Life Lessons
The Effect of Early Childhood Education on Adult Criminality: Evidence from the 1960s through 1990s
John Anders, Andrew Barr & Alexander Smith
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023, Pages 37-69
Abstract:
We compare the effects of early childhood education on adult criminal behavior across time periods, using administrative crime data that provide significant precision advantages over existing work. We find that improvements in early childhood education led to large (20 percent) reductions in later criminal behavior, reductions that far exceed those implied by estimates of test score gains in prior studies. While the benefits generated account for a large portion of the costs of the education provided, we find substantial relative gains from the targeting of funds to high-poverty areas and areas without existing access to subsidized care.
The Long-Run Effects of Peers on Mental Health
Lukas Kiessling & Jonathan Norris
Economic Journal, January 2023, Pages 281–322
Abstract:
This paper studies how peers in school affect students’ mental health. Guided by a theoretical framework, we find that increasing students’ relative ranks in their cohorts by one standard deviation improves their mental health by 6% of a standard deviation conditional on own ability. These effects are more pronounced for low-ability students, persistent for at least 14 years and carry over to economic long-run outcomes. Moreover, we document a pronounced asymmetry: Students who receive negative rather than positive shocks react more strongly. Our findings therefore provide evidence on how the school environment can have long-lasting consequences for individuals’ well-being.
School-Based Healthcare and Absenteeism: Evidence from Telemedicine
Sarah Komisarow & Steven Hemelt
Education Finance and Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs) provide students with access to healthcare during the regular school day through private videoconferencing with a healthcare provider. We exploit variation over time in SBTC openings across schools in three rural districts in North Carolina. We find that school-level SBTC access reduces the likelihood that a student is chronically absent by 2.5 percentage points (29 percent) and reduces the number of days absent by about 0.8 days (10 percent). Relatedly, access to an SBTC increases the likelihood of math and reading test-taking by between 1.8-2.0 percentage points (about 2 percent). Heterogeneity analyses suggest that these effects are driven by male students. Finally, we see suggestive evidence that SBTC access reduces violent or weapons-related disciplinary infractions among students but has little influence on other forms of misbehavior.
Indoor Air Quality and Learning: Evidence from A Large Field Study in Primary Schools
Juan Palacios et al.
MIT Working Paper, December 2022
Abstract:
Governments devote a large share of public budgets to construct, repair, and modernize school facilities. However, evidence on whether investments in the physical state of schools translate into better student outcomes is scant. In this study, we report the results of a large field study on the implications of poor air quality inside classrooms − a key performance measure of school mechanical ventilation systems. We continuously monitor the air quality (i.e., CO2), together with a rich set of indoor environmental parameters in 216 classrooms in the Netherlands. We link indoor air quality conditions to the outcomes on semi-annual nationally standardized tests of 5,500 children, during a period of five school terms (from 2018 to 2020). Using a fixed-effects strategy, relying on within-pupil changes in air quality conditions and test results, we document that exposure to poor indoor air quality during the school term preceding a test is associated with significantly lower test results: a one standard deviation increase in the school-term average daily peak of CO2 leads to a 0.11 standard deviation decrease in subsequent test scores. The estimates based on plausibly exogenous variation driven by mechanical ventilation system breakdown events confirm the robustness of the results. Our results add to the ongoing debate on the determinants of student human capital accumulation, highlighting the role of school infrastructure in shaping learning outcomes.
A Faustian bargain? Rethinking the role of debt in law students' career choices
Steven Boutcher et al.
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the absence of strong empirical evidence to support the relationship, legal scholars have long argued that a model of financing legal education through student debt makes it difficult, if not impossible, for most students to take seriously a career path in government and public interest (GPI) law, where salaries are generally lower than private, corporate practice. Drawing from a multiwave, panel survey of law students, we take advantage of a unique tuition remission intervention that occurred at the founding of University of California Irvine (UCI) Law, resulting in a natural, quasi-experiment. Using ordinary least squares regression and an instrumental variables approach, we ask whether law student debt influences the likelihood that students will (1) launch their careers in the GPI and (2) aspire to the GPI sector 5 years after graduation. We find little to no evidence that student debt is a barrier to a graduate's decision to take a position in the GPI sector at career launch or that debt is a factor in a graduate's career aspirations at UCI law school during the study period. These counterintuitive findings provoke new questions about our understanding of debt in the context of legal education and the types of interventions that might facilitate greater entry into the public sector.
Universal Pre-K and College Enrollment: Is There a Link?
William Gormley et al.
AERA Open, January 2023
Abstract:
In this study, we used data from a cohort of 4,033 Tulsa kindergarten students to investigate the relationship between pre-K enrollment and later college enrollment. Specifically, we tested whether participation in the Tulsa Public Schools universal pre-K program and the Tulsa Community Action Project (CAP) Head Start program predicted enrollment in 2- or 4-year colleges. We used propensity score weighting with multiply imputed data sets to estimate these associations. We found that college enrollment was 12 percentage points higher for Tulsa pre-K alumni compared with former students who did not attend Tulsa pre-K or Head Start. College enrollment was 7.5 percentage points higher for Head Start alumni compared to former students who did not attend Head Start or Tulsa pre-K, but this difference was only marginally significant. Tulsa pre-K attendance was associated with 2-year college enrollment among students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, but only among Black and Hispanic students did it strongly predict 4-year college enrollment.
Uneven Progress: Recent Trends in Academic Performance Among U.S. School Districts
Kaylee Matheny et al.
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use data from the Stanford Education Data Archive to describe district-level trends in average academic achievement between 2009 and 2019. Although on average school districts’ test scores improved very modestly (by about 0.001 standard deviations per year), there is significant variation among districts. Moreover, we find that average test score disparities between nonpoor and poor students and between White and Black students are growing; those between White and Hispanic students are shrinking. We find no evidence of achievement-equity synergies or trade-offs: Improvements in overall achievement are uncorrelated with trends in achievement disparities. Finally, we find that the strongest predictors of achievement disparity trends are the levels and trends in within-district racial and socioeconomic segregation and changes in differential access to certified teachers.
The Boundaries of Competition: Examining Charter Schools’ Impact on Traditional Schools
Matthew Uttermark et al.
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
For decades, charter schools have been promoted as a panacea for increasing competition in the educational marketplace. Supporters argue that increased choice forces neighboring schools to innovate, while opponents contend that charters “skim” students and funds away from traditional public schools (TPS). We test the two differing views by comparing academic achievement and school segregation in TPS in South Florida facing competition from charter schools compared to TPS with no competition. We find that when a charter school moves into the community, it fails to substantively change test scores or diversity of the nearby TPS, even 10 years after a charter is established.
Human Capital Investment after the Storm
Emily Gallagher, Stephen Billings & Lowell Ricketts
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does household exposure to a natural disaster affect higher education investments? Using variation in flooding from Hurricane Harvey (2017), we find that college-aged adults from flooded blocks in Houston are 7% less likely than counterparts to have student loans after Harvey, with larger effects in areas with more potential first-generation students. We find a similar relative decline in enrollment at more exposed Texas universities and colleges and a shift toward majors with higher expected earnings. Our results highlight a decrease in the quantity but an increase in the intensity of investments in human capital after the storm.
How does performance management affect social equity? Evidence from New York City public schools
Weijie Wang
Public Administration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
An ongoing tension exists in the relationship between performance regimes and equity. On the one hand, performance regimes could set goals to reduce disparate outcomes. However, performance regimes are associated with strategic behaviors, such as cream skimming, that could worsen outcomes for marginalized groups. This article contributes to this debate by examining the use of growth measures of performance on achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged subgroups of students in New York City public schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, this study credibly identifies the causal effects of performance signals on equity outcomes. Results show weak evidence of negative effects on equity, and the achievement gaps did not increase in most of the cases. The article also discusses how the incentives provided by growth measures can curb strategic behaviors. The findings provide measured optimism that the current generation of performance regimes can be designed to account for issues of equity.