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One of the most important mechanism design policies in college admissions is to let students choose a college major sequentially (college-then-major choice) or jointly (college-major choice). In the context of the Chinese meta-major reforms that transition from college-major choice to college-then-major choice, we provide the first experimental evidence on the information frictions and heterogeneous preferences that students have in their response to the meta-major option. In a randomized experiment with a nationwide sample of 11,424 high school graduates, we find that providing information on the benefits of a meta-major significantly increased students’ willingness to choose the meta major; however, information about specific majors and assignment mechanisms did not affect student major choice preferences. We also find that information provision mostly affected the preferences of students who were from disadvantaged backgrounds, lacked accurate information, did not have clear major preferences, or were risk loving.
Recent policy efforts have attempted to increase the number of dual enrollment courses offered within Career and Technical Education pathways and there is evidence to suggest that this practice is widespread. However, there is very little research on student participation in CTE dual enrollment and on its impacts. This study examines participation in the CTE dual enrollment pathway in North Carolina, finding that about 9% of North Carolina students participated in CTE dual enrollment courses in 11th or 12th grade and disparities in participation among subgroups were less than for college transfer dual enrollment courses. Using a quasi-experimental approach to examine the effect of the program, the study found that participation is CTE was positively associated with college credits earned in high school, graduation from high school, and overall enrollment in college within one year after high school. The study also examined results by subgroup.
Research suggests that longer commute times can increase employee turnover probabilities by increasing job stress and reducing job attachment and embeddedness. Using administrative data from a midsized urban school district, we test whether teachers and school leaders with longer commute times are more likely to transfer schools or exit the school system. We find that transfer probability increases roughly monotonically through most of the commute time distribution. Teachers who commute 45 minutes or more to work are 10 percentage points more likely to transfer than another teacher in the same school commuting only 5 minutes. They are also 3 percentage points more likely to leave the district. Consistent with turnover patterns, we find that teachers with longer commute times are more likely to be absent from work. Their observation scores are also lower. These results suggest that schools may benefit from hiring teachers who live relatively close by, at least in the absence of supports or resources to compensate teachers with longer commutes. In contrast, we find no consistent evidence that principals’ or assistant principals’ likelihood of turning over, absence rates, or performance ratings are a function of their travel time from home to work.
Drawing on 16 years of nationally representative survey data from 2007-2022, I demonstrate that partisan gaps—the average differences in public opinion between Democrats and Republicans—have widened on many education issues. The growth of the partisan gaps consistently exceeds what would be expected due to the changing demographic compositions of the parties alone. In most cases, widening partisan gaps are primarily attributable to sorting (the alignment of one’s party affiliation and one’s issue positions) rather than polarization (increasing support for more extreme positions relative to more moderate positions). However, polarization is also increasing on some of the most divisive issues. Among those who are sorting, individuals are overwhelmingly switching their issues positions to align with their party affiliations rather than switching their party affiliations to align with their issue positions.
In spring 2020, nearly every U.S. public school closed at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing evidence suggests that local political partisanship and teachers union strength were better predictors of fall 2020 school re-opening status than Covid case and death rates. We replicate and extend these analyses using data collected over the 2020-21 academic year. We demonstrate that Covid case and death rates were meaningfully associated with initial rates of in-person instruction. We also show that all three factors—Covid, partisanship, and teachers unions—became less predictive of in-person instruction as the school year continued. We then leverage data from two nationally representative surveys of Americans’ attitudes toward education and identify an as-yet undiscussed factor that predicts in-person instruction: public support for increasing teacher salaries. We speculate that education leaders were better able to manage the logistical and political complexities of school re-openings in communities with greater support for educators.
While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the California Community Colleges system to provide insights into how the use of online education may change in the system going forward. Leaders predicted that post-pandemic, colleges would increase their online course offerings, and that many instructional innovations to online courses from the pandemic—such as the use of synchronous courses—would persist. They hoped that a more prominent position for online education within the system would be matched by more resources to provide supports for online learning.
We evaluate the effects of grade retention on students’ academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the effects persist into middle school. We find no evidence of grade retention effects on student attendance or disciplinary incidents, again into middle school. Our findings combine to show that Indiana’s third grade retention policy improves achievement for retained students without adverse impacts along (measured) non-academic dimensions.
We study teachers’ choices about how to allocate class time across different instructional activities, for example, lecturing, open discussion, or individual practice. Our data come from secondary schools in England, specifically classes preceding GCSE exams. Students score higher in math when their teacher devotes more class time to individual practice and assessment. In contrast, students score higher in English if there is more discussion and work with classmates. Class time allocation predicts test scores separate from the quality of the teacher’s instruction during the activities. These results suggest opportunities to improve student achievement without changes in teachers’ skills.
When an employee expects repeated evaluation and performance incentives over time, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in building relevant skills. Because new skills benefit job performance, the effects of an evaluation program can persist after the rewards end or even anticipate the start of rewards. I test for persistence and anticipation effects, along with more conventional predictions, using a quasi-experiment in Tennessee schools. Performance improves with new evaluation measures, but gains are larger when the teacher expects future rewards linked to future scores. Performance rises further when incentives start and remains higher even after incentives end.
Policy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate the academic and behavioral effects of being reassigned to a different school and, separately, of shifts in peer characteristics. We rule out all but substantively small effects of transitioning to a different school as a result of reassignment on test scores, course grades and chronic absenteeism. In contrast, increasing the achievement levels of students' peers improves students' math and ELA test scores but harms their ELA course grades. Test score benefits accrue primarily to students from higher-income families, though students with lower family income or lower prior performance still benefit. Our results suggest that student assignment policies that relocate students to avoid the over-concentration of lower-achieving students or those from lower-income families can accomplish equity goals (despite important caveats), although these reassignments may reduce achievement for students from higher-income backgrounds.