School Is Out
"Everyone Thinks They're Special": How Schools Teach Children Their Social Station
Peter Francis Harvey
American Sociological Review, June 2023, Pages 493-521
Abstract:
Sociologists have identified many ways that childhood inequalities promote social reproduction. These inequalities are not always explicitly linked to what children are taught about their position and direction in the world, what I term their social station. Extant case studies find that social station socialization has meritocratic underpinnings (e.g., elite boarding schoolers are taught they are the "best of the best"). But societal changes, including increased emphasis on identity in educational institutions' and employers' evaluative practices, raise the prospect of similar changes in childhood socialization. I conducted three years of observations in two racially diverse elementary schools -- one upper-middle class, the other working class -- supplemented by interviews with 101 students, teachers, and parents. Students were taught markedly different lessons about their social station, but neither school predicated this on meritocratic achievement narratives. Overall, children at the upper-middle-class school were taught to see themselves as always-already special because of their internal qualities. Children at the working-class school were taught to see themselves as conditionally good if they adhered to external rules. Variations were visible for Asian American girls at the upper-middle-class school and poor students and Black students at the working-class school. I discuss the importance of school socialization and the implications of discrimination, identity rhetoric, and individualism for social reproduction.
How Informal Mentoring by Teachers, Counselors, and Coaches Supports Students' Long-Run Academic Success
Matthew Kraft, Alexander Bolves & Noelle Hurd
NBER Working Paper, May 2023
Abstract:
We document a largely unrecognized pathway through which schools promote human capital development -- by fostering informal mentoring relationships between students and teachers, counselors, and coaches. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents, we explore the nature and consequences of natural mentoring relationships by leveraging within-student variation in the timing of mentorship formation as well as differences in exposure among pairs of twins, best friends, and romantic partners. Results across difference-in-differences and pair fixed-effect specifications show consistent and meaningful positive effects on student attainment, with a conservative estimate of a 9.4 percentage point increase in college attendance. Effects are largest for students of lower socioeconomic status and robust to controls for individual characteristics and bounding exercises for selection on unobservables. Smaller class sizes and a school culture where students have a strong sense of belonging are important school-level predictors of having a K-12 natural mentor.
School Choice, Competition, and Aggregate School Quality
Michael Gilraine, Uros Petronijevic & John Singleton
NBER Working Paper, June 2023
Abstract:
This paper develops and estimates an empirical framework that evaluates the impact of charter school choice on education quality in the aggregate. We estimate the model using student-level data from North Carolina. We find that North Carolina's lifting of its statewide charter school cap raised the average public school's value-added by around 0.01 standard deviations (on the student test score distribution). We calculate the total human capital returns of the expansion at above $100,000 per charter school enrollee. We further show that competition drives the aggregate gains; test score impacts on students induced into charter schools by the policy are negative.
Does test-based accountability improve more than just test scores?
Katherine McElroy
Economics of Education Review, June 2023
Abstract:
This paper estimates the long-run effects of school accountability on educational attainment by exploiting two sources of variation: staggered implementation of accountability across states and individuals' exposure to accountability. I find 12 years of exposure to school accountability leads to an increase in the likelihood of graduating high school by 2.3 percentage points but has no statistically significant effect on college attendance or the likelihood of receiving a Bachelor's degree. However, racial heterogeneity shows Hispanic students experience a significant increase in the likelihood of attending college. I rule out changes in school expenditures and teacher characteristics as potential mechanisms and present suggestive evidence that schools are classifying more students as learning disabled. Lastly, accountability is more effective in conjunction with promotion gates.
Incidence and Outcomes of School Finance Litigation: 1968-2021
Eric Hanushek & Matthew Joyce-Wirtz
NBER Working Paper, May 2023
Abstract:
School finance court cases have proceeded one or more times in all but two states. Plaintiffs ask the courts to rule that the existing funding formula is unconstitutional under state constitutions, and the defendants call for continuation of the existing finance formula. By compiling and analyzing the universe of such cases, we can accurately describe the nature of the cases, the decisions made, and the long run impact on overall financing of schools. Defendants win a slight majority of decisions with, surprisingly, their victories coming most frequently in low spending states and in low achieving states. And, while plaintiff victories on average yield an immediate increase in funding, they have no influence on long run growth in school spending.
Enhancing economic freedom via school choice and competition: Have state laws been enabling enough to generate broad-based effects?
John Garen
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
An aspect of economic freedom that varies across U.S. states is K-12 educational freedom. Some states allow a degree of choice for families in selecting schools outside public schools for their children. However, the enabling laws for such programs are often quite restrictive and limited to few children. Can this limited degree of competition and choice have a noticeable effect on an entire state's overall K-12 performance? I find strikingly large test score gains for states that have adopted voucher programs and/or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), swamping the effect of per pupil K-12 spending on test scores. Moreover, vouchers and ESAs are associated with less per pupil spending. These effects are robust to a host of specification checks. A key factor is the amount of a program's funding that "follows the student," even if a small number of students are eligible. Overall, it seems that even a small measure of educational freedom has a large effect.
Public Education and Intergenerational Housing Wealth Effects
Michael Gilraine, James Graham & Angela Zheng
NBER Working Paper, June 2023
Abstract:
While rising house prices benefit existing homeowners, we document a new channel through which price shocks have intergenerational wealth effects. Using panel data from school zones within a large U.S. school district, we find that higher local house prices lead to improvements in local school quality, thereby increasing child human capital and future incomes. We quantify this housing wealth channel using an overlapping generations model with neighborhood choice, spatial equilibrium, and endogenous school quality. Housing market shocks in the model generate large intra- and intergenerational wealth effects, with the latter accounting for over half of total wealth effects.
Classed Beginnings: Status Socialization in Two Preschool Classrooms
Hannah Espy & Freda Lynn
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, May 2023
Abstract:
Research on class inequality in education shows how the hidden curriculum -- the tacit yet systematic lessons taught alongside the official curriculum -- tends to favor the cultural capital that class-advantaged students bring from home over that of their less advantaged peers. This ethnography instead explores variation in what schools implicitly teach and how organizations potentially class their members. Comparing one Head Start with one tuition-charging preschool, the authors document how Head Start implicitly treats preschoolers, who are from predominantly disadvantaged backgrounds, as students who lack decision-making power and occupy the lowest position in a rigid status hierarchy. In contrast, the advantaged preschoolers were implicitly encouraged to take ownership of their actions, make the curriculum work for them, and activate support from teachers and administrators. Insofar as this "internal control" mindset of the tuition-charging preschool is favored in later academic and professional arenas, the authors argue that organizations can be agents of class socialization.
What do students gain from banks in schools? A field study
Michael Collins & Madelaine L'Esperance
Review of Economics of the Household, June 2023, Pages 567-590
Abstract:
This field study estimates the short-run effects of banks in schools on students' financial behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge. The presence of in-school banking programs increased the rate that students owned bank accounts, improved students' perceptions of banks, and increased indicators of financial socialization. Using the random assignment of banks at the school level as an instrument, being banked improved students' attitudes about banking services and increased the rate that students engaged with their parents on financial issues. Banks in schools do not appear to influence student financial literacy or savings levels, however. Exposure to banking at school primarily serves as a mechanism to increase students' awareness of financial services, and leads to more parent-child interactions related to financial issues.
The Effect of Right to Work Laws on Union Membership and School Resources: Evidence from 1942-2017
Melissa Arnold Lyon
Educational Researcher, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision, the U.S. Supreme Court mandated that all public sector workers, including teachers, operate in a Right to Work (RTW) framework. In the years since, teachers' unions have not experienced the mass exodus that some predicted, but should we expect them to? Using an original, historical data set spanning 1942-2017, I examine the effect of prior RTW policies on teachers' union membership and school expenditures. I find that RTW policies decrease teachers' union membership by roughly 43% and reduce educational expenditures by nearly $800 per pupil. Importantly, effects take roughly 10 years to clearly materialize. Additional analyses provide support for the notion that effects on school resources are driven, in part, by effects on union membership.
What Types of Novelty Are Most Disruptive?
Erin Leahey, Jina Lee & Russell Funk
American Sociological Review, June 2023, Pages 562-597
Abstract:
Novelty and impact are key characteristics of the scientific enterprise. Classic theories of scientific change distinguish among different types of novelty and emphasize how a new idea interacts with previous work and influences future flows of knowledge. However, even recently developed measures of novelty remain unidimensional, and continued reliance on citation counts captures only the amount, but not the nature, of scientific impact. To better align theoretical and empirical work, we attend to different types of novelty (new results, new theories, and new methods) and whether a scientific offering has a consolidating form of influence (bringing renewed attention to foundational ideas) or a disruptive one (prompting subsequent scholars to overlook them). By integrating data from the Web of Science (to measure the nature of influence) with essays written by authors of Citation Classics (to measure novelty type), and by joining computational text analysis with statistical analyses, we demonstrate clear and robust patterns between type of novelty and the nature of scientific influence. As expected, new methods tend to be more disruptive, whereas new theories tend to be less disruptive. Surprisingly, new results do not have a robust effect on the nature of scientific influence.
Teachers Are Not Lemons: An Examination of Spillover Effects When Teachers Transfer Away From Turnaround Schools
Lam Pham
Educational Researcher, forthcoming
Abstract:
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, whole-school reforms will continue to be a prominent strategy for improving student outcomes in low-performing schools. As reform models have proliferated, so has research evaluating the impact in reform schools. However, previous evaluations have rarely examined unintended spillover effects in nonreform schools. With data from Tennessee, this study uses difference-in-differences models to estimate spillover effects from teachers who transfer when their school begins implementing turnaround reforms. Results show that teachers who transfer tend to be less effective than teachers who stay, and they tend to move into nearby schools that are themselves low-performing. However, after transferring, these teachers produce modest positive spillover effects on student test scores in nonreform schools, which is likely explained by improvements in their effectiveness. Moreover, I find that working with more effective peers is a likely mechanism to explain improved teacher effectiveness after they transfer. Overall, this study draws attention to the need for future educational policy evaluations that quantify both intended and unintended spillover effects.