Does the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit Create Jobs at Subsidized Firms?

This paper uses the results of a survey of more than 3,500 private employers to determine whether use of the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC) alters the level of a firm\u27s employment and/or whom the firm hires. We estimate that each subsidized hire generates between .13 and .3 new jobs at a participating firm. Use of the program also appears to induce employers to hire more young workers (age 25 and under). Our results suggest, however, that at least 70 percent of the tax credits granted employers are payments for workers who would have been hired even without the subsidy. Such payments represent mere transfers to employers

Peer Harassment: A Weapon in the Struggle for Popularity and Normative Hegemony in American Secondary Schools

This paper addresses two of secondary education’s most serious problems—peer abuse of weaker socially unskilled students and a peer culture that in most schools discourages many students from trying to be all that they can be academically. We have documented the two problems by reviewing ethnographies of secondary schools, by interviewing students in eight suburban high schools and by analyzing data from questionnaires completed by nearly 100,000 students at Educational Excellence Alliance schools. Grounded in these observations, we built a simple mathematical model of peer harassment and popularity and of the pressures for conformity that are created by the struggle for popularity and then tested it in data from the Educational Excellence Alliance. Students entering middle school learn its norms by trying to copy the traits and behaviors of students who are respected and by avoiding contact with those who are frequently harassed. Peer norms are enforced by encouraging ‘wannabes,’ aspirants for admission to popular crowds, to harass those who visibly violate them. Consequently, one can infer the norms by noting who gets harassed and who doesn’t. Traits that in EEA data led to higher risks of being bullied and harassed were: being in a special education, being in gifted programs, taking accelerated courses in middle school, tutoring other students, enjoying school assignments, taking a theatre course, not liking rap-hip hop music and liking instead musicals, heavy metal, country, or classical music. The relationship between harassment and academic effort was curvilinear; both the nerds and the slackers were harassed. To some degree these norms are, as Kenneth Arrow suggests, trying to internalize externalities. But why are music preferences such good predictors of harassment? Why are the student tutors victimized? We propose that norms also have a “We’re cool, Honor us” function of legitimating the high status that the leading crowds claim for themselves. As a result the traits and interests that members of leading crowds have in common tend to become normative for everyone. The norms that prevailed were: “Spend your time socializing, do not “study too hard.” Value classmates for their athletic prowess and their attractiveness, not their interest in history or their accomplishments in science.

An Economic Theory of Academic Engagement Norms: The Struggle for Popularity and Normative Hegemony in Secondary Schools

[Excerpt] Why and how do groups create norms? Kenneth Arrow proposed that “norms of social behavior, including ethical and moral codes, ….are reactions of society to compensate for market failure”. This internalize the real externalities explanation for norms is also standard among rational choice theorists in sociology. The situation becomes more complex when we recognize some actions create positive externalities for some individuals and negative externalities for others. Often this results in no norm being established. However, sometimes one segment of a social system has normative hegemony and enforces norms that enhance their power and prestige at the expense of other groups. Norms regarding caste in India, for example, were functional for Brahmins but humiliating for Harijans. Caste and status norms of this type will also be referred to as “Honor us; Not them” norms. Such norms arise when one group is much more powerful (has greater ability to enforce their preferred social norm) than other groups and it imposes its will on others. An additional requirement is that the people who oppose the norm established by the dominant group must be unable or unwilling to leave the social system in which the norm operates

Enrollment, Attendance and Engagement → Achievement: Successful Strategies for Motivating Students - Evidence of Effectiveness from Comparisons of 50 States and 45 Nations

The purpose of the educational enterprise is LEARNING. Engagement is essential to achieving this purpose. How do we increase the proportion of our young people who enroll in and attend school while simultaneously setting high standards and inducing them to become engaged and effective learners? This paper proposes an agenda of reform to achieve these two goals. Each of proposal has a research literature behind it that makes a good case that the policy simultaneously raises the achievement of existing students and encourages them to stay in school or alternatively achieves one of these goals without sacrificing the other. Strategy # 1 says “Do a better job of convincing adolescents that learning and schooling pays off big time.” Strategy # 2 proposes a variety of ways of making secondary schools both more attractive and more effective. Expand the offerings of and access to career-technical education. Stop building large high schools. Create a new set of small high quality schools of choice: KIPP Academies and Career Academies. In Strategy # 3 I propose that end-of-course exams [not minimum competency exams or standards based exams] be the primary mechanism (along with teacher grades) for signaling student achievements to colleges and employers and for holding high schools accountable.High quality end-of-course exams that reliably measure achievement over the entire A to F range would need to be developed. Exam grades would appear on the student’s transcript, be part of the final grade in the course and be factored into college admissions and placement decisions. The exam would be a spur for everyone in the class to try harder, not just those who are struggling to pass the course. This strategy brings the interests of students, parents and teachers into alignment, encourages a pro-learning culture in the classroom and makes it easier for teachers to be rigorous and demanding. Universal curriculum-based external exam systems—as they are called--work remarkably well in Europe, Canada, North Carolina and New York and there is every reason to expect them to be equally successful when implemented in other SREB states

Employer Training and Skill Shortages: A Review of the State of Knowledge With Recommendations for Future Research by the Department of Labor

This report proposes that the Department of Labor undertake a program of research designed to inform the policy debate related to skill shortages and the role of employer training in ameliorating them. The paper reviews the currently available evidence and then proposes new research on seven questions

Is it Wise to Try to Force Employers to Pay All the Costs of Training at the Workplace?

[Excerpt] This article explores the effects that these regulations have on: (a) the form of labor contracts and on training outcomes such as: (b) who pays for work place training of non-exempt employees, (c) whether training is obtained at schools or firms, (d) how much training non-exempt employees get? The evidence on who gets and who pays for training is consistent with the proposition that these regulations are having the effects that economists would predict for them. Many other explanations fit the data just as well, however, so causal connections between these regulations and training outcomes cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt

The Effect of National Standard and Curriculum-Based Exams on Achievement

[Excerpt] Two presidents, the National Governors Association and numerous blue ribbon panels have called for the development of state or national content standards for core subjects and examinations that assess the achievement of these standards. The Competitiveness Policy Council, for example, advocates that external assessments be given to individual students at the secondary level and that the results should be a major but not exclusive factor qualifying for college and better jobs at better wages (1993, p. 30). It is claimed that curriculum-based external exit exam systems (CBEEEs) based on world class content standards will improve teaching and learning of core subjects. What evidence is there for this claim? Outside the United States such systems are the rule, not the exception. What impacts have such systems had on school policies, teaching and student learning

The Skills Shortage and the Payoff to Vocational Education

[Excerpt] Skill demands also appear to be rising within occupations. Increasing numbers of manufacturing workers are working in production cells in which every member of the team is expected to learn every job. Production workers are being given responsibilities--quality checking, statistical process control (SPC) record keeping, resetting machines shown by SPC to be straying from target dimensions, redesigning the layout of the machines in the production cell--that used to be the sole province of supervisors, specialized technicians and industrial engineers. What implications do these changes in skill demands have for the payoff to high school vocational education? Are workers who develop the technical skills taught in trade and technical programs, in fact, more productive when they get a job in the field? Are the skills taught in these programs still valued by the labor market? Has the payoff to high school vocational training increased along with the payoff to other skills? What changes in the way vocational education is delivered are implied by the tight labor markets for highly skilled workers? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining four different kinds of evidence on the economic payoffs to occupationally specific training in high school

Is An Oversupply of College Graduates Coming?

[Excerpt] Demand for college graduates workers was strong during the 1980s (Blackburn, Bloom and Freeman 1989; Katz and Murphy 1990; Kosters 1989; Freeman 1991). The relative wage of college graduate workers rose and college attendance rose in response. Have the demand and technology shocks that produced this result run their course? Is the supply response large enough to stop and/or reverse the 1980s escalation of the relative wages of college graduates? Read superficially, Bureau of Labor Statistics projections appear to suggest that the answers to these questions are YES. In the latest BLS report, the growing supply of college graduates was projected to outstrip growth of demand by 300,000 annually (Shelley 1996). Even larger gaps between supply and demand were projected in 1992 and 1994 (Shelley 1992, 1994). Looking at these projections, some in the press have reported that the college graduate labor market is about to go bust. New York Times reporter, Louis Uchitelle, for example, led off an article titled Surplus of College Graduates Dims Job Outlook for Others with the following