I estimate the effect of private schooling on Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores of 62 countries across the globe from 2000 to 2012. I employ time and country-fixed effects regression models and also use the short-run demand for schooling within a country and year as an instrument for private share of schooling enrollment. I find evidence to suggest that increased private schooling leads to improved PISA scores around the world. Specifically, the model using control variables alongside country and year fixed effects finds that a one percentage point increase in the private share of schooling enrollment is associated with a 1.6-point increase in math scores and a 1.2-point increase in reading scores. However, only one of the two relationships remains statistically significant in the instrumental variables analysis.
{"title":"Does Private Schooling Improve International Test Scores? Evidence from a Natural Experiment","authors":"Corey A. DeAngelis","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2903523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2903523","url":null,"abstract":"I estimate the effect of private schooling on Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores of 62 countries across the globe from 2000 to 2012. I employ time and country-fixed effects regression models and also use the short-run demand for schooling within a country and year as an instrument for private share of schooling enrollment. I find evidence to suggest that increased private schooling leads to improved PISA scores around the world. Specifically, the model using control variables alongside country and year fixed effects finds that a one percentage point increase in the private share of schooling enrollment is associated with a 1.6-point increase in math scores and a 1.2-point increase in reading scores. However, only one of the two relationships remains statistically significant in the instrumental variables analysis.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125822146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson led a Midwestern policy revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s centered on providing parents with more school choices. Since those early years, school choice in the forms of private school vouchers, public charter schools, and public school open enrollment have spread across almost all of the country. Longitudinal evaluations of the effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the voucher program initiated by Governor Thompson, indicate that student achievement outcomes were not consistently affected by vouchers but other vital student outcomes, including educational attainment, civic values, criminal proclivities as well as parent and student satisfaction were positively influenced by participation in private school choice. A generally similar pattern of results applies to public charter schools and open enrollment. Parents across the U.S. tend to have more educational options in no small part due to the pioneering initiatives of Tommy Thompson. Although the evidence on school choice, and the desirability of the policies themselves, remains fiercely contested 30 years later, our assessment is that, on balance, disadvantaged families in Wisconsin and elsewhere are no worse off and most likely somewhat better off if they have availed themselves of the school choice opportunities that Governor Thompson helped to make possible.
{"title":"The Wisconsin Role in the School Choice Movement","authors":"J. Witte, Patrick J. Wolf","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2978094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2978094","url":null,"abstract":"Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson led a Midwestern policy revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s centered on providing parents with more school choices. Since those early years, school choice in the forms of private school vouchers, public charter schools, and public school open enrollment have spread across almost all of the country. Longitudinal evaluations of the effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the voucher program initiated by Governor Thompson, indicate that student achievement outcomes were not consistently affected by vouchers but other vital student outcomes, including educational attainment, civic values, criminal proclivities as well as parent and student satisfaction were positively influenced by participation in private school choice. A generally similar pattern of results applies to public charter schools and open enrollment. Parents across the U.S. tend to have more educational options in no small part due to the pioneering initiatives of Tommy Thompson. Although the evidence on school choice, and the desirability of the policies themselves, remains fiercely contested 30 years later, our assessment is that, on balance, disadvantaged families in Wisconsin and elsewhere are no worse off and most likely somewhat better off if they have availed themselves of the school choice opportunities that Governor Thompson helped to make possible.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132345106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A vast body of research has proven the correlation between exclusionary discipline (out-of-school suspensions and expulsions) and student outcomes such as lower test scores, dropout, grade retention, and involvement in the juvenile justice system, but there is no consensus on the causal impacts of exclusionary discipline. This study uses six years of de-identified demographic, achievement, and disciplinary data from all K-12 public schools in Arkansas to estimate the causal relationship. We conduct dynamic panel data models incorporating student fixed effects using Anderson-Hsiao (1981) estimation. We find, counter-intuitively, a null to positive impact of out-of-school suspensions on test scores. Therefore, while policymakers may have other reasons to limit exclusionary discipline, we should not expect academic gains to follow.
{"title":"Understanding a Vicious Cycle: Do Out-of-School Suspensions Impact Student Test Scores?","authors":"Kaitlin P. Anderson, Gary W. Ritter, Gema Zamarro","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2944346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2944346","url":null,"abstract":"A vast body of research has proven the correlation between exclusionary discipline (out-of-school suspensions and expulsions) and student outcomes such as lower test scores, dropout, grade retention, and involvement in the juvenile justice system, but there is no consensus on the causal impacts of exclusionary discipline. This study uses six years of de-identified demographic, achievement, and disciplinary data from all K-12 public schools in Arkansas to estimate the causal relationship. We conduct dynamic panel data models incorporating student fixed effects using Anderson-Hsiao (1981) estimation. We find, counter-intuitively, a null to positive impact of out-of-school suspensions on test scores. Therefore, while policymakers may have other reasons to limit exclusionary discipline, we should not expect academic gains to follow.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"401 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127930683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to a 2014 report from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Black students represent only 15% of students across the nation, but 35% of students suspended once are Black, 44% of students suspended more than once are Black, and 36% of expelled students are Black. While these disparate disciplinary outcomes at the aggregate level are troubling, more information is needed if we are to develop a full understanding of the problem of disproportionate discipline. In particular, consequences should be attached to specific infractions and school level data are necessary to help us decipher the extent to which students in the same schools are being treated differently for the same ostensible infractions. In this study, we exploit three years of student-level discipline data from Arkansas and find that Black students received more severe punishments than White students for the same infractions across the state. These differences were due, in large part, to school-level differences in disciplinary patterns. However, even after controlling for infraction and school-fixed effects, Black students received slightly longer punishments than their White peers in the same schools.
{"title":"Do School Discipline Policies Treat Students Fairly? A Second Look at School Discipline Rate Disparities","authors":"Kaitlin P. Anderson, Gary W. Ritter","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2700707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2700707","url":null,"abstract":"According to a 2014 report from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Black students represent only 15% of students across the nation, but 35% of students suspended once are Black, 44% of students suspended more than once are Black, and 36% of expelled students are Black. While these disparate disciplinary outcomes at the aggregate level are troubling, more information is needed if we are to develop a full understanding of the problem of disproportionate discipline. In particular, consequences should be attached to specific infractions and school level data are necessary to help us decipher the extent to which students in the same schools are being treated differently for the same ostensible infractions. In this study, we exploit three years of student-level discipline data from Arkansas and find that Black students received more severe punishments than White students for the same infractions across the state. These differences were due, in large part, to school-level differences in disciplinary patterns. However, even after controlling for infraction and school-fixed effects, Black students received slightly longer punishments than their White peers in the same schools.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130256494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
High school graduation serves as an important gateway to increased professional opportunities. Not only does a high school graduate improve the national economy, a high school diploma is the key to opening the door to college. However, obtaining a high school degree does not necessarily ensure college readiness. In fact, many high school graduates are not prepared for college coursework, but still apply to and attend college in our college for all system. The class of 2013 saw only 38 percent of students test at a level considered prepared for college on the reading portion of the NAEP, but the problem is 66 percent of these students went on to enroll in college (Petrilli, 2016). In order to rectify this situation of unprepared students entering post-secondary education, colleges have implemented developmental coursework policies to prepare students for college-level coursework. Here, we add to the literature by examining the impacts of developmental coursework on students at Arkansas’s flagship public institution. We use a regression discontinuity design to examine multiple bandwidths of student-level observations for first-time enrollees from 2003-2014. The full sample includes 40,395 first-time enrollees for the time period of interest, 92 percent reported scores for each of the three ACT sections that determine recommendation for remediation. Using marginal effects to predict outcomes, we find that students recommended to developmental math courses are less likely to persist in college and less likely to graduate in 4 years after enrollment. We find that students recommended for developmental English coursework were more likely to persist into the second semester and year of college but were less likely to graduate in 4 years. We conclude that developmental coursework at the University of Arkansas, while having mixed impacts on students, could be due to the quality of student choosing to attend the state’s flagship institution and the state’s policies tied to opting-in and placing-out of developmental courses.
{"title":"Helping Hand or a Hurdle Too High? An Evaluation Of Developmental Coursework at Arkansas's Flagship University","authors":"Evan Rhinesmith","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2903521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2903521","url":null,"abstract":"High school graduation serves as an important gateway to increased professional opportunities. Not only does a high school graduate improve the national economy, a high school diploma is the key to opening the door to college. However, obtaining a high school degree does not necessarily ensure college readiness. In fact, many high school graduates are not prepared for college coursework, but still apply to and attend college in our college for all system. The class of 2013 saw only 38 percent of students test at a level considered prepared for college on the reading portion of the NAEP, but the problem is 66 percent of these students went on to enroll in college (Petrilli, 2016). In order to rectify this situation of unprepared students entering post-secondary education, colleges have implemented developmental coursework policies to prepare students for college-level coursework. Here, we add to the literature by examining the impacts of developmental coursework on students at Arkansas’s flagship public institution. We use a regression discontinuity design to examine multiple bandwidths of student-level observations for first-time enrollees from 2003-2014. The full sample includes 40,395 first-time enrollees for the time period of interest, 92 percent reported scores for each of the three ACT sections that determine recommendation for remediation. Using marginal effects to predict outcomes, we find that students recommended to developmental math courses are less likely to persist in college and less likely to graduate in 4 years after enrollment. We find that students recommended for developmental English coursework were more likely to persist into the second semester and year of college but were less likely to graduate in 4 years. We conclude that developmental coursework at the University of Arkansas, while having mixed impacts on students, could be due to the quality of student choosing to attend the state’s flagship institution and the state’s policies tied to opting-in and placing-out of developmental courses.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115253398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Graduating from high school is a crucial outcome for young people. Unfortunately, 12 percent of Texas students fail to earn the vital credential of a high school diploma. Private school choice has a proven track record of increasing graduation rates. In this study I draw upon prior research, Texas demographics, and conservative assumptions to forecast that the launch of a universal private school choice program in the form of Education Savings Accounts in the fall of 2017 would generate 11,809 additional high school graduates in the Lone Star State by 2022. In other words, of those students attending high school today, or entering high school within a year, an additional 11,809 students will graduate with the passage of ESAs in Texas. This is a conservative projection and the numbers will also grow over time.
{"title":"Boosting Graduation Rates in Texas Through Education Savings Accounts","authors":"Patrick J. Wolf","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2857403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2857403","url":null,"abstract":"Graduating from high school is a crucial outcome for young people. Unfortunately, 12 percent of Texas students fail to earn the vital credential of a high school diploma. Private school choice has a proven track record of increasing graduation rates. In this study I draw upon prior research, Texas demographics, and conservative assumptions to forecast that the launch of a universal private school choice program in the form of Education Savings Accounts in the fall of 2017 would generate 11,809 additional high school graduates in the Lone Star State by 2022. In other words, of those students attending high school today, or entering high school within a year, an additional 11,809 students will graduate with the passage of ESAs in Texas. This is a conservative projection and the numbers will also grow over time.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120999595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Providing parents choices in education has become an increasingly popular instrument for reforming education in the United States. While existing research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs shows that parents are satisfied with the schools they have chosen, there is not much to explain their satisfaction. Previous research using parent surveys asks parents to rate and/or grade their school of choice, while comparing their response to their thoughts on their previous public school. This paper reports new empirical evidence that looks to offer a possible explanation for parents’ satisfaction. Using data from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, we look to analyze whether or not parents get what they choose for when given the opportunity to choose a private school. Our analysis makes use of survey responses from parents that can be matched to students and then matched to principals. In total, there were 7,338 parents who received a survey. Of these, 3,226 parents completed a survey. In total, there were 1,868 students who responded to surveys. Parents were matched to MPCP students using a unique child ID, resulting in 1,856 parents who were matched to students. These were then matched to principals representing 123 schools participating in the MPCP. Our analysis of the MPCP examines the probability of a parent choosing a school that ranked at least above average on the specific characteristic they had listed as most important to their school choice. Since a school having a specific characteristic is a binary variable, we used Logit as the functional form of the regression equation in order to estimate the probability that parents get what they choose for.
{"title":"You Can Often Get What You Want: Assessing the Match between Parent Preferences and Private Schools of Choice","authors":"Evan Rhinesmith, Patrick J. Wolf","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2830648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2830648","url":null,"abstract":"Providing parents choices in education has become an increasingly popular instrument for reforming education in the United States. While existing research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs shows that parents are satisfied with the schools they have chosen, there is not much to explain their satisfaction. Previous research using parent surveys asks parents to rate and/or grade their school of choice, while comparing their response to their thoughts on their previous public school. This paper reports new empirical evidence that looks to offer a possible explanation for parents’ satisfaction. Using data from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, we look to analyze whether or not parents get what they choose for when given the opportunity to choose a private school. Our analysis makes use of survey responses from parents that can be matched to students and then matched to principals. In total, there were 7,338 parents who received a survey. Of these, 3,226 parents completed a survey. In total, there were 1,868 students who responded to surveys. Parents were matched to MPCP students using a unique child ID, resulting in 1,856 parents who were matched to students. These were then matched to principals representing 123 schools participating in the MPCP. Our analysis of the MPCP examines the probability of a parent choosing a school that ranked at least above average on the specific characteristic they had listed as most important to their school choice. Since a school having a specific characteristic is a binary variable, we used Logit as the functional form of the regression equation in order to estimate the probability that parents get what they choose for.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121826339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
School voucher programs (a.k.a. opportunity scholarships) are scholarship programs - frequently government funded - that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. Many private school vouchers programs have been initiated around the world with the goal of increasing the academic performance of students. Voucher programs are often viewed as a way to increase achievement and satisfaction for individual students and families, while at the same time creating competitive pressures that encourage other schools in the area to improve. Countries like Chile and India have developed extensive school voucher programs. While many studies have been conducted on school vouchers, a meta-analysis of the international randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the achievement effects of vouchers has never been conducted. This study is a meta-analytic consolidation of the evidence from all RCTs evaluating the participant test score effects of school vouchers internationally. Our search process turned up 9,443 potential studies, 19 of which ultimately were included. These 19 studies represent 11 different voucher programs. A total of 262 effect sizes are included, with a two-stage consolidation of those estimates yielding a total of 44 drawn from the last year of the studies. We have included only math and reading outcomes as other subjects are rarely reported and are difficult to compare across countries. We also differentiate between English and reading outcomes and present English results as a subcomponent of the reading effects to account for the effect of local language in the international context. Our meta-analysis indicates overall positive and statistically significant achievement effects of school vouchers that vary by subject (math or reading), location (US v. non-US), and funding type (public or private). Generally, the impacts are larger (1) for reading than for math, (2) for programs outside the US relative to those within the US, and (3) for publicly-funded programs relative to privately-funded programs.
{"title":"The Participant Effects of Private School Vouchers Across the Globe: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review","authors":"M. Shakeel, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Patrick J. Wolf","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2777633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2777633","url":null,"abstract":"School voucher programs (a.k.a. opportunity scholarships) are scholarship programs - frequently government funded - that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. Many private school vouchers programs have been initiated around the world with the goal of increasing the academic performance of students. Voucher programs are often viewed as a way to increase achievement and satisfaction for individual students and families, while at the same time creating competitive pressures that encourage other schools in the area to improve. Countries like Chile and India have developed extensive school voucher programs. While many studies have been conducted on school vouchers, a meta-analysis of the international randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the achievement effects of vouchers has never been conducted. This study is a meta-analytic consolidation of the evidence from all RCTs evaluating the participant test score effects of school vouchers internationally. Our search process turned up 9,443 potential studies, 19 of which ultimately were included. These 19 studies represent 11 different voucher programs. A total of 262 effect sizes are included, with a two-stage consolidation of those estimates yielding a total of 44 drawn from the last year of the studies. We have included only math and reading outcomes as other subjects are rarely reported and are difficult to compare across countries. We also differentiate between English and reading outcomes and present English results as a subcomponent of the reading effects to account for the effect of local language in the international context. Our meta-analysis indicates overall positive and statistically significant achievement effects of school vouchers that vary by subject (math or reading), location (US v. non-US), and funding type (public or private). Generally, the impacts are larger (1) for reading than for math, (2) for programs outside the US relative to those within the US, and (3) for publicly-funded programs relative to privately-funded programs.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"107 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132638242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gema Zamarro, Albert Cheng, M. Shakeel, Collin Hitt
Though researchers now are aware of the potential importance of character skills, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, and a growth mindset, researchers struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. In this paper, we use data collected from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative internet panel to study the validity of innovative measures of character skills based on measures of survey effort. We believe surveys themselves can be seen as a behavioral tasks and that respondents provide meaningful information about their character skills by way of the effort they put forward on surveys. In particular, we compare measures of grit, conscientiousness and other personality traits, and growth mindset, based on self-reports, and survey effort measures of character. We study the relationship across each other and their relationship with academic and life outcomes such as income and labor-market outcomes, after controlling for cognitive ability and other relevant demographic characteristics. Our results show that survey effort measures of character skills, in particular measures of careless answering in surveys, show great promise for being good proxy measures of relevant non-cognitive skills.
{"title":"Comparing and Validating Measures of Character Skills: Findings from a Nationally Representative Sample","authors":"Gema Zamarro, Albert Cheng, M. Shakeel, Collin Hitt","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2777635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2777635","url":null,"abstract":"Though researchers now are aware of the potential importance of character skills, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, and a growth mindset, researchers struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. In this paper, we use data collected from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative internet panel to study the validity of innovative measures of character skills based on measures of survey effort. We believe surveys themselves can be seen as a behavioral tasks and that respondents provide meaningful information about their character skills by way of the effort they put forward on surveys. In particular, we compare measures of grit, conscientiousness and other personality traits, and growth mindset, based on self-reports, and survey effort measures of character. We study the relationship across each other and their relationship with academic and life outcomes such as income and labor-market outcomes, after controlling for cognitive ability and other relevant demographic characteristics. Our results show that survey effort measures of character skills, in particular measures of careless answering in surveys, show great promise for being good proxy measures of relevant non-cognitive skills.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133184909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although research has been unable to find strong links between observable teacher characteristics and a teacher’s ability to improve student achievement, it has generally not considered the role that teacher non-cognitive skills play in affecting student outcomes. In this article, we validate several novel performance-task measures of teacher conscientiousness based upon the effort that teachers exert completing a survey and use these measures to examine the role that teacher conscientiousness plays in affecting both student test scores and student non-cognitive skills. We conduct our analysis using the Measure of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database where teachers were randomly assigned to their classrooms in the second year of the study. We exploit this random assignment to estimate causal impacts of teachers on their students’ outcomes during the second year of the MET project. We find that our survey-effort measures of teacher conscientiousness capture important dimensions of teacher quality. More conscientious teachers are more effective at improving their student conscientiousness but not their student test scores. Additional analysis suggests that traditional measures of teacher quality largely fail to capture a teacher’s ability to improve student conscientiousness, though measures of teacher quality based upon student ratings and one particular classroom observation protocol are exceptions.
{"title":"Measuring Teacher Conscientiousness and its Impact on Students: Insight from the Measures of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database","authors":"Albert Cheng, Gema Zamarro","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2768970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2768970","url":null,"abstract":"Although research has been unable to find strong links between observable teacher characteristics and a teacher’s ability to improve student achievement, it has generally not considered the role that teacher non-cognitive skills play in affecting student outcomes. In this article, we validate several novel performance-task measures of teacher conscientiousness based upon the effort that teachers exert completing a survey and use these measures to examine the role that teacher conscientiousness plays in affecting both student test scores and student non-cognitive skills. We conduct our analysis using the Measure of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database where teachers were randomly assigned to their classrooms in the second year of the study. We exploit this random assignment to estimate causal impacts of teachers on their students’ outcomes during the second year of the MET project. We find that our survey-effort measures of teacher conscientiousness capture important dimensions of teacher quality. More conscientious teachers are more effective at improving their student conscientiousness but not their student test scores. Additional analysis suggests that traditional measures of teacher quality largely fail to capture a teacher’s ability to improve student conscientiousness, though measures of teacher quality based upon student ratings and one particular classroom observation protocol are exceptions.","PeriodicalId":336198,"journal":{"name":"University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Research Paper Series","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124291950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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