The Consequences of Using one Assessment System to Pursue two Objectives

Education officials often use one assessment system both to create measures of student achievement and to create performance metrics for educators. However, modern standardized testing systems are not designed to produce performance metrics for teachers or principals. They are designed to produce reliable measures of individual student achievement in a low-stakes testing environment. The design features that promote reliable measurement provide opportunities for teachers to profitably coach students on test-taking skills, and educators typically exploit these opportunities whenever modern assessments are used in high-stakes settings as vehicles for gathering information about their performance. Because these coaching responses often contaminate measures of both student achievement and educator performance, it is likely possible to acquire more accurate measures of both student achievement and education performance by developing separate assessment systems that are designed specifically for each measurement task.     

Resources and Student Achievement—Evidence from a Swedish Policy Reform*

A policy change is used to estimate the effect of teacher density on student performance. We find that an increase in teacher density has a positive effect on student achievement. The baseline estimate—obtained by using the grade‐point average as the outcome variable—implies that resource increases corresponding to the class‐size reduction in the STAR experiment (a reduction of seven students) improves performance by 2.6 percentile ranks (or 0.08 standard deviations). When we used test‐score data for men, potentially a more objective measure of student performance, the effect of resources appears to be twice as large.     

Laying the Tracks for Successful Science,Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education: What Can We Learn from Comparisons of Immigrant–Native Achievement in the USA?

This paper examines the immigrant–native achievement gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in college in the USA. Using student survey data from the Beginning Postsecondary Longitudinal Studies 2004/09, I find that on average immigrant students have significantly higher rates entering and persisting in STEM fields compared to their native counterparts. There is, however, considerable variation across immigrant generations and race and ethnicity. The immigrant attainment advantage is particularly large among first‐generation Asian and white immigrant students who attended foreign K–12 schools. I explore the channels leading to the achievement gap, including socioeconomic status, individual preferences, and academic preparation in math and science. Results suggest that the immigrant STEM advantage is largely due to better academic preparation in math and science in high school. This indicates that improvements in students' college STEM attainment may depend crucially on policy efforts devoted to strengthening the quality of high school math and science education.     

The Efficacy of Choice Threats Within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments

Targeted stigma and school voucher threats under a revised 2002 Florida accountability law have positive impacts on school performance as measured by the test score gains of their students. In contrast, stigma and public school choice threats under the US federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, do not have similar effects in Florida. Estimation relies upon individual-level data and is based upon regression analyses that exploit discontinuities within the accountability regimes. Choice threats embedded within accountability regimes can moderate educational inequalities by boosting achievement at the lowest-performing schools, but policy design is crucial.     

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: A SOURCE OR SALVE FOR THE RACIAL ACHIEVEMENT GAP?*

Racial disparities in school discipline are believed to contribute to the persistent achievement gap between black and white students. In this article, I estimate the relationship between school discipline and achievement within a structural model, taking into account the spillover effects of disruptive behavior. I find that discipline has an overall positive influence on student performance and that the racial gap in discipline stemming from cross‐school variation in discipline policies is consistent with achievement maximization. Integrating schools can close both the discipline and achievement gaps; however, overall achievement is reduced since schools are less able to target their discipline policies.     

How history matters for student performance. lessons from the Partitions of Poland

This paper examines the effect on current student performance of the 19th century Partitions of Poland among Austria, Prussia and Russia. Using a regression discontinuity design, I show that student test scores are 0.6 standard deviations higher on the Austrian side of the former Austrian-Russian border, despite the modern similarities of the three regions. However, I do not find evidence for differences across the Prussian-Russian border. Using a theoretical model and indirect evidence, I argue that the Partitions have persisted through their impact on social norms toward local schools. Nevertheless, the persistent effect of Austria is puzzling, given the historical similarities of the Austrian and Prussian education systems. I argue that the differential legacy of Austria and Prussia originates from the Austrian Empire’s policy to promote Polish identity in schools and the Prussian Empire’s efforts to Germanize the Poles through education.     

WHY DO CHARTER SCHOOLS FAIL? AN ANALYSIS OF CHARTER SCHOOL SURVIVAL IN NEW JERSEY

Charter school competition can only work as a policy to improve public education if schools that do not contribute to this goal are allowed to fail. We estimate survival regressions to assess the effects of various factors on the probability of school failure. We find that students' test scores are the most important determinant of survival: a one standard deviation increase reduces the probability of failure by 76%. Higher expenditures per student and a longer wait list result in smaller, but significant, reductions. Enrollment, average performance in the host district, and student demographics do not significantly affect school survival. (JEL I21, H75)     

Encouraging Tutorial Attendance at University Did Not Improve Performance

When tertiary education is subsidised the cost of poor student performance in university subjects falls not only on the individual student but also on society in general. Society therefore has an interest in promoting student performance. There is evidence in the literature that absenteeism from university classes is widespread and that absenteeism adversely affects student performance. In this paper I describe an incentive scheme that increased attendance of business and economics students in an introductory statistics subject at a typical Australian university. Like other authors I find a strong positive association between attendance and academic performance, both in the presence and absence of the scheme. However, there is no evidence that the incentive scheme caused student performance to improve. Although students attended more classes they did not perform better than students in the previous year's class who had the same observable characteristics and attendance levels but who were not exposed to the scheme.     

How accountability pressure on failing schools affects student achievement

Although an emerging body of evidence has shown that the threat of sanctions on low-performing schools can raise student test scores in the short run, the extent to which these test score improvements are due to schools' manipulation of the accountability system has remained uncertain. In this paper, I provide two new strands of evidence to evaluate the relative importance of educational reforms and gaming behavior in generating test score gains by threatened schools. First, using a regression discontinuity design that exploits Florida's system of imposing sanction threats on the basis of a cutoff level of performance, I estimate medium-run effects on student test scores from having attended a threatened elementary school. Threat-induced math improvements from elementary school largely persist at least through the first 1 to 2 years of middle school, while evidence for persistence of reading improvements is less consistent. Second, I analyze the effects of sanction threats on various features of educational production, and I find that sanction threats raise school spending on instructional technology, curricular development, and teacher training. Both strands of evidence are consistent with a predominant role for educational reforms in generating test score gains by threatened schools.     

The impact of charter school attendance on student performance

We employ a panel of individual student data on math and reading test performance for five cohorts of students in Texas to study the impact of charter school attendance. We control for school mobility effects and distinguish movement to a charter school from movement within and between traditional public school districts. We find students experience poor test score growth in their initial year in a charter school, but that this is followed by recovery in the subsequent years. Failure to account for this pattern may lead to potentially misleading estimates of the impact of charter attendance on student achievement. Students who remain in charters largely recover from the initial disruption within approximately 3 years, and there is weak evidence that there may be overall gains from charter attendance within this period. Furthermore, students who return to traditional public schools after just 1 or 2 years in a charter do not appear to suffer a lasting negative impact despite their poor average performance in their first year of charter attendance.     

Food for thought: the effects of school accountability plans on school nutrition

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, school accountability is now federal law, continuing the recent trend of states implementing significant accountability systems for schools. This paper studies an unusual yet powerful school response to accountability systems. Using disaggregated school lunch menus from a random sample of school districts in Virginia, we find that schools threatened with accountability sanctions increase the caloric content of their lunches on testing days in an apparent attempt to boost short-term student cognitive performance. Moreover, we find that the schools that responded the most along these dimensions experienced the greatest improvements in standardized test scores.     

DO PRIVATE TUTORS ENHANCE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ABILITY? REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY EXPERIMENT IN INDIA

Empirical evidence has shown that returns to English language ability are substantial in India. Research has also focused on the impact of private tutoring in the context of developing economies to find evidence that remedial teaching leads to better student achievement and higher test scores. In this paper I analyze whether private tutoring helps in developing English language ability. Simple OLS estimates suggest statistically significant effects but estimated coefficients are rather small at 0.2 percentage points. Presence of confounders and selection bias may potentially understate the true effects of private tutoring on English language ability. To address this issue, I exploit a unique policy experiment in India in a regression discontinuity framework to identify cohorts eligible for private tutoring and compare their outcomes to the ineligible. I use this potentially exogenous policy variation as an instrument for private tutoring and find significant increases in English language ability estimated at 16 percentage points which is much larger than the simple OLS effects. Since standard academic curriculum is not directed towards improving foreign language ability, private tutoring as an input in the education production function seems to offer high marginal returns. From a policy perspective, this implies that private tutoring should be encouraged for enhancing English ability even though there are concerns that this provides disincentives for teachers to teach in school.     

Students Cheat More: Comparing the Dishonesty of a Student Sample and a Representative Sample in the Laboratory*

Unethical behavior has been found in numerous experiments, yet mainly among university students. The use of student participants is potentially problematic for generalizability and the resulting policy recommendations. In this paper, I report on an experiment with potential dishonesty. The experiment was completed by a representative non-student sample and a student sample. The results show that cheating does exist, but also that students cheat systematically more. This suggests that focusing on students as participants tends to overestimate the magnitude of cheating. I further find that age is an important explanation for this difference in dishonesty. The older the participants are, the less they cheat.     

THE IMPACT OF PUBLICLY PROVIDED EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROGRAMS ON DISTRICT‐LEVEL TEST SCORES

While the existing literature largely finds that standardized test scores are positively associated with participation in pre‐kindergarten programs at the student level, there is little research on the policy effect of publicly providing these programs to entire school districts. We attempt to partially fill this void by examining the effect that publicly provided pre‐kindergarten and full‐day kindergarten programs have on fourth grade student achievement in math and reading at the district level. The models utilize panel data from districts in Wisconsin along with fixed effects estimations. We find that once time‐invariant unobserved heterogeneity of a district is accounted for, preschool programs have small but significant impacts on a cohort's future math scores, particularly in less‐educated communities. Additionally, there is no evidence that preschool or full‐day kindergarten has an impact on future reading scores at the district level. (JEL I20, I28)     

Teacher unions, teacher pay and student performance in India: A pupil fixed effects approach

This paper examines the relationship between teacher unionization, student achievement and teachers' pay using a cross-section of data from private schools in India. We use differences in student mark across subjects to identify within-pupil variation in achievement and find that union membership of the teacher is associated with reduced pupil achievement. We find no evidence this could be due to the unobservables not controlled for by this procedure. A school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows that union membership raises pay and in this case too we find that remaining unobservables are unlikely to explain this outcome. We discuss the policy implications of the findings and show that the effectiveness of teacher credentials in improving teacher performance is linked to unionization.     

Greek membership and academic performance: evidence from student-level data

Compared to other inputs of the ‘education production function’, less is known about the effect of social and non-classroom choices. This study examines whether joining fraternities and sororities improves academic performance. In order to account for the self-selection bias of Greek membership, I exploit plausibly exogenous cross-class variation in Greek student composition at the course-instructor level. My estimate shows that a 10 percentage point increase in Greek student composition translates to a 0.02 standard deviation increase in course grade for Greek students relative to non-Greek students. I further find that this effect is driven largely by low-achieving and middle-achieving white Greek members.     

TRACING THE EFFECTS OF GUARANTEED ADMISSION THROUGH THE COLLEGE PROCESS: EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY DISCONTINUITY IN THE TEXAS 10% PLAN

The Texas 10% law states that students who graduated among the top 10% of their high school class are guaranteed admission to public universities in Texas. We estimate the causal effects of this admissions guarantee on a sequence of connected decisions: students' application behavior, admission decisions by the university, students' enrollment choices conditional on admission; as well as the resulting college achievement. We identify these effects by comparing students just above and just below the top 10% rank cut off. We assume that other student characteristics and incentives are continuous at this cut off. We find that students react to incentives created by the admissions guarantee—for example, by reducing applications to competing private universities. The effects of the admissions guarantee depend on the university and the type of students it attracts. The 10% law is binding and alters the decisions of the admissions committees. We find little evidence that the law increases diversity or leads to meaningful mismatch for the marginal student admitted. (JEL I23, I28)     

基础教育中的同伴效应估计

对基础教育阶段不良同伴带来的短期和中长期效应的评估已经成为劳动经济学的热点话题.文章根据最新的2014年中国教育追踪调查( China Education Panel Survey, CEPS)微观数据,考察了不良同伴对学生标准化考试成绩的影响.为了克服反射(reflection)和自选择问题带来的估计偏误,文章依据班级上不良学生的比例而非传统文献采用的同伴成绩来刻画学生所处的班级环境,并控制了组群的自然特征.在控制学生个体特征和家庭因素后发现,学生所在班级中存在不良同伴,会对学生自身的学习成绩造成显著的负面影响,这一作用在高年级(初三)表现得尤为明显.班级不良同伴比例提高10%会带来平均成绩下降约2分.分样本的回归显示,男性学生、家庭经济状况不佳的学生和住校生的学习成绩对班级不良同伴的反应更敏感.而学校类型的异质性分析则表明,同伴效应在办学情况较差的学校和乡镇/农村学校表现得更明显.进一步的分位数回归结果表明,不良同伴产生的负面效应对成绩较差的学生影响更大.文章的研究发现有利于丰富学界对教育生产函数的认识,也为今后的教育政策提供有益参考.     

Bonus pay for teachers,spatial sorting,and student achievement

Bonus pay policy for teachers in the U.S. is analyzed in this paper. We quantitatively argue that, because of the decentralized education finance system in the U.S., this policy may lead to higher teacher and household sorting across school districts. This then may lead to higher variance of achievement and lower mean achievement. Formally, we use an equilibrium political economy model of education at which households, heterogeneous in exogenously set income, and teachers, heterogeneous in exogenously set quality, are endogenously allocated across two school districts. Public education expenditures, which includes teachers’ wage payment and non-teacher related education spending, are financed through local income taxation. Income tax rate in each district is determined via majority voting. Achievement depends on the efforts chosen by teachers and non-teacher related education spending. Teacher efficiency wage per unit of quality is determined at the national teacher labor market. We first calibrate our benchmark model by matching certain statistics from the U.S. data. Then in a computational experiment, we introduce bonus pay for teachers which rises with average achievement. We find that for the recently observed level of average bonus pay (6.59% of average base salary), variance of achievement is 2.46% higher and mean achievement is 1.79% lower than the benchmark. Variance of achievement reaches its peak when average bonus pay is 14.06% and then it starts falling. Also, mean achievement always falls as average bonus pay rises.     

A Survey of Economic Understanding in U.S. High Schools

The recent widespread adoption of online competitions in economic education provides a unique opportunity to make frequent assessments of economic literacy in U.S. classrooms. In this survey, student responses to test items from the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) are used to create economic concept and content area achievement benchmarks. These benchmarks provide an interim renorming of the TEL and allow the authors to gauge the status of economic understanding among high school students. The data also allow the authors to compare learning outcomes between regular and advanced economics classes. Finally, the authors find that students in advanced economics classes significantly outperform students in regular classes.