You do the math
Jeffrey Brown, Chichun Fang & Francisco Gomes
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
We analyze the returns to education in a life-cycle framework that incorporates risk preferences, earnings volatility (including unemployment), and a progressive income tax and social insurance system. We show that such a framework significantly reduces the measured gains from education relative to simple present-value calculations, although the gains remain significant. For example, for a range of preference parameters, we find that individuals should be willing to pay 300 to 500 (200 to 250) thousand dollars to obtain a college (high school) degree in order to benefit from the 32 to 42 percent (20 to 38 percent) increase in annual certainty-equivalent consumption. We also explore how the measured value of education varies with preference parameters, by gender, and across time. In contrast to findings in the education wage-premia literature, which focuses on present values and which we replicate in our data, our model indicates that the gains from college education were flat in the 1980s and actually decreased significantly in 1991-2007 period. On the other hand, the gains to a high school education have increased quite dramatically over time. We also show that both high school and college education help to decrease the gender gap in life-time earnings, contrary again to the conclusion from wage premia calculations.
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The Role of Socioeconomic Status in SAT-Grade Relationships and in College Admissions Decisions
Paul Sackett et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the relationships among college admissions-test scores, secondary school grades, and subsequent academic performance. Scores on the SAT (a test widely used in the admissions process in the United States), secondary school grades, college grades, and SES measures from 143,606 students at 110 colleges and universities were examined, and results of these analyses were compared with results obtained using a 41-school data set including scores from the prior version of the SAT and using University of California data from prior research on the role of SES. In all the data sets, the SAT showed incremental validity over secondary school grades in predicting subsequent academic performance, and this incremental relationship was not substantially affected by controlling for SES. The SES of enrolled students was very similar to that of specific schools' applicant pools, which suggests that the barrier to college for low-SES students in the United States is a lower rate of entering the college admissions process, rather than exclusion on the part of colleges.
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David Weakliem, Gordon Gauchat & Bradley Wright
American Sociologist, September 2012, Pages 310-327
Abstract:
Previous research has found that there is a good deal of stability in departmental prestige, but has not considered its long-term dynamics. This paper investigates a hypothesis implied by some accounts in the sociology of science and organizational theory: that there will be a permanent component of prestige associated with the department or university. The data are the ratings of graduate departments of sociology between 1965 and 2007 using a measure of prestige constructed from hiring patterns. There is no evidence of a permanent component for individual departments, but there is evidence of a permanent difference between departments in "elite" universities and those in other universities. Despite change in rankings within each group, the difference between the groups remained constant over the period. That is, there appear to be enduring barriers that limit the mobility of individual departments.
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The Effect of School Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Academic Outcomes
Justine Hastings, Christopher Neilson & Seth Zimmerman
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
Using data on student outcomes and school choice lotteries from a low-income urban school district, we examine how school choice can affect student outcomes through increased motivation and personal effort as well as through improved school and peer inputs. First we use unique daily data on individual-level student absences and suspensions to show that lottery winners have significantly lower truancies after they learn about lottery outcomes but before they enroll in their new schools. The effects are largest for male students entering high school, whose truancy rates decline by 21% in the months after winning the lottery. We then examine the impact attending a chosen school has on student test score outcomes. We find substantial test score gains from attending a charter school and some evidence that choosing and attending a high value-added magnet school improves test scores as well. Our results contribute to current evidence that school choice programs can effectively raise test scores of participants. Our findings suggest that this may occur both through an immediate effect on student behavior and through the benefit of attending a higher-performing school.
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Gregory Park, David Lubinski & Camilla Benbow
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from a 40-year longitudinal study, the authors examined 3 related hypotheses about the effects of grade skipping on future educational and occupational outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). From a combined sample of 3,467 mathematically precocious students (top 1%), a combination of exact and propensity score matching was used to create balanced comparison groups of 363 grade skippers and 657 matched controls. Results suggest that grade skippers (a) were more likely to pursue advanced degrees in STEM and author peer-reviewed publications in STEM, (b) earned their degrees and authored their 1st publication earlier, and (c) accrued more total citations and highly cited publications by age 50 years. These patterns were consistent among male participants but less so among female participants (who had a greater tendency to pursue advanced degrees in medicine or law). Findings suggest that grade skipping may enhance STEM accomplishments among the mathematically talented.
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Grading New York: Accountability and Student Proficiency in America's Largest School District
Marcus Winters & Joshua Cowen
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2012, Pages 313-327
Abstract:
This article uses a regression discontinuity approach to study the influence of New York City's school grading policy on student math and English language arts (ELA) achievement. We find evidence that students in schools receiving a failing grade realized positive effects in English in the 1st year of sanction, but we find no statistically significant effect during the 1st year of sanction on student math achievement. There is no evidence that receiving letter grades other than F had positive effects. Finally, we show that students in schools that received an F-grade in the 1st year continued to realize a positive average ELA effect in the 2nd year and that a positive math effect was evident as well.
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The Labor Market Returns to a For-Profit College Education
Stephanie Riegg Cellini & Latika Chaudhary
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
A lengthy literature estimating the returns to education has largely ignored the for-profit sector. In this paper, we offer some of the first causal estimates of the earnings gains to for-profit colleges. We rely on restricted-use data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) to implement an individual fixed effects estimation strategy that allows us to control for time-invariant unobservable characteristics of students. We find that students who enroll in associate's degree programs in for-profit colleges experience earnings gains between 6 and 8 percent, although a 95 percent confidence interval suggests a range from -2.7 to 17.6 percent. These gains cannot be shown to be different from those of students in public community colleges. Students who complete associate's degrees in for-profit institutions earn around 22 percent, or 11 percent per year, and we find some evidence that this figure is higher than the returns experienced by public sector graduates. Our findings suggest that degree completion is an important determinant of for-profit quality and student success.
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Can Self-Control Explain Avoiding Free Money? Evidence from Interest-Free Student Loans
Brian Cadena & Benjamin Keys
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses insights from behavioral economics to explain a particularly surprising borrowing phenomenon: One in six undergraduate students offered interest-free loans turn them down. Models of impulse control predict that students may optimally reject subsidized loans to avoid excessive consumption during school. Using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), we investigate students' take-up decisions and identify a group of students for whom the loans create an especially tempting liquidity increase. Students who would receive the loan in cash are significantly more likely to turn it down, suggesting that consumers choose to limit their liquidity in economically meaningful situations.
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Luke Miller & Joel Mittleman
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The High Schools That Work school improvement initiative is the nation's largest comprehensive school reform model with over a thousand schools adopting its framework. The initiative's premise is that all students can meet the demands of a college preparatory curriculum if provided the right supports. Analyzing over a decade of data on student course taking and performance, we employ a rigorous comparative interrupted time series strategy to assess the extent to which HSTW meets its goal by increasing students' successful progression through the mathematics and science pipelines. Each pipeline consists of three college preparatory courses: algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 in mathematics and biology plus two physical science courses in science. The results show no effect on pipeline progression for the average student and some evidence of increased gaps in course taking between more advantaged and disadvantaged students.
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Jason Grissom & Katharine Strunk
Educational Policy, September 2012, Pages 663-695
Abstract:
This study examines the relative distribution of salary schedule returns to experience for beginning and veteran teachers. We argue that districts are likely to benefit from structuring salary schedules with greater experience returns early in the teaching career. To test this hypothesis, we match salary data to school-level student performance data on math and reading achievement tests across states. We find that frontloaded compensation schemes - those that allocate greater salary returns to experience to novice teachers - are associated with better performance in multiple grades and throughout the achievement distribution. Our results contribute to national debates concerning teacher compensation policies.
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Does Competition Improve Public School Efficiency? A Spatial Analysis
Kaustav Misra, Paul Grimes & Kevin Rogers
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Advocates for educational reform frequently call for policies to increase competition between schools because it is argued that market forces naturally lead to greater efficiencies, including improved student learning, when schools face competition. Researchers examining this issue are confronted with difficulties in defining reasonable measures of competition within local educational markets. We approach the problem through the application of geographical information system (GIS) tools to the development of a school competition index (SCI) for the state of Mississippi. The SCI captures the degree of competition each public school in the state faces from peer private schools spatially located within their local market area. We find that higher degrees of competition from private schools significantly increase public primary and high school efficiency, as measured by the proficiency rates on high-stakes examinations. It is anticipated that the current results will inform policymakers regarding the viability of competition-based reforms.
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Does School Autonomy Make Sense Everywhere? Panel Estimates from PISA
Eric Hanushek, Susanne Link & Ludger Woessmann
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
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 estimate 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 suggest that autonomy affects student achievement negatively in developing and low-performing countries, but positively in developed and high-performing countries. These estimates 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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Development, Discouragement, or Diversion? New Evidence on the Effects of College Remediation
Judith Scott-Clayton & Olga Rodriguez
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
Half of all college students take at least one remedial course as part of their postsecondary experience, despite mixed evidence on the effectiveness of this intervention. Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from a large urban community college system, we extend the research on remediation in three ways. First, we articulate three alternative models of remediation to help guide interpretation of sometimes conflicting results in the literature. Second, in addition to credits and degree completion we examine several under-explored outcomes, including the initial decision to enroll, grades in subsequent college courses, and post-treatment proficiency test scores. Finally, we exploit rich high school background data to examine heterogeneity in the impact of remedial assignment by predicted academic risk. We find that remediation does little to develop students' skills. But we also find relatively little evidence that it discourages either initial enrollment or persistence, except for a subgroup we identify as potentially mis-assigned to remediation. Instead, the primary effect of remediation appears to be diversionary: students simply take remedial courses instead of college-level courses. These diversionary effects are largest for the lowest-risk students. Implications for remediation policy are discussed.
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Steven McMullen & Katy Rouse
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 2007, 22 Wake County, NC traditional-calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling.
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College social engagement and school identification: Differences by college type and ethnicity
Melissa Witkow, Cari Gillen-O'Neel & Andrew Fuligni
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The importance of school-based social engagement for students' school identification and persistence has been well established among adolescents. No work, however, has examined the extent to which social engagement and school identification differ between students from Latino, Asian, and European-American backgrounds enrolled in community versus four-year colleges. With a sample of 373 college students, those enrolled in community colleges reported less college social engagement than those enrolled in four-year institutions. Additionally, although there were no differences in school identification in 12th grade, the school identification of community-college students decreased compared to their reports in high school, whereas that of four-year college students increased, such that identification differed according to college type. Controlling for school type, Latino and Asian students also reported lower levels of social engagement and identification than European-American students. Differences in identification according to school type and ethnicity were mediated by social engagement.
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Earnings Benefits of Tulsa's Pre-K Program for Different Income Groups
Timothy Bartik, William Gormley & Shirley Adelstein
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper estimates future adult earnings effects associated with a universal pre-K program in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These projections help to compensate for the lack of long-term data on universal pre-K programs, while using metrics that relate test scores to social benefits. Combining test-score data from the fall of 2006 and recent findings by Chetty et al. (2011) on the relationship between kindergarten test scores and adult earnings, we generate projections of adult earnings effects and a partial cost-benefit analysis of the Tulsa pre-K program. For both half-day and full-day programs, benefits are similar across program participants of different income, with benefit-to-cost ratios of 3- or 4-to-1. Because we only consider adult earnings benefits, actual benefit-cost ratios are likely higher, especially for disadvantaged children.
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The Influence of Habitus in the Relationship Between Cultural Capital and Academic Achievement
Michael Gaddis
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars routinely use cultural capital theory in an effort to explain class differences in academic success but often overlook the key concept of habitus. Rich, longstanding debates within the literature suggest the need for a closer examination of the individual effects of cultural capital and habitus. Drawing upon the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, I use a longitudinal dataset to examine the effects of multiple operationalizations of cultural capital on academic achievement and the mediating effects of habitus. Using first difference models to control for time-invariant unobserved characteristics, I find that typical operationalizations of cultural capital (i.e. high-arts participation and reading habits) have positive effects on GPA that are completely mediated through habitus. These results stress the importance of habitus in the relationship between cultural capital and academic achievement for disadvantaged youth.
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Glenn Ellison & Ashley Swanson
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
This paper explores differences in the frequency with which students from different schools reach high levels of math achievement. Data from the American Mathematics Competitions is used to produce counts of high-scoring students from more than two thousand public, coeducational, non-magnet, non-charter U.S. high schools. High-achieving students are found to be very far from evenly distributed. There are strong demographic predictors of high achievement. There are also large differences among seemingly similar schools. The unobserved heterogeneity across schools includes a thick tail of schools that produce many more high-achieving students than the average school. Gender-related differences and other breakdowns are also discussed.
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Anna Chung
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper I investigate whether students self-select into the U.S. for-profit colleges or whether the choice of for-profit sector is accidental or due to the reasons external to the students (geographic exposure to for-profit providers, tuition pricing, or random circumstances). The main student-level data samples come from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) and the associated Postsecondary Education Transcript Study (PETS:2000). I estimate a multinomial logit of college choice and find that students self-select into for-profit colleges and that the choice of for-profit college is affected by community college tuition. The probability of a student choosing a for-profit college is also heavily influenced by the student's socioeconomic background and parental involvement in the student's schooling. The students with higher school absenteeism are more likely to enroll into for-profit college. Finally, the concentration of for-profit colleges in the student's county is important for the choice of for-profit college.
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The Impact of Institutional Grant Aid on College Choice
Michael Hurwitz
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2012, Pages 344-363
Abstract:
In this study, I exploit exogenous differences in institutional policies regarding the treatment of home equity in grant aid allocation to estimate a causal impact of institutional grant aid on college choice. Because institutional grant aid is typically not awarded randomly, the college-estimated home equity value serves as an instrumental variable from which the causal relationship between institutional grant aid and college choice is identified. An additional $1,000 in institutional grant aid awarded by the typical sampled college increases the probability that the typical accepted student will choose that college by 1.66 percentage points. I also find that choice elasticity varies by student socioeconomic status, with the lowest income students nearly three times more sensitive to institutional grant aid than high-income students.
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Geoffrey Phelps et al.
Educational Policy, September 2012, Pages 631-662
Abstract:
The amount of instruction students receive has long been viewed as a foundational educational resource. This article presents an analysis of the time students spend in elementary English language arts (ELA) and mathematics instruction. In mathematics, the average student received about 140 hr of instruction, but students in the top sixth of classrooms in this distribution can expect to receive between 80 and 160 hr more instruction over the school year than students assigned to the bottom sixth of classrooms. We found similar magnitudes of variation in ELA. Although most of the variation was due to differences among classrooms, there was also substantial variation among schools. Some variation in instructional time is expected and probably favorable. However, we argue that the large variation demonstrated by these results represent substantial inequity in students' opportunity to learn ELA and mathematics.
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Keith Thiede et al.
Journal of Educational Psychology, August 2012, Pages 554-564
Abstract:
We explored whether exposure to different kinds of comprehension tests during elementary years influenced metacomprehension accuracy among 7th and 8th graders. This research was conducted in a kindergarten through 8th grade charter school with an expeditionary learning curriculum. In literacy instruction, teachers emphasize reading for meaning and inference building, and they regularly assess deep comprehension with summarization, discussion, dialogic reasoning, and prediction activities throughout the elementary years. The school recently expanded, doubling enrollments in 7th and 8th grades. Thus, approximately half of the students had long-term exposure to the curriculum and the other half did not. In Study 1, metacomprehension accuracy measured with the standard relative accuracy paradigm was significantly better for long-time students than for newcomers. In Study 2, all students engaged in delayed-keyword generation before judging their comprehension of texts. Metacomprehension accuracy was again significantly better for long-time students than for newcomers. Further, the superior monitoring accuracy led to more effective regulation of study, as seen in better decisions about which texts to restudy, which led, in turn, to better comprehension. The results suggest the importance of early exposure to comprehension tests for developing skills in comprehension monitoring and self-regulated learning.
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Match Quality, Worker Productivity, and Worker Mobility: Direct Evidence From Teachers
Kirabo Jackson
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
I investigate the importance of the match between teachers and schools for student achievement. I show that teacher effectiveness increases after a move to a different school, and I estimate teacher-school match effects using a mixed-effects estimator. Match quality "explains away" a quarter of, and has two-thirds the explanatory power of teacher quality. Match quality is negatively correlated with turnover, unrelated with exit, and increases with experience. This paper provides the first estimates of worker-firm match quality using output data as opposed to inferring productivity from wages or employment durations. Because teacher wages are essentially unrelated to productivity, this is compelling evidence that workers may seek high-quality matches for reasons other than higher pay.
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Combination classes and educational achievement
Jaime Thomas
Economics of Education Review, December 2012, Pages 1058-1066
Abstract:
Using the ECLS-K and considering first graders in single-grade and K-1 and 1-2 combination classes, I discuss the mechanisms underlying the combination-class effect and address the systematic school-, teacher-, and student-level differences that confound estimates of this effect. I find evidence for positive selection into 1-2 classes, but using a rich set of control variables, find no relationship between class type and student achievement in first grade within schools, and no difference in overall first-grade achievement between single-grade and combination schools in a matched school sample. The results I present suggest that first graders are not harmed by being in a combination class or by their schools offering combination classes. As long as other stakeholders such as parents, teachers, and students in other grades are not made worse off, these results suggest that offering combination classes may be a Pareto-improving option for school administrators.
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Alexandre Belloni et al.
Marketing Science, July/August 2012, Pages 621-636
Abstract:
Each year in the postsecondary education industry, schools offer admission to nearly 3 million new students and scholarships totaling nearly $100 billion. This is a large, understudied targeted marketing and price discrimination problem. This problem falls into a broader class of configuration utility problems (CUPs), which typically require an approach tailored to exploit the particular setting. This paper provides such an approach for the admission and scholarship decisions problem. The approach accounts for the key distinguishing feature of this industry - schools value the average features of the matriculating students such as percent female, percent from different regions of the world, average test scores, and average grade point average. Thus, as in any CUP, the value of one object (i.e., student) cannot be separated from the composition of all of the objects (other students in the enrolling class). This goal of achieving a class with a desirable set of average characteristics greatly complicates the optimization problem and does not allow the application of standard approaches. We develop a new approach that solves this more complex optimization problem using an empirical system to estimate each student's choice and the focal school's utility function. We test the approach in a field study of an MBA scholarship process and implement adjusted scholarship decisions. Using a holdout sample, we provide evidence that the methodology can lead to improvements over current management decisions. Finally, by comparing our solution to what management would do on its own, we provide insight into how to improve management decisions in this setting.