Economics of Education Review最新文献

Using a representative longitudinal survey of U.S. teenagers, we investigate how peer racial composition in high school affects individual turnout of young adults. We exploit across-cohort, within-school differences in peer racial composition. One within-school standard deviation increase in the racial diversity index leads to a 2.3 percent increase in the probability to be registered to vote seven years later and to a 2.6 percent higher probability to vote six years later. These effects are likely due to positive interracial contact when socialization has long-lasting effects: higher racial diversity in school is linked to more interracial friendships in school and later on.

Whereas there is a large literature evaluating the impacts of education, most of the focus has been on getting to universal primary enrollment and understanding the returns to basic education; but it misses the major shifts toward higher education in many fast-growing parts of the developing world over the last 20 years. In this paper, I study the returns to higher education in China using the reinstatement of the National College Entrance Examination in 1977 as a natural experiment, investigating the causal impacts of higher education on later life outcomes and well-being. Through a combination of regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference methods, I find that cohorts that were more likely to complete high school and obtain a college education as a result of the reform were no more likely to be employed, but were more likely to have a high-socioeconomic (SES) occupation in their early 30s, and lesser of the same in their 40s. Cohorts with higher education work for fewer days in a week, and, on average, earn a higher monthly income by 56 percent in their late 40s.

A central premise of the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was that test-based accountability systems would break through local politics and lead districts to prioritize the needs of disadvantaged students. Yet, no research examines the equity-related effects of NCLB’s district accountability system. Focusing on a state with rich data, we find that negative ratings (which put districts at higher risk of state intervention) led to the disenrollment of economically disadvantaged students (ostensibly leading to a decline in income-based school segregation) and a corresponding (suspicious) jump in test scores. Negative ratings also led to changes in collectively bargained personnel policies and the replacement of teachers in disadvantaged students’ schools. There was no redistribution of funds toward disadvantaged students’ schools, however, and likely minimal impact on district elections. The results put into question whether a shift in district governance helps explain NCLB’s well-documented positive impacts on low-income students’ academic outcomes.

This paper examines the effects of increasing the compulsory school leaving age from 16 to 18 in Hungary using a difference-in-regression-discontinuities design empirical strategy. While the reform increased the length of schooling, it did not decrease the probability of dropping out of secondary school, either on average or among the most at-risk group of Roma ethnic minority students. Due to grade retentions, marginal students were older than their peers and couldn't have reached the final grade of secondary school by age 18 to earn a degree. The reform also did not affect the probability of employment, hours worked, wages and the probability of working in low-skilled occupations at ages 20 and 25. In education systems that allow grade retention, compulsory education should have the explicit goal of keeping students in school until they earn a secondary degree, rather than just until a certain age.

Turnaround schools and districts that were charged with making rapid and dramatic improvements before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic faced considerable challenges carrying out improvement efforts during pandemic schooling. Using survey and administrative data collected during the pandemic, we document some of the ways in which students and educators in Michigan's turnaround schools and districts experienced the pandemic. We show that the communities in which turnaround schools are located were hardest hit by the pandemic and school and district operations were substantially disrupted. By extension, turnaround districts and especially the lowest performing schools in those districts that were targeted for school-level turnaround experienced high rates of student absenteeism, low student and parent engagement, and, ultimately, significantly smaller gains on math and reading benchmark assessments than non-turnaround districts. Our findings have implications for policy as states resume school and district turnaround efforts that were disrupted by the pandemic.

In which settings can bicycles help to improve girls’ education in low-income countries? This paper analyzes the complementarity between all-weather roads and a bicycle program in India aimed at increasing girls’ secondary school enrollment. Using a triple-difference strategy, I find that the program benefits girls living 3–10 km away from schools with all-weather road connections, increasing their enrollment by 60 percent and reducing the gender enrollment gap by 51 percent. There are no effects for girls in villages without all-weather roads or girls living more than 10 km from school. The findings emphasize the importance and interdependence of road infrastructure, mode of transport, and distance to school for improving girls’ education in India.

Anecdotal evidence suggests widespread discrimination against community college transfer students, despite their prevalence among bachelor’s degree holders in the US. I send out fictitious job applications and conduct a labor market audit study to examine such discrimination. All applicants have bachelor’s degrees, and a random subset are transfer students who attended community colleges for their first two years of college. I find that, for accounting jobs, community college experience significantly reduces callback rates and undermines the value of graduating from selective four-year colleges. In comparison, sales and marketing firms do not exhibit signs of discrimination.

We study the long-run and multi-generational effects of a mass education program in Vietnam during the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Difference-in-difference estimations indicate that the girls exposed to the program had an average of 1.5 years of education, while their children had an average of 0.9 more years of education. Better household lifestyles and a stronger focus on education are possible transmission pathways between mothers and children.

Improving school quality in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is a global priority. One way to improve quality may be to improve the management skills of school leaders. In this systematic review, we analyze the impact of interventions targeting school leaders’ management practices on student learning. We begin by describing the characteristics and responsibilities of school leaders using data from large, multi-country surveys. Second, we review the literature and conduct a meta-analysis of the causal effect of school management interventions on student learning, using 39 estimates from 20 evaluations. We estimate a statistically significant improvement in student learning of 0.033 standard deviations. We show that effect sizes are not related to program scale or intensity. We complement the meta-analysis by identifying common limitations to program effectiveness through a qualitative assessment of the studies included in our review. We find three main factors which mitigate program effectiveness: (1) low take-up; (2) lack of incentives or structure for implementation of recommendations; and (3) the lengthy causal chain linking management practices to student learning. Finally, to assess external validity of our review, we survey practitioners to compare characteristics between evaluated and commonly implemented programs. Our findings suggest that future work should focus on generating evidence on the marginal effect of common design elements in these interventions, including factors that promote school leader engagement and accountability.

Developing countries are increasingly under siege from various adverse income shocks, including climate hazards and public health crises, which are known to increase households’ opportunity cost of child schooling. This paper uses an individual fixed-effect linear probability model to test whether free compulsory education mitigates the permanent effect of COVID-19’s containment measures on children’s school attendance. In so doing, we exploit the variation across levels of education in the implementation of free compulsory education laws in Nigeria. Estimation results show that fifteen months after schools reopened, COVID-19’s containment measures had no permanent effect on the school attendance of children whose schooling was free and compulsory. However, they decreased the school attendance of those whose schooling was neither free nor compulsory by 7.8 percentage points. Our findings suggest that pre-existing education policies, such as the scale of implementation of compulsory education laws, influence children’s vulnerability to the negative effects of adverse aggregate income shocks on children’s schooling outcomes.