Does school autonomy improve educational outcomes? Judging the performance of foundation secondary schools in England

Government and researchers use school performance measures such as contextual value-added to claim that giving schools autonomy from local authority control produces superior pupil performance in GCSE examinations. This paper explores the extent to which inferring causality between autonomy and pupil achievement is reasonable given that pupils are not randomly assigned to schools and schools do not randomly acquire autonomous status. Rich administrative data and the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England are used to evaluate whether CVA-style inferences are confounded by pupil characteristics that explain both the chances of attending an autonomous school and academic achievement. The assignment of grant-maintained (and thus now foundation) status through a vote of parents is used to compare school that just did, and just did not, gain autonomy over a decade ago. These alternative estimation strategies suggest there is little evidence that foundation status casually yields superior school performance.school autonomy, school effectiveness, foundation schools

What Should an Index of School Segregation Measure?

Segregation, Choice, Schools, School Admissions

Can school competition improve standards? The case of faith schools in England

This paper measures the extent to which the presence of religious state-funded secondary schools in England impacts on the educational experiences of pupils who attend neighbouring schools, whether through school effort induced by competition or changes in peer groups induced by sorting. National administrative data is used to estimate pupil test score growth models between the ages of 11 and 16, with instrumental variable methods employed to avoid confounding the direct causal effect of religious schools. It finds significant evidence that religious schools are associated with higher levels of pupil sorting across schools, but no evidence that competition from faith schools raises area-wide pupil attainment.school choice, school competition, educational outcomes

Fuel Tax Incidence in Developing Countries: The Case of Costa Rica

Although fuel taxes are a practical means of curbing vehicular air pollution, congestion, and accidents in developing countries--all of which are typically major problems--they are often opposed on distributional grounds. Yet few studies have investigated fuel tax incidence in a developing country context. We use household survey data and income-outcome coefficients to analyze fuel tax incidence in Costa Rica. We find that the effect of a 10 percent fuel price hike through direct spending on gasoline would be progressive, its effect through spending on diesel--both directly and via bus transportation--would be regressive (mainly because poorer households rely heavily on buses), and its effect through spending on goods other than fuel and bus transportation would be relatively small, albeit regressive. Finally, we find that although the overall effect of a 10 percent fuel price hike through all types of direct and indirect spending would be slightly regressive, the magnitude of this combined effect would be modest. We conclude that distributional concerns need not rule out using fuel taxes to address pressing public health and safety problems, particularly if gasoline and diesel taxes can be differentiated.fuel tax incidence, transportation, Costa Rica

Evaluating the provision of school performance information for school choice

One of the key components of any school choice system is the information given to parents as the basis for choice. We develop and implement a framework for determining the optimal performance metrics to help parents choose a school. This approach combines the three major critiques of the usefulness of performance tables into a natural, implementable metric. The best content for school performance tables is the statistic that best answers the question: “In which feasible choice school will a particular child achieve the highest exam score?” We implement this approach for 500,000 students in England for a range of performance measures. Using performance tables is strongly better than choosing at random: a child who attends the highest ex ante performing school within their choice set will ex post do better than the average outcome in their choice set twice as often as they will do worse.school choice, performance tables

Intimate interfaces in action: assessing the usability and subtlety of emg-based motionless gestures

Mobile communication devices, such as mobile phones and networked personal digital assistants (PDAs), allow users to be constantly connected and communicate anywhere and at any time, often resulting in personal and private communication taking place in public spaces. This private -- public contrast can be problematic. As a remedy, we promote intimate interfaces: interfaces that allow subtle and minimal mobile interaction, without disruption of the surrounding environment. In particular, motionless gestures sensed through the electromyographic (EMG) signal have been proposed as a solution to allow subtle input in a mobile context. In this paper we present an expansion of the work on EMG-based motionless gestures including (1) a novel study of their usability in a mobile context for controlling a realistic, multimodal interface and (2) a formal assessment of how noticeable they are to informed observers. Experimental results confirm that subtle gestures can be profitably used within a multimodal interface and that it is difficult for observers to guess when someone is performing a gesture, confirming the hypothesis of subtlety

The early impact of Brighton and Hove's school admission reforms

We analyse the initial impact of a major school admission reform in Brighton and Hove. The new system incorporated a lottery for oversubscribed places and new catchment areas. We examine the post-reform changes in school composition. We locate the major winners and losers in terms of the quality of school attended. We match similar cities and conduct a difference-in-difference analysis of the policy change. We see no significant change in student sorting: if anything, the point estimates suggest a rise in socio-economic segregation. We do see a significant weakening of the dependence of school attended on student’s prior attainment.school lottery, segregation, school admissions reforms

Moment-based boundary conditions for lattice Boltzmann simulations of natural convection in cavities

We study a multiple relaxation time lattice Boltzmann model for natural convection with moment-based boundary conditions. The unknown primary variables of the algorithm at a boundary are found by imposing conditions directly upon hydrodynamic moments, which are then translated into conditions for the discrete velocity distribution functions. The method is formulated so that it is consistent with the second order implementation of the discrete velocity Boltzmann equations for fluid flow and temperature. Natural convection in square cavities is studied for Rayleigh numbers ranging from 103 to 108. An excellent agreement with benchmark data is observed and the flow fields are shown to converge with second order accuracy