School Zone
A's from Zzzz's? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents
Scott Carrell, Teny Maghakian & James West
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2011, Pages 62-81
Abstract:
Recent sleep research finds that many adolescents are sleep-deprived because of both early school start times and changing sleep patterns during the teen years. This study identifies the causal effect of school start time on academic achievement by using two policy changes in the daily schedule at the US Air Force Academy along with the randomized placement of freshman students to courses and instructors. Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation.
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Assets and liabilities, race/ethnicity, and children's college education
Min Zhan & Michael Sherraden
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the extent to which household assets and liabilities are related to disparities in children's college attendance and college graduation among White, Black, and Hispanic families. Results indicate that, after household assets are considered, a substantial portion of the Black-White gap in college attendance and college graduation disappears, and a small portion of the Hispanic-White gap in college graduation also disappears. Separate analyses of children from each racial/ethnic group further indicate that family income and financial assets are related to White children's college attendance and graduation, but nonfinancial assets and unsecured debt are associated with college attendance and graduation among Black and Hispanic children. Policy implications are considered.
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Katharine Strunk & Andrew McEachin
American Educational Research Journal, August 2011, Pages 871-903
Abstract:
The authors examine how the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between teachers' unions and districts is associated with schools' and districts' performance under accountability pressures in California. They find that CBA restrictiveness is associated with the increased likelihood that districts will be in Program Improvement (PI) and at higher levels of PI, and with lower school- and district-level proficiency and graduation rates. They also show that strong contract schools and districts that have higher proportions of minority, low-income, and low-achieving student are even less likely to meet performance targets and have even lower proficiency rates.
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Cognitive enhancement and education
Allen Buchanan
Theory and Research in Education, July 2011, Pages 145-162
Abstract:
Cognitive enhancement - augmenting normal cognitive capacities - is not new. Literacy, numeracy, computers, and the practices of science are all cognitive enhancements. Science is now making new cognitive enhancements possible. Biomedical cognitive enhancements (BCEs) include the administration of drugs, implants of genetically engineered or stem-cell grown neural tissue, transcranial magnetic stimulation, computer/brain interface technologies, and (perhaps someday) modification of human embryos by genetic engineering and/or synthetic biology techniques. The same liberal-democratic values that support education as a public institutional endeavor also supply reasons for institutionalizing and publicly supporting BCE. Pursuing the goals of education may require changing what we have hitherto regarded as the individual's 'natural' potential, even in the case of normal individuals, and this may require recourse to BCE. The prospect of BCE raises no novel issues of distributive justice. Like other beneficial innovations, BCEs have the potential to worsen existing unjust inequalities, but they also have the potential to ameliorate them.
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Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters And Pilots
Atila Abdulkadiroğlu et al.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2011, Pages 699-748
Abstract:
We use student assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of charter school attendance on student achievement in Boston. We also evaluate a related alternative, Boston's pilot schools. Pilot schools have some of the independence of charter schools but are in the Boston Public School district and are covered by some collective bargaining provisions. Lottery estimates show large and significant score gains for charter students in middle and high school. In contrast, lottery estimates for pilot school students are mostly small and insignificant, with some significant negative effects. Charter schools with binding assignment lotteries appear to generate larger gains than other charters.
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School Competition and Teacher Labor Markets: Evidence from Charter School Entry in North Carolina
Kirabo Jackson
NBER Working Paper, July 2011
Abstract:
I analyze changes in teacher turnover, hiring, effectiveness, and salaries at traditional public schools after the opening of a nearby charter school. While I find small effects on turnover overall, difficult to staff schools (low-income, high-minority share) hired fewer new teachers and experienced small declines in teacher quality. I also find evidence of a demand side response where schools increased teacher compensation to better retain quality teachers. The results are robust across a variety of alternate specifications to account for non-random charter entry.
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Greg Duncan, Pamela Morris & Chris Rodrigues
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social scientists do not agree on the size and nature of the causal impacts of parental income on children's achievement. We revisit this issue using a set of welfare and antipoverty experiments conducted in the 1990s. We utilize an instrumental variables strategy to leverage the variation in income and achievement that arises from random assignment to the treatment group to estimate the causal effect of income on child achievement. Our estimates suggest that a $1,000 increase in annual income increases young children's achievement by 5%-6% of a standard deviation. As such, our results suggest that family income has a policy-relevant, positive impact on the eventual school achievement of preschool children.
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The Impact of Family Income on Child Achievement: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit
Gordon Dahl & Lance Lochner
University of California Working Paper, June 2011
Abstract:
Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use an instrumental variables strategy to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, non-linear changes in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) over the last two decades. The largest of these changes increased family income by as much as 20%, or approximately $2,100, between 1993 and 1997. Using a panel of roughly 4,500 children matched to their mothers from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth datasets allows us to address problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity, endogenous transitory income shocks, and measurement error in income. Our baseline estimates imply that a $1,000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6% of a standard deviation in the short-run. Test gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and are robust to a variety of alternative specifications.
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Child Care Choices and Children's Cognitive Achievement: The Case of Single Mothers
Raquel Bernal & Michael Keane
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2011, Pages 459-512
Abstract:
We evaluate the effect of child care versus maternal time inputs on child cognitive development using single mothers from the NLSY79. To deal with nonrandom selection of children into child care, we exploit the exogenous variation in welfare policy rules facing single mothers. In particular, the 1996 welfare reform and earlier state-level policy changes generated substantial increases in their work/child care use. We construct a comprehensive set of welfare policy variables and use them as instruments to estimate child cognitive ability production functions. In our baseline specification, we estimate that a year of child care reduces child test scores by 2.1%.
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Margaret Burchinal et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Black-White achievement gap in children's reading and mathematics school performance from 4½ years of age through fifth grade was examined in a sample of 314 lower income American youth followed from birth. Differences in family, child care, and schooling experiences largely explained Black-White differences in achievement, and instructional quality was a stronger predictor for Black than White children. In addition, the achievement gap was detected as young as 3 years of age. Taken together, the findings suggest that reducing the Black-White achievement gap may require early intervention to reduce race gaps in home and school experiences during the infant and toddler years as well as during the preschool and school years.
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How Well Aligned Are State Assessments of Student Achievement With State Content Standards?
Morgan Polikoff, Andrew Porter & John Smithson
American Educational Research Journal, August 2011, Pages 965-995
Abstract:
Coherence is the core principle underlying standards-based educational reforms. Assessments aligned with content standards are designed to guide instruction and raise achievement. The authors investigate the coherence of standards-based reform's key instruments using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Analyzing 138 standards-assessment pairs spread across grades and the three No Child Left Behind tested subjects, the authors find that roughly half of standards content is tested on the corresponding test and roughly half of test content corresponds to the standards. A moderate proportion of test content is at the wrong level of cognitive demand as compared to the corresponding standards, and vice versa. Between 17% and 27% of content on a typical test covers topics not mentioned in the corresponding standards. Policy and research implications are discussed.
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Effects of Welfare Reform on Vocational Education and Training
Dhaval Dave et al.
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exploiting variation in welfare reform across states and over time and using relevant comparison groups, this study estimates the effects of welfare reform on an important source of human capital acquisition among women at risk for relying on welfare: vocational education and training. The results suggest that welfare reform reduced enrollment in full-time vocational education and had no significant effects on part-time vocational education or participation in other types of work-related courses, though there appears to be considerable heterogeneity across states with respect to the strictness of educational policy and the strength of work incentives under welfare reform. In addition, we find evidence of heterogeneous effects by prior educational attainment. We find no evidence that the previously-observed negative effects of welfare reform on formal education (including college enrollment), which we replicated in this study, have been offset by increases in vocational education and training.
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Stepping Stones: Principal Career Paths and School Outcomes
Tara Béteille, Demetra Kalogrides & Susanna Loeb
NBER Working Paper, July 2011
Abstract:
More than one out of every five principals leaves their school each year. In some cases, these career changes are driven by the choices of district leadership. In other cases, principals initiate the move, often demonstrating preferences to work in schools with higher achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. We use longitudinal data from one large urban school district to study the relationship between principal turnover and school outcomes. We find that principal turnover is, on average, detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover of school leadership results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains. Leadership changes are particularly harmful for high poverty schools, low-achieving schools, and schools with many inexperienced teachers. These schools not only suffer from high rates of principal turnover but are also unable to attract experienced successors. The negative effect of leadership changes can be mitigated when vacancies are filled by individuals with prior experience leading other schools. However, the majority of new principals in high poverty and low-performing schools lack prior leadership experience and leave when more attractive positions become available in other schools.
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Laura Hopson & Eunju Lee
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The persistent achievement gap between students from poor families and their peers calls for research that examines risk factors associated with poverty and strategies for promoting resilience. Research demonstrates the impact of school climate on behavior and academic achievement, especially in high-poverty schools. The present study examines associations between family poverty, social supports, students' perceptions of school climate, behavior, and grades. Poverty is associated with poor grades and behavior, while positive perceptions of school climate are associated with positive grades and behavior. Perceptions of school climate moderate the association between poverty and behavior, such that students from poor families who perceive a positive school climate exhibit similar behaviors to their peers from higher income families. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.
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Home Computer Use and the Development of Human Capital
Ofer Malamud & Cristian Pop-Eleches
Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2011, Pages 987-1027
Abstract:
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of home computers on child and adolescent outcomes by exploiting a voucher program in Romania. Our main results indicate that home computers have both positive and negative effects on the development of human capital. Children who won a voucher to purchase a computer had significantly lower school grades but show improved computer skills. There is also some evidence that winning a voucher increased cognitive skills, as measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices. We do not find much evidence for an effect on non-cognitive outcomes. Parental rules regarding homework and computer use attenuate the effects of computer ownership, suggesting that parental monitoring and supervision may be important mediating factors.