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Author: Kari Dalane
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Category : Education and state
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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The three essays in my dissertation each address topics in education policy. While they all address substantively different research questions, each provides insight into how schools are organized and run, and how this affects student experiences and outcomes. All three papers address policy-relevant questions in education related to equity. In my first essay, I focus on a recent policy development in the provision of free and reduced-price lunch called Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP allows schools and districts with a certain proportion of students from low-income families to opt to provide free lunch to their entire student bodies. Using student-level administrative data from North Carolina, I find evidence that students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) have lower levels of suspension and higher math and reading achievement in years they are enrolled in a school participating in CEP.In my second essay, I examine understudied questions in arts education in American public schools. Schools devote substantial time and resources to arts education, but little research examines how arts offerings in schools have changed over time, or which students have access to the arts. Even less credible research examines the question of how arts experiences in schools impact student outcomes. I provide insight into trends in arts education using national datasets (the Schools and Staffing Surve and the National Teacher and Principal Survey) and more detailed administrative data from one state, North Carolina. I then take up the question of how arts impacts student outcomes. The principal threat to any study of arts education is fundamental endogeneity of schools' arts curricula, and students' decisions to enroll in courses that are often elective. I estimate the impact of arts education on outcomes in a student-by-school fixed effects framework, comparing outcomes for students in years they are enrolled in arts courses to outcomes in years they are enrolled in no art courses while attending the same school. I find arts enrollment has positive impacts on attendance.In my third essay, my co-author Dave Marcotte and I examine within school segregation by income in schools in North Carolina. While recent research has examined between school income segregation, within school segregation has received relatively little attention. Since students experience school in classrooms, within school segregation is relevant to understanding how segregation overall impacts students. We generate dissimilarity indexes to measure how economically disadvantaged (ED) students and non-ED students are sorted into classrooms within schools. We then investigate whether a common policy lever, charter schools, impact levels of within school ED segregation. Traditional public school administrators could face heightened pressures to retain students when school choice options become available nearby. These pressures may encourage administrators to ramp up academic tracking or the introduce or expand specialized curricula such as gifted and talented programs. These changes could increase within school segregation. We find some evidence that within school ED segregation increases in grades 3 and 4 in traditional public schools located closest to charter schools, but little evidence of impacts in other grades.
Author: Kari Dalane
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education and state
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The three essays in my dissertation each address topics in education policy. While they all address substantively different research questions, each provides insight into how schools are organized and run, and how this affects student experiences and outcomes. All three papers address policy-relevant questions in education related to equity. In my first essay, I focus on a recent policy development in the provision of free and reduced-price lunch called Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP allows schools and districts with a certain proportion of students from low-income families to opt to provide free lunch to their entire student bodies. Using student-level administrative data from North Carolina, I find evidence that students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) have lower levels of suspension and higher math and reading achievement in years they are enrolled in a school participating in CEP.In my second essay, I examine understudied questions in arts education in American public schools. Schools devote substantial time and resources to arts education, but little research examines how arts offerings in schools have changed over time, or which students have access to the arts. Even less credible research examines the question of how arts experiences in schools impact student outcomes. I provide insight into trends in arts education using national datasets (the Schools and Staffing Surve and the National Teacher and Principal Survey) and more detailed administrative data from one state, North Carolina. I then take up the question of how arts impacts student outcomes. The principal threat to any study of arts education is fundamental endogeneity of schools' arts curricula, and students' decisions to enroll in courses that are often elective. I estimate the impact of arts education on outcomes in a student-by-school fixed effects framework, comparing outcomes for students in years they are enrolled in arts courses to outcomes in years they are enrolled in no art courses while attending the same school. I find arts enrollment has positive impacts on attendance.In my third essay, my co-author Dave Marcotte and I examine within school segregation by income in schools in North Carolina. While recent research has examined between school income segregation, within school segregation has received relatively little attention. Since students experience school in classrooms, within school segregation is relevant to understanding how segregation overall impacts students. We generate dissimilarity indexes to measure how economically disadvantaged (ED) students and non-ED students are sorted into classrooms within schools. We then investigate whether a common policy lever, charter schools, impact levels of within school ED segregation. Traditional public school administrators could face heightened pressures to retain students when school choice options become available nearby. These pressures may encourage administrators to ramp up academic tracking or the introduce or expand specialized curricula such as gifted and talented programs. These changes could increase within school segregation. We find some evidence that within school ED segregation increases in grades 3 and 4 in traditional public schools located closest to charter schools, but little evidence of impacts in other grades.
Author: Cristelle A. A. Kouame
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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This dissertation, in the standard three-essay format, covers three loosely connected topics that focus on education outcomes and the quality of a country's institutions in facilitating access to sanitation in Africa. Chapter 1 attempts to estimate peer effects on student effort. I present a structural model of friendship networks in which I introduce a student grade point average (GPA) as a positive function of the student's effort and their own characteristics. I show that my model is functionally different from the standard model as it captures heterogeneity based on whether students have friends or not. I estimate peer effects using the first wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and by applying the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach. I find that on average, a one-point increase in the mean GPA of student's peers induces the student to increase their effort that in turn increase their own GPA by 0.856 points. I also find that the estimated endogenous peer effect coefficient is significantly larger than the estimated coefficient obtained under the standard model. Furthermore, I consider an alternative specification by controlling for network endogeneity. I find that the size of the estimated peer effect does not change much. My results are robust and provide a consistent and efficient measure of peer effects, which can inform the efficiency of network-targeted public policies. Chapter 2 examines whether expansion in institutional quality broadens access to improved sanitation in Sub-Sahara Africa. This is a published paper with two co-authors. This paper employs a dynamic panel-data model and data from 44 Sub-Sahara African countries over the period 2002-2015 to estimate the direct effect of institutional quality on access to sanitation. The estimation techniques control for potential endogeneity of regressors and country-specific effects. The results indicate that institutional quality promotes access to improved sanitation with control of corruption, regulatory quality, and voice and accountability playing the most significant roles. The results also show a dichotomy between rural and urban areas in which aspects of institutions increase access to sanitation. Specifically, in urban areas, the populace's ability to participate in selecting government and expressing freedom through associations and free media drives access to sanitation. In contrast, efficient curbing of corruption, increasing rule of law, and enhancing the capacity of governments to formulate and implement sound policies facilitate access to sanitation in rural areas. This dichotomy generates important policy implications as countries move towards achieving the Sustainable Development goal, universal access to improved sanitation.Finally, Chapter 3 estimates partial correlation of teacher quality and language of instruction on student learning deprivation. I use a unique primary school-level dataset on standardized test scores of Senegalese and Mauritanian grade 4 students and teachers (cross-sectional data). Learning deprivation is a dichotomous variable that takes the value 1 if a student reading test score falls below the minimum reading proficiency level, and 0 if otherwise. An instrumental-variable probit model controls to some extent for the endogeneity of teacher quality due to unobserved school-specific factors correlated with both teacher quality and learning deprivation. After controlling for a range of student, socioeconomic, school, district and regional related variables, I find that a decrease of one in the average teacher test score at the school level (teacher quality) is associated with an increase of the likelihood of a student's being learning deprived by 6.05 percentage points. I also show that the learning deprivation of a student who is taught in French is 98 percentage points higher than that of a student who is taught in a familiar language, (i.e., Arabic). The results suggest that policymakers in developing countries should focus on teachers' subject knowledge in teacher recruitment, training, and compensation policies. They also shed light on the importance of using a familiar language.
Author: Gregory R. Phelan
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ISBN:
Category : Distance education
Languages : en
Pages :
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The impact of public policy on education can be substantial. This holds true whether we are considering students in primary and secondary schools, school administrators, or college students. Moreover, the effects of education policy may be greatest for groups of vulnerable or disadvantaged students. My research examines three pieces of education policy in Texas, and the impacts of these policies on students and school principals. The first essay evaluates the efficacy of a state-funded scholarship provided to low income college bound students that demonstrate a significant amount of academic promise. The second essay analyzes the role that school accountability ratings and performance information plays in the labor market outcomes of Texas school principals. The third essay characterizes the set of students that enroll in full-time online virtual schools in Texas that are publicly funded, but run managed by privately owned Education Management Organizations.
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Languages : en
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There are many ways parents can improve their offspring's outcomes. For example, they can invest in offspring's education or health. They can provide better social connections to obtain job information or personal references. In addition, they can exert political influence to obtain better labor market outcomes for their offspring. Understanding exactly how parents improve their offspring's outcomes is very important for the formation of political perspectives and policy designs. However, it is very difficult to disentangle the factors, as parents of high socioeconomic status do many things to help their children succeed. This dissertation presents three quasi-experimental studies to understand the causal mechanisms of parents' influence on children's outcomes in the context of China and United States. Chapter two examines the implementation of court-ordered racial desegregation of schools and finds that school desegregation increases biracial births. This provides the first evidence of how an education policy that affects racial integration also has demographic implications and an intergenerational impact on social and economic opportunities.
Author: Pierre Edward Mouganie
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Category :
Languages : en
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This dissertation introduces three essays on the short and long run consequences of educational choices. In the first essay "Conscription and the Returns to Education: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity" we use a regression discontinuity design to first identify the effect of peacetime conscription on education and labor market outcomes. Results indicate that conscription eligibility induces a significant increase in years of education, which is consistent with conscription avoidance behavior. However, this increased education does not result in either an increase in graduation rates, or in employment and wages. Additional evidence shows conscription has no direct effect on earnings, suggesting that the returns to education induced by this policy was zero. In the second essay "Quality of Higher Education and Earnings: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from the French Baccalaureate", we use a regression discontinuity design to examine the returns to quality of postsecondary education. We compare the outcomes of students who marginally pass and fail the first round exams of the French Baccalaureate, a degree that students must earn to graduate from secondary school. Marginally passing increases the likelihood of attending a higher quality university and a STEM major. Threshold crossing also increases earnings by 13.6 percent at the age of 27 to 29. After ruling out other channels that could affect earnings, we conclude that increased access to higher quality postsecondary education leads to a significant earnings premium. In the third and final essay "Better or Best? High School Quality and Academic Performance" we look at the effects of attending a higher quality high school on the academic performance and college outcomes of young Chinese students. Specifically, in our analysis, we draw a distinction between going to a better school, regardless of tier, and going to a top-tier school. We find that college entrance exam test score gains and improved college outcomes are only realized for individuals attending the most elite set of high schools. These results are mainly driven by males as we find no significant effects on academic performance for females. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that these academic gains are mostly due to variation in teacher quality. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/155600.
Author: Ricardo Meilman Lomaz Cohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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This thesis is composed of three essays on economics of education. The first chapter is co-authored with Ciro Avitabile and Jesse Cunha and investigates the medium-term impact of early-life welfare transfers on children's learning. It studies children who were exposed to the randomized controlled trial of the Mexico's Food Support Program (Programa de Apoyo Alimentario), in which households were assigned to receive cash, in-kind food transfers, or nothing (a control). The findings show that in-kind transfers did not impact test scores, while cash transfers led to a significant and meaningful decrease in test scores. An analysis of the mechanisms driving these results reveals that both transfers led to an increase in child labor, which is likely detrimental to learning. In-kind food transfers, however, induced a greater consumption of several key micronutrients that are vital for brain development, which likely attenuated the negative impacts of child labor on learning. The second chapter, jointly with Jane Friesen and Simon Woodcock, studies sorting, peer effects and school effectiveness under a universal voucher program. Using student-level longitudinal data for the population of students enrolled in private and public schools, we estimate a model of test scores that includes student effects, school effects and peer effects. Our results provide both the first estimates of the contribution of peer ability to private school effectiveness and a novel set of estimates of the effect of private school cream-skimming on the achievement of public school students under a mature voucher program. We find evidence of substantial sorting that contributes meaningfully to achievement at private schools via peer effects but has little effect on the average outcomes of those left behind in public schools. The third chapter investigates the effect of a policy-induced increase in public school competition on private school enrollment and budget outcomes. I exploit a natural experiment created by the introduction of an open enrollment policy that expanded public school choice opportunities and increased competitive pressure on private schools. Using a new data set constructed from mandatory nonprofit information returns and school enrollment records, I find that an increase in public school competition modestly reduces private school enrollment. Catholic school enrollment is most responsive to increased public school choice, whereas other private schools such as Christian and other faith schools experience no reduction in enrollment. The negative enrollment effects are concentrated among high school age students. I find no evidence that private schools respond to this increased public school choice by adjusting their revenue and spending choices.
Author: Juan-Pedro Garces
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Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages :
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In this dissertation we explore different aspects of the relationship between education (as one of the main components of human capital) and economic productivity. In the first chapter, we measure the factors that contribute to the quality of education, following Hanushek and Woessmann (2007). An empirical research is carried out for the case of Chile, a country which implemented a very unique educational system in the mid-1980s, with a strong participation of the private sector in the provision of educational services. Amongst other factors, we study the influence of the public/private divide, the socio-economic level of the students and the pupil/teacher ratio. The quality of education is measured by the performance of students in standardised national tests administered to all schools in Chile. The second chapter explores the effects of population density on productivity and the synergetic impact of educational attainment and population density on the causation of technological progress and economic growth, following Becker et al. (1999). We devise a simple theoretical model to explain the channels through which education and density affect productivity, and we test it for a wide sample of developed and developing countries. Our empirical results confirm the positive impact of both population density—broadly defined—and the interaction of education and density on economic productivity. Finally, the third chapter of the dissertation examines the ongoing controversy about the roles of education and institutions as main contributing factors of economic growth. To try to establish a balanced view, we first assume as a premise that good institutional governance is indeed an important factor in promoting economic growth, as has been shown repeatedly in the literature. But at the same time, we investigate the causes of good institutional governance, and find out that educational attainment is one of the main factors contributing to most of the aspects of good governance.
Author: Kevin Sylwester
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Author: Rodney P. Hughes
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Author: Christopher R. Walters
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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This dissertation consists of three essays covering topics in the economics of education. Two common threads connect these essays: first, a focus on the inputs and practices driving variation in effectiveness across educational programs; and second, an interest in the relationships between students' preferences, characteristics, and returns to human capital investment. In the first chapter, I develop and estimate a structural model of school choice that links students' decisions to apply to and attend charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to their potential achievement test scores in charter schools and public schools. This chapter is motivated by a growing literature that uses randomized entrance lotteries to show that urban charter schools, including those in Boston, substantially increase test scores and close racial achievement gaps among their applicants. A key policy question is whether charter expansion is likely to produce similar effects on a larger scale. To address this question, I use the structural model to predict the effects of charter expansion for the citywide achievement distribution in Boston. Estimates of the model suggest that charter applicants are negatively selected on achievement gains: low-income students and students with low prior achievement gain the most from charter attendance, but are unlikely to apply to charter schools. This form of selection implies that lottery-based estimates understate gains for broader groups of students, and that charter schools will produce substantial gains for marginal applicants drawn in by expansion. Simulations suggest that realistic expansions are likely to reduce the gap in math scores between Boston and the rest of Massachusetts by up to 8 percent, and reduce racial achievement gaps by roughly 5 percent. Nevertheless, the estimates also imply that perceived application costs are high and that most students prefer traditional public schools to charter schools, so large expansions may leave many charter seats empty. These results suggest that in the absence of significant behavioral or institutional changes, the potential gains from charter expansion may be limited as much by demand as by supply. The second chapter, written jointly with Joshua Angrist and Parag Pathak, seeks to explain differences in effectiveness across charter schools. Using a large sample of lotteried applicants to charter schools throughout Massachusetts, we show that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We then explore student-level and school-level explanations for this difference. In an econometric framework that isolates sources of charter effect heterogeneity, we show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond that of urban public school students, while non-urban charters reduce achievement from a higher baseline. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity within the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban charters with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. Using a detailed survey of school practices and characteristics, we link charter impacts to inputs such as instructional time, classroom techniques and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by these schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to urban education, a package of policies that includes strict discipline, increased instructional time, selective teacher-hiring, and a focus on traditional skills. In the third chapter, I use data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), a nationwide randomized trial of the Head Start program, to study the relationship between site-level treatment effects and educational inputs within Head Start. Studies of small-scale, intensive early-childhood programs, including the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project, show that such programs can have transformative effects on human capital and economic outcomes. Evidence for larger-scale programs like Head Start is more mixed. I use the HSIS data to ask whether Head Start centers using practices more similar to successful model programs produce larger short-run effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. My results show that while there is significant variation in effectiveness across Head Start centers, centers that are more similar to the Perry Preschool Project on observed dimensions are not more effective. Specifically, Head Start centers using the High/Scope curriculum, the centerpiece of the Perry experiment, do not produce larger gains relative to other centers. Other inputs often cited as essential to the success of the Perry Project, including teacher education, teacher certification, teacher/student ratios, instructional time, and frequency of home visiting, are also unrelated to effectiveness in Head Start. These results suggest that replicating the success of small-scale programs may be difficult, as the effectiveness of such programs may be due to idiosyncratic, unmeasured inputs. JEL Classification: 121, C51, J24
