Education and Success
Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations
M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikora & Donald Treiman
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents' education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China. Data are from representative national samples in 27 nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multilevel linear and probit models with multiple imputation of missing data.
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Jennie Brand & Yu Xie
American Sociological Review, April 2010, Pages 273-302
Abstract:
In this article, we consider how the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population. Based on principles of comparative advantage, scholars commonly presume that positive selection is at work, that is, individuals who are most likely to select into college also benefit most from college. Net of observed economic and noneconomic factors influencing college attendance, we conjecture that individuals who are least likely to obtain a college education benefit the most from college. We call this theory the negative selection hypothesis. To adjudicate between the two hypotheses, we study the effects of completing college on earnings by propensity score strata using an innovative hierarchical linear model with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. For both cohorts, for both men and women, and for every observed stage of the life course, we find evidence suggesting negative selection. Results from auxiliary analyses lend further support to the negative selection hypothesis.
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Single-Sex Schooling and Academic Attainment at School and Through the Lifecourse
Alice Sullivan, Heather Joshi & Diana Leonard
American Educational Research Journal, March 2010, Pages 6-36
Abstract:
This article examines the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. In terms of the overall level of qualifications achieved, single-sex schooling is positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys, while at later ages, single-sex schooling is neutral for both sexes. However, single-sex schooling is linked to the attainment of qualifications in gender-atypical subject areas for both sexes, not just during the school years, but also later in life.
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Dongshu Ou
Economics of Education Review, April 2010, Pages 171-186
Abstract:
The high school exit exam (HSEE) is rapidly becoming a standardized assessment procedure for educational accountability in the United States. I use a unique, state-specific dataset to identify the effects of failing the HSEE on the likelihood of dropping out of high school based on a regression discontinuity design. The analysis shows that students who barely failed the exam were more likely to exit than those who barely passed, despite being offered retest opportunities. The discontinuity amounts to a large proportion of the dropout probability of barely failers, particularly for limited-English-proficiency, racial-minority, and low-income students, suggesting that the potential benefit of raising educational standards might come at the cost of increasing inequality in the educational system.
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Ability Bias and the Rising Education Premium in the United States: A Cohort‐Based Analysis
Barış Kaymak
Journal of Human Capital, Fall 2009, Pages 224-267
Abstract:
I use differences in educational attainment by birth cohorts to estimate the rise in the return to education in the United States. If average ability is similar among nearby cohorts, then differences in educational attainment lead to differences in earnings only if education is productive. The results reveal that (i) the return to a year of schooling increased from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent between 1964 and 2003, (ii) the ability bias rose from 1.8 percent to 4.7 percent during the same period, and (iii) the acceleration in the education premium after 1980 is explained almost entirely by the rise in the ability bias.
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Identifying Effective Classroom Practices Using Student Achievement Data
Thomas Kane, Eric Taylor, John Tyler & Amy Wooten
NBER Working Paper, March 2010
Abstract:
Recent research has confirmed both the importance of teachers in producing student achievement growth and in the variability across teachers in the ability to do that. Such findings raise the stakes on our ability to identify effective teachers and teaching practices. This paper combines information from classroom-based observations and measures of teachers' ability to improve student achievement as a step toward addressing these challenges. We find that classroom based measures of teaching effectiveness are related in substantial ways to student achievement growth. Our results point to the promise of teacher evaluation systems that would use information from both classroom observations and student test scores to identify effective teachers. Our results also offer information on the types of practices that are most effective at raising achievement.
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Is the GED an Effective Route to Postsecondary Education for School Dropouts?
John Tyler & Magnus Lofstrom
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel (TSMP) to examine the extent to which dropouts use the GED as a route to post-secondary education. Lacking suitable instruments that would allow us to directly address potential biases in estimating the "GED path" to postsecondary education, our approach is to base estimates on a set of academically "at risk" students who are very similar in the 8th grade. We observe that the eventual high school graduates in this group have much better postsecondary education outcomes than do the similar at-risk 8th graders who drop out and obtain a GED. We discuss potential explanations for the observed differences in the postsecondary education outcomes of the two groups.
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The effect of peer socioeconomic status on student achievement: A meta-analysis
Reyn van Ewijk & Peter Sleegers
Educational Research Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies on the effects on students' test scores of their peers' socioeconomic status (SES) reported varying results. A meta-regression analysis including 30 studies on the topic shows that the compositional effect that researchers find is strongly related to how they measure SES and to their model choice. If they measure SES dichotomously (e.g. free lunch eligibility) or include several average SES-variables in one model, they find smaller effects than when using a composite that captures several SES-dimensions. Composition measured at cohort/school level is associated with smaller effects than composition measured at class level. Researchers estimating compositional effects without controlling for prior achievement or not taking into account the potential for omitted variables bias, risk overestimating the effect. Correcting for a large set of not well thought-over covariates may lead to an underestimation of the compositional effect, by artificially explaining away the effect. Little evidence was found that effect sizes differ with sample characteristics such as test type (language vs. math) and country. Estimates for a hypothetical study, making a number of "ideal" choices, suggest that peer SES may be an important determinant of academic achievement.
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Joshua Angrist, Susan Dynarski, Thomas Kane, Parag Pathak & Christopher Walters
NBER Working Paper, February 2010
Abstract:
Charter schools affiliated with the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education. These schools feature a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms and a focus on traditional reading and math skills. We use applicant lotteries to evaluate the impact of KIPP Academy Lynn, a KIPP charter school that is mostly Hispanic and has a high concentration of limited English proficiency (LEP) and special-need students, groups that charter critics have argued are typically under-served. The results show overall gains of 0.35 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn. LEP students, special education students, and those with low baseline scores benefit more from time spent at KIPP than do other students, with reading gains coming almost entirely from the LEP group.
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Benefits of early childhood interventions across the world: (Under) Investing in the very young
Milagros Nores & Steven Barnett
Economics of Education Review, April 2010, Pages 271-282
Abstract:
This paper reviews the international (non-U.S.) evidence on the benefits of early childhood interventions. A total of 38 contrasts of 30 interventions in 23 countries were analyzed. It focuses on studies applying a quasi-experimental or random assignment. Studies were coded according to: the type of intervention (cash transfer, nutritional, educational or mixed); sample size; study design and duration; country; target group (infants, prekindergarten); subpopulations of interventions; and dosage of intervention. Cohen's D effect sizes were calculated for four outcomes: cognitive gains; behavioral change; health gains; and amount of schooling. We find children from different context and countries receive substantial cognitive, behavioral, health and schooling benefits from early childhood interventions. The benefits are sustained over time. Interventions that have an educational or stimulation component evidenced the largest cognitive effects.
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Health, Income, and the Timing of Education Among Military Retirees
Ryan Edwards
NBER Working Paper, February 2010
Abstract:
There is a large and robust correlation between adult health and education, part of which likely reflects causality running from education into health. Less clear is whether education obtained later in life is as valuable for health as are earlier years of schooling, or whether education raises health directly or through income or wealth. In this paper, I examine how the timing of educational attainment is important for adult health outcomes, income, and wealth, in order to illuminate these issues. Among military retirees, a subpopulation with large variation in the final level and timing of educational attainment, the health returns to a year of education are diminishing in age at acquisition, a pattern that is less pronounced for income and wealth. In the full sample, the marginal effects on the probability of fair or poor health at age 55 of a year of schooling acquired before, during, and after a roughly 25-year military career are -0.025, -0.016, and -0.006, revealing a decline of about half a percentage point each decade. These results suggest that education improves health outcomes more through fostering a lifelong accumulation of healthy behaviors and habits, and less through augmenting the flow of income or the stock of physical wealth.
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Intergenerational Family Predictors of the Black-White Achievement Gap
Jelani Mandara, Fatima Varner, Nereira Greene & Scott Richman
Journal of Educational Psychology, November 2009, Pages 867-878
Abstract:
The authors examined intergenerational family predictors of the Black-White achievement gap among 4,406 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. An intergenerational model of the process by which family factors contribute to the achievement gap was also tested. The results showed that the ethnic gaps in socioeconomic status (SES) and achievement had significantly reduced over the past few generations. Moreover, measures of grandparent SES, mothers' achievement, parent SES, and a comprehensive set of reliable parenting practices explained all of the ethnic differences in achievement scores. Parenting practices such as creating a school-oriented home environment, allowing adolescents to make decisions, and not burdening them with too many chores had particularly important effects on the achievement gap. The authors conclude that adjusting for these differences would eliminate the ethnic achievement gap.