Learning Curves
Growth-Mindset Intervention Delivered by Teachers Boosts Achievement in Early Adolescence
Tenelle Porter et al.
Psychological Science, July 2022, Pages 1086-1096
Abstract:
School underachievement is a persistent problem in the United States. Direct-to-student, computer-delivered growth-mindset interventions have shown promise as a way to improve achievement for students at risk of failing in school; however, these interventions benefit only students who happen to be in classrooms that support growth-mindset beliefs. Here, we tested a teacher-delivered growth-mindset intervention for U.S. adolescents in Grades 6 and 7 that was designed to both impart growth-mindset beliefs and create a supportive classroom environment where those beliefs could flourish (N = 1,996 students, N = 50 teachers). The intervention improved the grades of struggling students in the target class by 0.27 standard deviations, or 2.81 grade percentage points. The effects were largest for students whose teachers endorsed fixed mindsets before the intervention. This large-scale, randomized controlled trial demonstrates that growth-mindset interventions can produce gains when delivered by teachers.
Do EITC eligibility rules encourage college enrollment?
Shogher Ohannessian & Ben Ost
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
EITC benefits are substantially more generous for households with more qualifying children, and children ages 19-23 only qualify if they enroll in college. These eligibility rules result in an implicit college attendance subsidy - up to $4000 per year. The maximum subsidy is targeted at households earning approximately $20,000, so it represents a large fraction of both total earnings and net tuition. We find no evidence that college enrollment responds to these substantial financial incentives and can statistically rule out moderate effects.
Variation in the Relationship between School Spending and Achievement: Progressive Spending Is Efficient
Emily Rauscher & Yifan Shen
American Journal of Sociology, July 2022, Pages 189-223
Abstract:
The equity-efficiency trade-off and cumulative return theories predict larger returns to school spending in areas with higher previous investment in children. Equity-not efficiency-is therefore used to justify progressive school funding: spending more in communities with fewer financial resources. Yet it remains unclear how returns to school spending vary across areas by previous investment. Using county-level panel data for 2009-18 from the Stanford Education Data Archive, the Census Finance Survey, and National Vital Statistics, the authors estimate achievement returns to school spending and test whether returns vary between counties with low and high levels of initial human capital (measured as birth weight), child poverty, and previous spending. Spending returns are higher among counties with low previous investment (counties that also have a high percentage of Black students). Evidence of diminishing returns by previous investment documents another way that schools increase equality and establishes another argument for progressive school funding: efficiency.
Reining in Punitive Discipline: Recent Trends in Exclusionary School Discipline Disparities
NaYoung Hwang et al.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, June 2022
Abstract:
Concerns around disparities in suspensions and expulsions from schools in the United States have resulted in a concerted effort to reduce the use of exclusionary school discipline. In this article, the authors describe trends in the use of exclusionary discipline in Indiana and Oregon, two U.S. states with different school discipline policy climates. The findings point to a substantial decline in the use of suspensions and other forms of exclusionary discipline in both states. The authors further find that racial and socioeconomic disparities have recently narrowed in both states, though Black students and students who were identified as economically disadvantaged remain likely to be disproportionately exposed to exclusionary discipline. These trends, and their timing, illustrate the broad-based change in disciplinary norms that has occurred in the U.S. over the past decade.
Are Effective Teachers for Students with Disabilities Effective Teachers for All?
Jesse Wood et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most measures of teacher value-added measures (VAM) fail to distinguish between a teacher's effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. We create two VAM measures: one focusing on teachers' effectiveness in improving outcomes for SWDs, and one for non-SWDs. We find top-performing teachers for non-SWDs often have relatively lower VAMs for SWDs, and that SWDs sort to teachers with lower scores in both VAMs. Overall, SWD-specific VAMs may be more suitable for identifying which teachers have a history of effectiveness with SWDs and could play a role in ensuring that students are being optimally assigned to these teachers.
The Effects of Undergraduate Financing on Advanced Degree Attainment
Dirk Witteveen
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the effects of undergraduate financing on subsequent advanced degree attainment in a context characterized by a shift away from traditional grant aid programs and toward widespread student loans. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates, 2SLS Lewbel method regressions estimate the effects of having received undergraduate grant aid and having student loan debt on the chances of attaining an advanced degree during the next ten years. Results suggest a large positive influence of receiving undergraduate grant aid on advanced degree attainment (+8.5%), thus boosting higher education attainment far beyond only an undergraduate degree across college graduation cohorts between 1986 and 2007. Conversely, having loan debt upon college graduation affected the chances of advanced degree attainment negatively. The increased reliance on loans during undergraduate studies coincided with its long-term (or "spillover") effect on advanced degree attainment being null in the late 1980s to a substantive deficit of more than 4 percentage-points from the 2000s onward. Counterfactual projection models suggest that loan-taking after the 1992 Higher Education Act suppressed the number of advanced degree holders in the US labor market and will continue to do so given current undergraduate financing patterns.
Causal inference on the engagement effects of athletic participation from within-student variation
Richard DiSalvo & Jing Che
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study how athletic participation relates to two measures of engagement, school attendance and disciplinary suspension, among students in an urban school district. Following one strand of the literature, we study within-student variation, comparing the same student when playing sports versus not. To this literature, we contribute a microeconomic model to better interpret estimates obtained using such variation, and we propose and employ novel instrumental variables based on lagged season-specific sports choices and the sports-specific participation trajectories of other students. Our most rigorous models suggest positive effects of athletics on student attendance, but no significant effects on disciplinary suspension.
Exploring the Truth of Michael Yudin's Claim: The More Time Students With Disabilities Spend in General Classrooms, the Better They Do Academically
Douglas Fuchs, Hilary Mirowitz & Jennifer Gilbert
Journal of Disability Policy Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many K-12 students with disabilities (SWDs) spend a large portion of their school day in general classrooms because of a prevailing view that they are more appropriately challenging and beneficial than other educational placements. We questioned this belief by exploring a "dosage" hypothesis: The more time SWD are in general classrooms the better they do academically. We assembled a database spanning 1998 to 2015, inclusive. For nine of these years, we found both Office of Special Education Program's placement data and National Center for Education Statistics' reading data. We ran multilevel growth models to describe trends across time for the placement and reading data. Findings indicated a steadily increasing trend for general class placement and a positive but decelerating trend for reading performance, which together produced a widening placement-performance gap after 2007. Among 10 states/jurisdictions with the strongest positive trends for general class placement, there was no uniform pattern of reading performance across years. In short, we found little corroboration of a dosage hypothesis.
STEM Summer Programs for Underrepresented Youth Increase STEM Degrees
Sarah Cohodes, Helen Ho & Silvia Robles
NBER Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
The federal government and many individual organizations have invested in programs to support diversity in the STEM pipeline, including STEM summer programs for high school students, but there is little rigorous evidence of their efficacy. We fielded a randomized controlled trial to study a suite of such programs targeted to underrepresented high school students at an elite, technical institution. The STEM summer programs differ in their length (one week, six weeks, or six months) and modality (on-site or online). Students offered seats in the STEM summer programs are more likely to enroll in, persist through, and graduate from college, with gains in institutional quality coming from both the host institution and other elite universities. The programs also increase the likelihood that students graduate with a degree in a STEM field, with the most intensive program increasing four-year graduation with a STEM degree attainment by 33 percent. The shift to STEM degrees increases potential earnings by 2 to 6 percent. Program-induced gains in college quality fully account for the gains in graduation, but gains in STEM degree attainment are larger than predicted based on institutional differences.
Do Long Bus Rides Drive Down Academic Outcomes?
Sarah Cordes, Christopher Rick & Amy Ellen Schwartz
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet, little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York City to explore the morning commutes of more than 120,000 bus riders. We find that long bus rides are uncommon and that those with long bus rides are disproportionately Black and more likely to attend charter or district choice schools. We find deleterious effects of long bus rides on attendance and chronic absenteeism of district choice students.
Making the Grade (But Not Disclosing It): How Withholding Grades Affects Student Behavior and Employment
Eric Floyd, Sorabh Tomar & Daniel Lee
University of California Working Paper, May 2022
Abstract:
We study the effects of grade non-disclosure (GND) policies implemented within MBA programs at highly ranked business schools. GND precludes students from revealing their grades and grade point averages (GPAs) to employers. In the labor market, we find that GND weakens the positive relation between GPA and employer desirability. During the MBA program, we find that GND reduces students' academic effort within courses by approximately 4.9%, relative to comparable students not subject to the policy. Consistent with our model, in which abilities are potentially correlated and students can substitute effort towards other activities in order to signal GPA-related ability, students participate in more extracurricular activities and enroll in more difficult courses under GND. Finally, we show that students' tenure with their first employers after graduation decreases following GND.
College-for-some or college-for-all?: Inequality in the relationship between educational expectations and educational attainment across academic achievement
Samuel Fishman
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The predominant college-for-all ethos in the US education system proposes that all students should attend college regardless of academic achievement. An underlying assumption is that higher adolescent educational expectations will result in increased educational attainment, net of academic achievement. This study evaluates this assumption using data from the Education Longitudinal Study and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Results from educational attainment models reveal interactions between expectations and achievement. Respondents with high levels of achievement have a stronger association between expectations and educational attainment than their peers with lower achievement levels. Thus, adolescents with lower achievement levels may receive fewer long-term benefits from ambitious college expectations than previously believed. Such findings suggest that interventions which jointly increase educational expectations and academic achievement may have the most positive impact on reducing education inequity.