Schools and student achievement: more evidence from the Milwaukee parental choice program

Using math and reading test score gains, the author compares the achievement of students in the nonsectarian private schools participating in Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program with the achievement of students in a wide range of Milwaukee's public schools. Her results point to the need for a better understanding of what makes a school successful.Education

Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early Career Occupational Choices

In the early 2000s, a highly selective university introduced a "no-loans" policy under which the loan component of financial aid awards was replaced with grants. We use this natural experiment to identify the causal effect of student debt on employment outcomes. In the standard life-cycle model, young people make optimal educational investment decisions if they are able to finance these investments by borrowing against future earnings; the presence of debt has only income effects on future decisions. We find that debt causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose low-paid "public interest" jobs. We also find some evidence that debt affects students' academic decisions during college. Our estimates suggest that recent college graduates are not life-cycle agents. Two potential explanations are that young workers are credit constrained or that they are averse to holding debt. We find suggestive evidence that debt reduces students' donations to the institution in the years after they graduate and increases the likelihood that a graduate will default on a pledge made during her senior year; we argue this result is more likely consistent with credit constraints than with debt aversion.

Causality, causality, causality: the view of education inputs and outputs from economics

Educators and policy makers are increasingly intent on using scientifically-based evidence when making decisions about education policy. Thus, education research today must necessarily be focused on identifying the causal relationships between education inputs and student outcomes. In this paper we discuss methodologies for estimating the causal effect of resources on education outcomes; we also review what we believe to be the best evidence from economics on a few important inputs: spending, class size, teacher quality, the length of the school year, and technology. We conclude that while the number of papers using credible identification strategies is thin, the body of credible research on causal relationships is growing, and we have started to gather evidence that some school inputs matter while others do not.Education - Economic aspects ; Technology - Economic aspects

School vouchers and student achievement: recent evidence, remaining questions

In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero. Further, what little evidence exists regarding the potential for public schools to respond to increased competitive pressure generated by vouchers suggests that one should remain wary that large improvements would result from a more comprehensive voucher system. The evidence from other forms of school choice is also consistent with this conclusion. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including whether vouchers have longer-run impacts on outcomes such as graduation rates, college enrollment, or even future wages, and whether vouchers might nevertheless provide a cost-neutral alternative to our current system of public education provision at the elementary and secondary school level.Educational vouchers

The Underrepresentation of Women in Economics: A Study of Undergraduate Economics Students

Although women are underrepresented in the field of economics, many see little need for intervention, arguing that women are inherently less interested in economics, or are less willing or able to get the math skills skills needed to do well in the subject. At the same time, others support active efforts to increase the number of women in the field, citing other possible causes of their current underrepresentation. These people argue, for example, that women are deterred from entering the field because of a lack of female role models, or that women are discouraged by an unappealing classroom environment. This study assesses these hypotheses by examining factors that influence undergraduate students' decisions to become economics majors using a survey of students in the introductory economics course at Harvard University as well as data on an entire class of students from Harvard's registrar. We find that although women in the introductory economics course at Harvard tend to begin the course with a weaker math background than men, math background does not explain much of the gender difference in students' decisions about majoring in economics. The class environment and the presence or absence of role models also do not explain much of the gender gap. On the other hand, women do less well in economics relative to other courses than men do, and controlling for this difference in relative performance significantly diminishes the estimated gender gap. An economically large but statistically insignificant difference between sexes in the probability of majoring in economics remains, however, which may be due to differing tastes or information about the nature of economics.

Feeling the Florida Heat? How Low-Performing Schools Respond to Voucher and Accountability Pressure

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school "gaming" of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school accountability. The lack of research is primarily due to the unavailability of appropriate data to carry out such an analysis. This paper brings to bear new evidence from a remarkable five-year survey conducted of a census of public schools in Florida, coupled with detailed administrative data on student performance. We show that schools facing accountability pressure changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways. In addition, we present medium-run evidence of the effects of school accountability on student test scores, and find that a significant portion of these test score gains can likely be attributed to the changes in school policies and practices that we uncover in our surveys.

Paying for performance: the education impacts of a community college scholarship program for low-income adults

We evaluate educational outcomes from an experiment which randomly assigned performancebased scholarship eligibility to students on community college campuses. Scholarships were awarded in three payments each semester over the course of two semesters. Payments were tied to students meeting two conditions—enrolling at least half time and maintaining a “C” or better semester grade point average. We find that the program increased the likelihood a student was enrolled at the program institutions in both the first and second semesters after random assignment and increased the total number of credits attempted and earned each semester. One year after random assignment, program group students were more likely to persist at their program institution, and one and two years after random assignment, program group students had completed 3-4 credits more than the control group students. We find little evidence that program eligibility induced students to change the types of courses taken but some evidence that the program may have increased academic performance and effort conditional on enrollment.Education - Economic aspects ; Income