Rolling admissions
Contextualizing the SAT: Experimental Evidence on College Admission Recommendations for Low-SES Applicants
Michael Bastedo et al.
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although it is well established that college entrance exams have become a key factor for admission to selective institutions, less is known about the influence of test scores in relation to other academic factors in the evaluation of a student’s application file. This study conducts a randomized-controlled trial to determine whether providing students’ test scores in context - how they perform relative to their school and neighborhood peers - increases the likelihood that admission officers (n = 321) would recommend admitting low-socioeconomic status (SES) applicants. The study also examines how including a personal admission essay that conveys grit, or ability to persevere in the pursuit of long-term goals, influences admission decision making. Admission officers in the contextual condition were significantly more likely to accept both the low-SES and high-SES applicant than those without contextual information on test scores; however, they were not more likely to accept applicants who convey grit in their personal essays.
School punishment and interpersonal exclusion: Rejection, withdrawal, and separation from friends
Wade Jacobsen
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
School suspension is a common form of punishment in the United States that is disproportionately concentrated among racial minority and disadvantaged youth. In labeling theories, the implication is that such stigmatized sanctions may lead to interpersonal exclusion from normative others and to greater involvement with antisocial peers. I test this implication in the context of rural schools by 1) examining the association between suspension and discontinuity in same‐grade friendship ties, focusing on three mechanisms implied in labeling theories: rejection, withdrawal, and physical separation; 2) testing the association between suspension and increased involvement with antisocial peers; and (3) assessing whether these associations are stronger in smaller schools. Consistent with labeling theories, I find suspension associated with greater discontinuity in friendship ties, based on changes in the respondents’ friendship preferences and self‐reports of their peers. My findings are also consistent with changes in perceptual measures of exclusion. Additionally, I find suspension associated with greater involvement with substance‐using peers. Some but not all of these associations are stronger in smaller rural schools. Given the disproportionate distribution of suspension, my findings indicate that an excessive reliance on this exclusionary form of punishment may foster inequality among these youth.
Estimating classroom-level influences on literacy and numeracy: A twin study
Katrina Grasby et al.
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Classroom-level influences on literacy skills in kindergarten through Grade 2, and on literacy and numeracy skills in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, were examined by comparing the similarity of twins who shared or did not share classrooms with each other. We analyzed two samples using structural equation modeling adapted for twin data. The first, Study 1, was of Australia-wide tests of literacy and numeracy, with 1,098; 1,080; 790, and 812 complete twin pairs contributing data for Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The second, Study 2, was of literacy tests from 753 twin pairs from kindergarten through Grade 2, which included a sample of United States and Australian students and was a reanalysis and extension of Byrne et al. (2010). Classroom effects were mostly nonsignificant; they accounted for only 2-3% of variance in achievement when averaged over tests and grades. Although the averaged effects may represent a lower-bound figure for classroom effects, and the design cannot detect classroom influences limited to individual students, the results are at odds with claims in public discourse of substantial classroom-level influences, which are mostly portrayed as teacher effects.
Price Effects of Non-Profit College and University Mergers
Lauren Russell
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Non-profit colleges and universities have merged across the US, citing economies of scale and scope. Yet, whether these mergers raise prices has not been empirically assessed. Using a retrospective merger evaluation approach, I estimate that the average merger between 2000 and 2015 increased tuition and fees by 5-7% relative to non-merging institutions in the same state and sector (public or non-profit). Effects on net prices are estimated imprecisely, but the results are suggestive that non-profit colleges use mergers to increase price discrimination.
Real Effects of Workers’ Financial Distress: Evidence from Teacher Spillovers
Gonzalo Maturana & Jordan Nickerson
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the effects of financial distress on workers’ productivity, using detailed data from the public school system in Texas. We show that the student passing rate in the median-sized grade decreases by 1.2 percentage points following a declaration of bankruptcy by one teacher in the grade. The effect of financial distress increases with the complexity of the task. Overall, our results suggest a potential feedback effect of worker financial distress on local economic conditions and thus contribute to the understanding of the propagation, and potential amplification, of shocks through a local economy.
Teachers’ Union Power in a Budget Crunch: Lasting Ramifications of Differential Spending Responses to the Great Recession
Walker Swain & Christopher Redding
Educational Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the wake of the 2007 housing crash and subsequent economic recession, state legislatures across the country faced substantial declines in revenues, and by 2011, for the first time in more than a decade, average spending on education declined. However, states’ budgetary responses to the Great Recession were decidedly uneven, with some making lasting cuts to public education. This article uses longitudinal data on state-level educational spending, politics, demographics, economic well-being, and a unique set of union strength indicators to assess the strength of teachers’ unions as advocates for education spending by examining their role in states’ varied budgetary responses to the Great Recession. We find that states with laws prohibiting collective bargaining for teachers and states with lower union dues per teacher made substantially larger cuts to overall educational expenditures, even after controlling for time-invariant state characteristics, secular trends, and an extensive set of time-variant state-level covariates.
High School Course Access and Postsecondary STEM Enrollment and Attainment
Rajeev Darolia et al.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effects of access to high school math and science courses on postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enrollment and degree attainment using administrative data from Missouri. Our data include more than 140,000 students from 14 cohorts entering the 4-year public university system. The effects of high school course access are identified by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in course offerings within high schools over time. We find that differential access to high school courses does not affect postsecondary STEM enrollment or degree attainment. Our null results are estimated precisely enough to rule out moderate impacts.
Major Malfunction: A Field Experiment Correcting Undergraduates’ Beliefs about Salaries
John Conlon
Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming
Abstract:
I test, in a field experiment at a flagship state university in the US, whether providing college students salary information can affect their choices of major and classes. I find that undergraduates are substantially misinformed about mean salaries by major. On average, students in my sample underestimate mean salaries, but there is also large heterogeneity in beliefs across individuals. I also find that providing information to correct these errors has a large impact on students’ choices; students in the treatment group were nine percentage points (16%) more likely to major in a field about which they received information.
Preschoolers Find Ways to Resist Temptation After Learning That Willpower Can Be Energizing
Kyla Haimovitz, Carol Dweck & Gregory Walton
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children's tendency to delay gratification predicts important life outcomes, yet little is known about how to enhance delay of gratification other than by teaching task‐specific strategies. The present research investigated the effect of exposing children to a model who experiences the exertion of willpower as energizing. In two experiments, 86 4‐5 year‐olds were read a story that represented the exertion of willpower as energizing or a control story before taking part in a delay‐of‐gratification task. Children exposed to a storybook character who struggled with waiting, but eventually found it energizing, spontaneously generated more delay strategies, which enhanced delay. By promoting the search for effective strategies, this approach provides a promising direction for efforts to foster self‐regulation early in development.
The Effects of Full-Day Prekindergarten: Experimental Evidence of Impacts on Children’s School Readiness
Allison Atteberry, Daphna Bassok & Vivian Wong
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study is a randomized control trial of full- versus half-day prekindergarten (pre-K) in a school district near Denver, Colorado. Four-year-old children were randomly assigned an offer of half-day (4 days/week) or full-day (5 days/week) pre-K that increased class time by 600 hours. The full-day pre-K offer produced substantial, positive effects on children’s receptive vocabulary skills (0.275 standard deviations) by the end of pre-K. Among children enrolled in district schools, full-day participants also outperformed their peers on teacher-reported measures of cognition, literacy, math, physical, and socioemotional development. At kindergarten entry, children offered full day still outperformed peers on a widely used measure of basic literacy. The study provides the first rigorous evidence on the impact of full-day preschool on children’s school readiness skills.
Frequent mastery testing with second‐chance exams leads to enhanced student learning in undergraduate STEM
Jason Morphew et al.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Laboratory studies have routinely demonstrated that testing often leads to greater learning and retention than repeated studying. In the classroom, this effect has been replicated with memory and application tasks. However, studies of classrooms involving mathematical problem‐solving are sparse and have had mixed results. This paper presents the results of a quasi‐experimental study in a undergraduate STEM course that investigated more frequent testing that incorporated aspects of mastery testing and second‐chance testing. Students in the frequent‐testing cohort scored seven percentage points higher, earned twice the number of A's, and half the number of failing grades. The advantage of frequent second‐chance mastery testing was found for both multiple‐choice and free‐response questions and remained after controlling for differences in student ability. Women and underrepresented minority students benefited from the altered testing environment to the same extent as the general population.
Can a brief, digital skill training intervention help undergraduates “learn to learn” and improve their STEM achievement?
Matthew Bernacki, Lucie Vosicka & Jenifer Utz
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Students who drop out of their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors commonly report that they lack skills critical to STEM learning and career pursuits. Many training programs exist to develop students’ learning skills and they typically achieve small to medium effects on behaviors and performance. However, these programs require large investments of students’ and instructors’ time and effort, which limits their applicability to large lecture course formats commonly employed in early undergraduate STEM coursework. This study examined whether brief, digital training modules designed to help students apply learning strategies and self-regulated learning principles effectively in their STEM courses can impact students’ behaviors and performance in a large biology lecture course. Results indicate that a 2-hr Science of Learning to Learn training had significant effects on students’ use of resources for planning, monitoring, and strategy use, and improved scores on quizzes and exams. These findings indicate that a brief, self-guided, online training can increase desirable learning behaviors and improve STEM performance with minimal cost to learners or instructors. Implications for future design of interventions and their provision to students in need of support are discussed.
Why Do We Inflate Grades? The Effect of Adjunct Faculty Employment on Instructor Grading Standards
Kelly Chen, Zeynep Hansen & Scott Lowe
Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming
Abstract:
A burgeoning literature has documented the influence of adjunct instructors on student subsequent interest and success, but very little is known about its underlying mechanisms. This study investigates instructor choice of grading standards as one mediating channel by exploiting a unique university policy that converts full-time permanent lecturers from existing pool of part-time temporary instructors. We find that instructors hired on a temporary, part-time basis assign higher grades than their permanent full-time counterparts, with no discernible differences in student learning outcomes or perceived teaching effectiveness. The differential grading standards, however, appear to have a non-negligible impact on student enrollment patterns.