More Learning
Can Gifted Education Help Higher-Ability Boys from Disadvantaged Backgrounds?
David Card, Eric Chyn & Laura Giuliano
NBER Working Paper, December 2024
Abstract:
Boys are less likely than girls to enter college, a gap that is often attributed to a lack of non-cognitive skills such as motivation and self-discipline. We study how being classified as gifted -- determined by having an IQ score of 116 or higher -- affects college entry rates of disadvantaged children in a large urban school district. For boys with IQ's around the cutoff, gifted identification raises the college entry rate by 25-30 percentage points -- enough to catch up with girls in the same IQ range. In contrast, we find small effects for girls. Looking at course-taking and grade outcomes in middle and high school, we find large effects of gifted status for boys that close most of the gaps with girls, but no detectable effects on standardized tests scores of either gender. Overall, we interpret the evidence as demonstrating that gifted services raise the non-cognitive skills of boys conditional on their cognitive skills, leading to gains in educational attainment.
The Strengths of People in Low-SES Positions: An Identity-Reframing Intervention Improves Low-SES Students' Achievement Over One Semester
Christina Bauer et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, January 2025, Pages 45-55
Abstract:
Students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds such as first-generation or low-income students are often portrayed as deficient, lacking in skills and potential to succeed at university. We hypothesized that such representations lead low-SES students to see their SES-identity as a barrier to success and impair achievement. If so, reframing low-SES students' identity as a source of strength may help them succeed. Testing this hypothesis in a highly scalable form, we developed an online low-SES-identity-reframing exercise. In Experiment 1 (N = 214), this exercise helped low-SES students to see their SES-identity more as a source of success and boosted their performance on an academic task by 13%. In Experiment 2, a large randomized-controlled intervention field experiment (N = 786), we implemented the identity-reframing intervention in a university's online learning program. This improved low-SES students' grades over the semester. Recognizing the strengths low-SES students bring to university can help students access these strengths and apply them to schooling.
Self-Selection and the Diminishing Returns of Research
Lorenz Ekerdt & Kai-Jie Wu
U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper, November 2024
Abstract:
The downward historical trend of research productivity has been used to suggest that there are severe permanent diminishing returns of knowledge production. We argue that a substantial portion of the trend is a transitional composition effect resulting from self-selection in researchers' ability and the expansion of the researcher sector. We quantify said effect with a semi-endogenous growth model in which workers self-select into research together with microdata on sectoral earnings distributions. Our results suggest that the average ability of researchers has fallen substantially. We then revisit the estimation of the knowledge production function and its resulting prediction on long-run economic growth. We find that separating transitional diminishing returns from permanent ones nearly doubles the long-run growth rate of per capita income predicted by a broad class of growth models.
Teacher Labor Market Policy and The Theory of the Second Best
Michael Bates et al.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate a matching model of teachers and elementary schools with rich data on teacher applications and principal ratings from a large, urban district in North Carolina. Both teachers' and principals' preferences deviate from those that would maximize the achievement of economically disadvantaged students: teachers prefer schools with fewer disadvantaged students, and principal ratings are weakly related to teacher effectiveness. In equilibrium, these two deviations combine to produce a surprisingly equitable current allocation, where teacher quality is balanced across advantaged and disadvantaged students. To close achievement gaps, policies that address deviations on one side alone are ineffective or harmful, while policies that address both could substantially increase the achievement of disadvantaged students.
Climbing the Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia
Ran Abramitzky et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2024
Abstract:
We explore how socio-economic background shapes academia, collecting the largest dataset of U.S. academics' backgrounds and research output. Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely underrepresented for seven decades, especially in humanities and elite universities. Father's occupation predicts professors' discipline choice and, thus, the direction of research. While we find no differences in the average number of publications, academics from poorer backgrounds are both more likely to not publish and to have outstanding publication records. Academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts, but are less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations, and awards.
Are low-ability students mentally represented as low-SES, academically incapable, and undeserving of support?
Alexander Browman & David Miele
Journal of Social Issues, forthcoming
Abstract:
In seven studies, this research demonstrates that both the general public and educators may hold culturally-shared, class stereotype-laden mental representations that they reflexively use both to subjectively identify particular students as being high or low in academic ability, and determine who should receive educational support. Using procedures designed to capture people's mental images of others, we first observed that both the general public and aspiring educators mentally represent low-ability students as qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from high-ability students. Furthermore, the representations of low (vs. high) ability students captured from the public and aspiring educators were more likely to be associated with negative class-based academic stereotypes by separate samples of the public and educators, such that a student who "looks" low in ability was also more likely to be labeled as being low-SES, and having poorer academic motivation and work ethic. As a result, the low (vs. high) ability student was more likely to be denied college admissions or scholarship support by members of the American public and to be exposed to unsupportive instructional practices by teachers. Implications for our understanding of teacher biases are discussed.
Rising Arizona: Participation and Results of the 2018 Red for Ed Strike
Michelle Doughty
AERA Open, December 2024
Abstract:
In 2018, a wave of educator strikes called Red for Ed swept through several states. Educators in Arizona won additional funding from the state legislature, supposedly for teacher salaries, which school boards could spend as they chose. This article quantitatively examines the participation and results of the 2018 Arizona educator strike, using this example to speak to theoretical work on types of union activity. I find that after the strike, per-pupil funding, teacher salaries, and student support staff salaries all increased. However, poststrike funding was added to Arizona's preexisting funding formula, which advantaged the small, rural, predominantly White districts whose educators were less likely to go on strike. Educators who went on strike (often from large, urban districts with low property wealth) thus received less money for their districts and smaller raises than nonparticipating educators. This raises important concerns about how free riders can affect different types of union organizing.
In-Person Schooling and Juvenile Violence
Benjamin Hansen, Kyutaro Matsuzawa & Joseph Sabia
NBER Working Paper, December 2024
Abstract:
While investments in schooling generate large private and external returns, negative peer interactions in school may generate substantial social costs. Using data from four national sources (Uniform Crime Reports, National Incident-Based Reporting System, National Crime Victimization Survey, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System) and a variety of identification strategies, this study comprehensively explores the effect of in-person schooling on contemporaneous juvenile violence. Using a proxy for in-person schooling generated from anonymized smartphone data and leveraging county-level variation in school calendars -- including unique, large, localized changes to in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic -- we find that in-person schooling is associated with a 28 percent increase in juvenile violent crime. A null finding for young adults is consistent with a causal interpretation of this result. The effects are largest in larger schools and in jurisdictions with weaker anti-bullying policies, consistent with both concentration effects and a peer quality channel. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that relative to closed K-12 schools, in-person schooling generates $233 million in monthly violent crime costs.