Three Essays on Education Policy

Three Essays on Education Policy PDF 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.

Three Essays on Education Policy

Three Essays on Education Policy PDF Author: Gregory R. Phelan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Distance education
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
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.

Three Essays on Education Policy

Three Essays on Education Policy PDF Author: Kari Dalane
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ISBN:
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.

Three Essays in Education Policy

Three Essays in Education Policy PDF Author: Thomas Edward Davis
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ISBN:
Category : Employee fringe benefits
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Three Essays on Education Law and Policy

Three Essays on Education Law and Policy PDF Author: Regina R. Umpstead
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Category : Education and state
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Three Essays on Teachers, Markets and Educational Policies

Three Essays on Teachers, Markets and Educational Policies PDF Author: Christiana Marie Stoddard
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Three Essays on Educational Policy and Peer Effects

Three Essays on Educational Policy and Peer Effects PDF Author: Lars John Lefgren
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Category : Academic achievement
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Public Opinion and the Public Schools

Public Opinion and the Public Schools PDF Author: David M. Houston
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Category :
Languages : en
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I find consistent evidence that the provision of education spending information has de-polarizing consequences, but the effects of ideologically moderate elite signals on polarization vary by year. I also find tentative evidence in favor of a link between direct experience with public schools and reduced polarization on education issues.

Three Essays on Early Childhood Education Policy

Three Essays on Early Childhood Education Policy PDF Author: Daphna Bassok
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Three Essays on Education and Urban School Reform

Three Essays on Education and Urban School Reform PDF Author: Brian A. Jacob
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Category : Education, Urban
Languages : en
Pages :

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Three Essays in Higher Education Policy

Three Essays in Higher Education Policy PDF Author:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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This dissertation consists of three chapters examining issues relevant to current higher education policy debates. In the first chapter, I use surveys, in-depth interviews, and administrative records from a sample of Wisconsin Pell Grant recipients who chose among Wisconsin public colleges and universities to explore whether students' initial college choices affected their early college experiences and to examine how this was associated with their persistence and achievement in college. After controlling for a robust set of observed characteristics, students attending their first choice college have similar levels of early academic and social integration into college life and similar academic outcomes when compared to students who did not attend their first choice college. In the second chapter, I use a form of cost-effectiveness analysis to estimate institutional performance and compare the results to popular college rankings, which generally reward colleges for attracting stronger students and spending more money. I use data from IPEDS, College InSight, and the Delta Cost Project for nearly 1,300 colleges and universities to estimate value-added to one important outcome: college graduation. I then adjust for two different types of costs for different audiences: the net price of attendance and per-student educational expenditures. All of the methods provide different results from the popular college rankings, suggesting that adjusting for costs and inputs yield a different set of high-performing institutions. In the third chapter, I address concerns about the timing of the current financial aid system, in which students from low-income families receive concrete information about the cost of college too late to academically and financially prepare for college. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I conduct a simulation of the effects of using a simplified eligibility process to make an early commitment of the full Pell Grant to eighth graders from needy families. The simulation of the estimated fiscal effects suggests that Pell program costs would grow by approximately $1.5 billion annually and the benefits would exceed the costs by approximately $600 million.