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EdWorkingPapers

Lucas Gortazar, Claudia Hupkau, Antonio Roldan.

We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The intensive, eight-week-long program was delivered by qualified math teachers in groups of two students during after-school hours. The intervention significantly increased standardized test scores (+0.26 SD) and end-of-year math grades (+0.48 SD), while reducing the probability of repeating the school year. The intervention also raised aspirations, as well as self-reported effort at school.

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Christian Buerger, Jane Arnold Lincove, Catherine Mata.

School autonomy has been and continues to be one of the most important education reform strategies around the world despite ambiguity about its theoretical and empirical effects on students learning. We use international data from PISA to test three country-level factors that might account for inconsistent results in prior literature: (1) the selective implementation of school autonomy based on school performance; (2) differential influence on high-risk subgroups; and (3) the presence of accountability policies to prevent opportunism by autonomous schools. We find that the relationship between autonomy and student test performance varies both across countries and within countries across subgroups in both magnitude and direction. Similar results are observed if decentralization is coupled with accountability policies. All of three tested factors influence country-level associations between school decentralization and student learning, which suggests that autonomy is effective only when contextual factors and other policies are aligned.

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Robert C. Carr, Margaret Burchinal, Lynne Vernon-Feagans.

A systematic review of the literature (1965–2022) and meta-analysis were undertaken to compare the school readiness skills of children participating in public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) or Head Start. Seven quasi-experimental studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis and 38 effect sizes were analyzed. Results indicated no reliable meta-analytic effect in relation to children’s school readiness skills overall nor in relation to language, mathematics, or social-behavioral skills specifically. A small, positive meta-analytic effect favoring public pre-K compared to Head Start participation was found in relation to children’s emergent literacy skills (Hedges’ g = 0.17). Strategies are discussed to further equate the benefits of public pre-K and Head Start programming by facilitating greater cross-sector collaboration.

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Diana Quintero, Michael Hansen, Nicolas Zerbino.

Public teacher compensation is largely determined by fixed salary schedules that were designed to avoid payment inequalities based on demographic characteristics. Yet, recent research shows female teachers earn less than their male peers after controlling for experience, education, and school characteristics. Building on this literature, this paper examines teacher salaries to provide empirical evidence of the extent of gender wage gaps in the teaching profession and the sources of those gaps. Using data from two waves of the National Teacher and Principal Survey, we show that on average male teachers have an advantage of over $700 in base pay and of $1,500 in supplemental compensation, compared to female teachers with similar characteristics and in similar contexts. Additionally, our estimations indicate that male teachers are both more likely to take on extra duties and receive compensation for those activities than female teachers, and the gap increases when schools have a male principal. Finally, an analysis of wage gaps across collective bargaining contexts suggests that wage gaps are positive for both base pay and extra duties, though the magnitudes of each vary across different CBA contexts. Our results provide insight into teacher compensation policies.

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Alessandro Castagnetti, Derek Rury.

We administer a survey to study students' preferences for relative performance feedback in an introductory economics class. To do so, we elicit students' willingness to pay for/avoid learning their rank on a midterm exam. Our results show that 10% of students are willing to pay to avoid learning their rank. We also find that female students are willing to pay $1 more than male students. We also confirm that beliefs about academic performance do not predict preferences for information. After randomizing access to information about rank, students report needing more study hours to achieve their desired grade and being less likely in the top half of the ability distribution in the class. These effects are driven by stronger effects from people who overestimated their midterm rank compared to those who underestimated their performance. We do not find an overall effect of learning about rank performance on final course grade. We also confirm that students' preferences for feedback do not interfere with their belief updating.

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Stephanie Owen.

The Advanced Placement (AP) program is nearly ubiquitous in American high schools and is often touted as a way to close racial and socioeconomic gaps in educational outcomes. Using administrative data from Michigan, I exploit variation within high schools across time in AP course offerings to identify the causal effect of AP course availability on college choice and degree attainment. I find that higher income students, White and Asian students, and higher-achieving students are more likely to take advantage of additional AP courses when they are offered, thus widening existing gaps in course-taking. I find little evidence that additional AP availability improves college outcomes for any students. Expanding access to AP courses without additional incentives or support for disadvantaged students to succeed is unlikely to address educational inequality.

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Mark Weber, Bruce D. Baker.

The factors that influenced school districts’ decisions to offer virtual, hybrid, or in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year—the first full school year after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic—have been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Some of this research examines the influence of school spending, among other factors; however, these studies do not consider spending in relation to cost, “cost” being the amount needed for a school district to achieve a given outcome. This paper uses a measure of adequacy, which is the amount of spending under or over estimated cost, to determine whether spending correlates with the amount of time a school district offered virtual instruction. We find spending adequacy significantly and substantially predicts time spent in virtual instruction: for every $1,000 positive change in adequacy (closing a gap and/or adding to a surplus), the time spent in virtual schooling decreases 0.6%. A one standard deviation positive change in adequacy, therefore, results in 7.5 fewer days of virtual instruction. While our findings are descriptive, they do require future researchers to consider school spending adequacy, as much as any other factor, as a predictor of pandemic instructional models.

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Tine L. Mundbjerg Eriksen, Amanda P. Gaulke, Niels Skipper, Jannet Svensson, Peter Thingholm.

While there is a growing literature on family health spillovers, questions remain about how sibling disability status impacts educational outcomes. As disability is not randomly assigned this is an empirical challenge. In this paper we use Danish administrative data and variation in the onset of type 1 diabetes to compare education outcomes of focal children with a disabled sibling to outcomes of focal children without a disabled sibling (matched on date of birth of the focal child, sibling spacing and family size). We find that having a disabled sibling significantly decreases 9th grade exit exam GPAs, while having no impact on on-time completion of 9th grade. However, educational trajectories are impacted, as we find significant decreases in high school enrollment and significant increases in vocational school enrollment by age 18. Our results indicate that sibling disability status can generate economically meaningful inequality in educational outcomes.

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Andrew Camp, Alison H. Johnson, Gema Zamarro.

During the 2020-21 school year, Black and Hispanic students were less likely to attend school in-person than white students. Prior research indicated multiple factors helped explain this gap. In this study, we revise these observed racial gaps in in-person learning to examine whether the relationship between these gaps and explanatory factors observed earlier in the pandemic changed during the 2021-2022 school year. We find that, while in-person gaps decreased, Black respondents continued to be less likely to report in-person learning than white respondents. Political leanings and COVID-19 health risks, which helped explain observed gaps in 2020-2021, lose explanatory power. But the availability of learning options remains an important factor in helping explain the observed in-person gaps. In this respect, our results suggest the presence of a mismatch between the preferences that Black families have and what they are being offered.

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David R. Johnson.

At schools with low grading standards, students receive higher school-awarded grades across multiple courses than students with the same skills receive at schools with high grading standards. A new methodology shows grading standards vary substantially, certainly enough to affect post-secondary opportunities, across high schools in Alberta. Schools with low grading standards are more likely to be private, rural, offer courses for students returning to high school, have smaller course cohorts, have a smaller percentage of lone parent households and a larger percentage of well-educated parents. Variation in grading standards changes post-secondary opportunities in systematic ways.

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