Pages 483-505
Abstract:
Faced with mounting policy pressures from federal and state accountability programs, school leaders are reallocating curricula, time, even diet in an attempt to boost student achievement. To explore whether they are using test score data to reallocate their teacher resources as well, I designed a cross-case, cross-sectional study and explored principals' reported staffing practices in one higher performing and one lower performing elementary school in each of five Florida school districts. Findings show that school leaders are "staffing to the test" by hiring, moving, and developing teachers in an effort to increase their schools' overall performance. The paper discusses the implications of evidence-based staffing for policy, practice and future research.
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Does School Autonomy Make Sense Everywhere? Panel Estimates from PISA
Eric Hanushek, Susanne Link & Ludger Woessmann
NBER Working Paper, November 2011
Abstract:
Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed systems but detrimental in low-performing systems. We construct a panel dataset from the four waves of international PISA tests spanning 2000-2009, comprising over one million students in 42 countries. Relying on panel estimation with country fixed effects, we identify the effect of school autonomy from within-country changes in the average share of schools with autonomy over key elements of school operations. Our results show that autonomy affects student achievement negatively in developing and low-performing countries, but positively in developed and high-performing countries. These results are unaffected by a wide variety of robustness and specification tests, providing confidence in the need for nuanced application of reform ideas.
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"Everybody thinking differently": K-12 is a leverage point
Diana Fisher
System Dynamics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
As a global community we are faced with many systemic problems. An analytical approach that has proven successful in the study of dynamic feedback systems is systems thinking and system dynamics modeling. If systems thinking and system dynamics have been successfully applied to many systemic problems, why are we not teaching this analytical method to our children? It might be suggested that system dynamics is too sophisticated - much too difficult for children to learn. This suggestion would be wrong. Systems thinking and system dynamics modeling concepts that have been successfully taught for 20 years to students in the U.S.A., ages 5-18 years, are presented, with highlights describing some of the lessons/activities used.
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The Effect of Minimum Academic Requirements to Participate in Sports on High School Graduation
Marian Vidal-Fernández
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, August 2011
Abstract:
During the 1970s, state interscholastic associations imposed rules requiring student athletes to pass a certain number of subjects in order to be allowed to participate in school sports. Using the NLSY together with a newly collected dataset on the stringency of the rules, I exploit variation in the rules across states to estimate their effects on high school graduation. I find that requiring students to pass one additional course is associated with a two-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of graduation. This result survives a number of robustness checks, including finding no effect for female students who at the time had limited access to interscholastic competitions.
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Teaching Practices and Social Capital
Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc & Andrei Shleifer
NBER Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
We use several data sets to consider the effect of teaching practices on student beliefs, as well as on organization of firms and institutions. In cross-country data, we show that teaching practices (such as copying from the board versus working on projects together) are strongly related to various dimensions of social capital, from beliefs in cooperation to institutional outcomes. We then use micro-data to investigate the influence of teaching practices on student beliefs about cooperation both with each other and with teachers, and students' involvement in civic life. A two-stage least square strategy provides evidence that teaching practices have an independent sizeable effect on student social capital. The relationship between teaching practices and student test performance is nonlinear. The evidence supports the idea that progressive education promotes social capital.
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Do Principals Fire the Worst Teachers?
Brian Jacob
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2011, Pages 403-434
Abstract:
This article takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union signed a new collective bargaining agreement that gave principals the flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers for any reason and without the documentation and hearing process that is typically required for such dismissals. With the cooperation of the CPS, I matched information on all teachers who were eligible for dismissal with records indicating which teachers were dismissed. With these data, I estimate the relative weight that school administrators place on a variety of teacher characteristics. I find evidence that principals do consider teacher absences and value-added measures, along with several demographic characteristics, in determining which teachers to dismiss.
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Paul Glewwe et al.
NBER Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students' years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality. Then an even higher bar is set in terms of econometric methods used, leaving 43 "high quality" studies. Finally, results are also shown separately for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially when the evidence is limited to the "high quality" studies. The few variables that do have significant effects - e.g. availability of desks, teacher knowledge of the subjects they teach, and teacher absence - are not particularly surprising and thus provide little guidance for future policies and programs.