ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Vouchers, Public School Response and the Role of Incentives: Evidence from Florida. Working Paper #09-04
Author: Chakrabarti, Rajashri
Date: 2009-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Vouchers,Public Schools,Incentives,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Improvement,Educational Change,School Effectiveness,Statistical Analysis,Regression (Statistics)

In this paper, I analyze the behavior of public schools facing vouchers. The literature on the effect of voucher programs on public schools typically focuses on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the threat of vouchers in Florida behaved. Under the 1999 Florida program, schools getting an &quot;F&quot; grade for the first time were exposed to the threat of vouchers, but did not face vouchers unless and until they got a second &quot;F&quot; within the next three years. Exploiting the institutional details of this program, I analyze the incentives built into the system and investigate the behavior of the threatened public schools facing these incentives. There is strong evidence that they did respond to incentives. Using highly disaggregated school level data, a difference-in-differences estimation strategy as well as a regression discontinuity analysis, I find that the threatened schools tended to focus more on students below the minimum criteria cutoffs rather than equally on all, but interestingly, this improvement did not come at the expense of higher performing students. Second, consistent with incentives, they focused mostly on writing rather than reading and math. These results are robust to controlling for differential pre-program trends, changes in demographic compositions, mean reversion and sorting. These findings have important policy implications.
Unequally Safe: The Race Gap in School Safety. Working Paper #01-13
Author: Lacoe, Johanna
Date: 2013-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: School Safety,Equal Education,Middle School Students,Racial Differences,Student Surveys,Attendance,African American Students,Hispanic American Students,White Students,Asian American Students,Hierarchical Linear Modeling,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Environment,Discipline Policy,School Security,Racial Relations,Regression (Statistics)

Inequality in educational outcomes is a frequent topic of policy debate. This paper investigates one potential source of educational inequality--school safety. With panel survey data of middle school students, this paper estimates racial gaps in student feelings of safety in the classroom, in the hallways, and outside the school building, and how frequently students miss school due to safety concerns. The results identify gaps in feelings of safety between black students, Hispanic students, and their white and Asian peers, even within the same schools and homerooms. Multilevel modeling and decomposition analyses are used to identify key contextual characteristics of schools -- school disorder, discipline and security policies, and racial and ethnic tension -- that relate to racial and ethnic inequality in feelings of safety.
Accounting for Resource Use at the School-Level and Below: The Missing Link in Education Administration and Policy Making. Working Paper #09-06
Author: Denison, Dwight V.
Date: 2009-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Finance,Financial Support,Costs,Evaluation Methods,Case Studies,Educational Resources,Student Characteristics,Grades (Scholastic),Comparative Analysis,Grade 5,Educational Quality,Accountability,School Districts,Data Collection,Resource Allocation,Accounting,Shared Resources and Services,School Personnel,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,School District Spending,Student Needs,Special Education,Reports,Information Utilization,Vocational Education

A long standing debate among policymakers as well as researchers is whether and how funding affects the quality of education. Often missing from the discussion is information about the costs of providing education at the school level and below, yet such information could impart a better indication of the linkages between outcomes and resources than is available with more macro-level data. In addition, because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and state accountability systems often require reporting of performance at the grade or school level, micro-level cost information would be useful to school administrators as they try to allocate resources productively. In this paper, we analyze the challenges involved in establishing a system to track costs at the school, grade, and subject level that will fit the needs of both internal and external users. To begin, we review the literature on cost accounting that is relevant to micro-level costs and the research that analyzes sub-district level resources. Next, we describe general challenges that arise in reporting at the level of the school and below and we then discuss school-level reporting in practice. We follow with a case study of an improved reporting system that links resource use, student demographic characteristics, and student outcomes at the school, grade and subject level. We conclude with recommendations for states when constructing such systems. The following tables are appended: (1) Comparison of Approaches in Addressing the Challenges of Producing School-Level Reports; (2) Sources of Data for Pennsylvania School-Level Reports; (3a) Example of School Summary Report for Sample Elementary School; and (3b) Example of Fifth Grade Summary Report for Sample Elementary School.
Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification Using an Information Experiment. Working Paper #02-11
Author: Wiswall, Matthew
Date: 2011-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Majors (Students),Course Selection (Students),Influences,Student Surveys,Student Attitudes,Beliefs,Attitude Change,Income,Ability,Experiments,Spouses,Student Interests,Gender Differences,Logical Thinking,Correlation,Statistical Bias,Undergraduate Students

This paper studies the determinants of college major choice using a unique &quot;information&quot; experiment embedded in a survey. We first ask respondents their &quot;self&quot; beliefs--beliefs about their own expected earnings and other major-specific outcomes conditional on various majors, their &quot;population&quot; beliefs--beliefs about the population distribution of these characteristics, as well as their subjective beliefs that they will graduate with each major. After eliciting these baseline beliefs, we provide students with information on the true population distribution of these characteristics, and observe how this new information causes respondents to update their beliefs. Our experimental design creates unique panel data. We first show that respondents make substantial errors in population beliefs, and logically revise their self beliefs in response to the information. Subjective beliefs about future major choice are positively and strongly associated with beliefs about self earnings, ability, and spouse's earnings. However, cross-sectional estimates are severely biased upwards because of the positive correlation of tastes with earnings and ability. The experimental variation in beliefs allows us to identify a rich model of college major choice, with which we estimate the relative importance of earnings and earnings uncertainty on the choice of college major versus other factors such as ability to complete coursework, spouse's characteristics, and tastes for majors. While earnings are a significant determinant of major choice, tastes are the dominant factor in the choice of field of study. We also investigate why males and females choose different college majors. The following are appended: (1) Figures A1 and A2; and Tables A1, A2, and A3; (2) Information on Survey Design and Information Treatments; (3) and Estimation Details.
Impact of Voucher Design on Public School Performance: Evidence from Florida and Milwaukee Voucher Program. Working Paper #09-03
Author: Chakrabarti, Rajashri
Date: 2009-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Vouchers,Public Schools,School Effectiveness,Incentives,Educational Improvement,Models,Predictive Validity,Robustness (Statistics),Regression (Statistics),Program Effectiveness,Elementary Schools

This paper examines the impact of vouchers in general and voucher design in particular on public school performance. It argues that all voucher programs are not created equal. There are often fundamental differences in voucher designs that affect public school incentives differently and induce different responses from them. It analyzes two voucher programs in the U.S. The 1990 Milwaukee experiment can be looked upon as a &quot;voucher shock&quot; program that suddenly made low-income students eligible for vouchers. The 1999 Florida program can be looked upon as a &quot;threat of voucher&quot; program, where schools getting an &quot;F&quot; grade for the first time are exposed to the threat of vouchers, but do not face vouchers unless and until they get a second &quot;F&quot; within the next three years. In the context of a formal theoretical model, the study argues that the threatened public schools will unambiguously improve under the Florida-type program and this improvement will exceed that under the Milwaukee type program. Using school-level scores from Florida and Wisconsin, and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy in trends, it then shows that these predictions are validated empirically. These findings are reasonably robust in that they survive several sensitivity checks including correcting for mean reversion and a regression discontinuity analysis.
Do Public Schools Disadvantage Students Living in Public Housing? Working Paper #09-08
Author: Schwartz, Amy Ellen
Date: 2009-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Public Housing,Disadvantaged Youth,Poverty,Low Income Groups,Minority Group Children,Institutional Characteristics,Elementary Schools,Middle Schools,Urban Schools,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Comparative Analysis,Educational Resources,Student Characteristics,Academic Achievement,Standardized Tests,Scores,Statistical Analysis,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement,Grade 5

In the United States, public housing developments are predominantly located in neighborhoods with low median incomes, high rates of poverty and disproportionately high concentrations of minorities. While research consistently shows that public housing developments are located in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, we know little about the characteristics of the schools serving students in these neighborhoods. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of elementary and middle schools attended by students living in public housing developments in New York City. Using the proportion of public housing students attending each elementary and middle school as our weight, we calculate the weighted average of school characteristics to describe the &quot;typical&quot; school attended by students living in public housing. We then compare these characteristics to those of the typical school attended by other students throughout the city in an effort to assess whether public schools systematically disadvantage students in public housing in New York City. Our results are decidedly mixed. On one hand, we find no large differences between the resources of the schools attended by students living in public housing and the schools attended by their peers living elsewhere in the city; on the other hand, we find significant differences in student characteristics and outcomes. The typical school attended by public housing students has higher poverty rates and lower average performance on standardized exams than the schools attended by others. These school differences, however, fail to fully explain the performance disparities: we find that students living in public housing score lower, on average, on standardized tests than their schoolmates living elsewhere- even though they attend the same school. These results point to a need for more nuanced analyses of policies and practices in schools, as well as the outside-of-school factors that shape educational success, to identify and address the needs of students in public housing.
High Stakes in the Classroom, High Stakes on the Street: The Effects of Community Violence on Students' Standardized Test Performance. Working Paper #03-13
Author: Sharkey, Patrick
Date: 2013-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Violence,Crime,Environmental Influences,Standardized Tests,Scores,Urban Schools,Public Schools,Comparative Analysis,Neighborhoods,Language Arts,Mathematics Achievement,Academic Achievement,Reading Achievement,African American Students,Racial Differences,Stress Variables,Student Records,Police,Poverty,Hispanic American Students,Asian American Students,White Students,Ethnic Groups,Statistical Analysis,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8

This paper examines the effect of exposure to violent crime on students' standardized test performance among a sample of students in New York City public schools. To identify the effect of exposure to community violence on children's test scores, we compare students exposed to an incident of violent crime on their own blockface in the week prior to the exam to students exposed in the week after the exam. The results show that such exposure to violent crime reduces performance on English Language Arts assessments, and no effect on Math scores. The effect of exposure to violent crime is most pronounced among African Americans, and reduces the passing rates of black students by approximately 3 percentage points. Two appendices contain supplementary tables.
From Front Yards to Schoolyards: Linking Housing Policy and School Reform. Working Paper #09-07
Author: Schwartz, Amy Ellen
Date: 2009-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Housing,Public Policy,Educational Change,Disadvantaged Youth,Urban Areas,Public Schools,Outcomes of Education,Neighborhoods,Environmental Influences,Relationship,Educational Policy,Elementary Secondary Education

Housing and education share strong ties in the United States. This relationship is shaped, in large part, by mobility. Students move to new schools, homes and neighborhoods as a result of planned and unplanned family relocations. Taxpayers move from one school district to another in a nation where school quality is closely tied to the district in which a family resides. Teachers weigh factors such as location, pay, and long-term career opportunities as they decide where to work and when to move within or between school districts. Despite the strong relationship between housing and education, policies that recognize and support this relationship are relatively rare. In this paper, we explore the mechanisms by which housing and education are related. We focus particular attention on disadvantaged students in urban areas, as these students often face a unique set of challenges that set them apart from their more advantaged and/or non-urban counterparts. First, we explore the ways in which a child's housing unit, his neighborhood, and the political economy of public schools might shape his educational outcome. We then turn to a discussion of the implications of these mechanisms for education and housing policy. Herein, we highlight recent efforts to strengthen the ties between education and housing policy and discuss how the lessons learned from these efforts might be brought to bear as policymakers consider new education and housing initiatives.
The Impact of the Great Recession on School District Finances: Evidence from New York. Working Paper #03-12
Author: Chakrabarti, Rajashri
Date: 2012-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Economic Climate,Educational Finance,School Districts,Financial Support,Trend Analysis,Income,Expenditures,Federal Aid,State Aid,Budgeting,Retrenchment,Poverty,Urban Schools,Metropolitan Areas,School District Size,Federal Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education

There is a slowly emerging literature that seeks to understand how the Great Recession affected other parts of the economy; however, there is no research that examines the effect of Great Recession (or any other recession) on schools. Given the fundamental role of education in human capital formation and growth, it is essential to understand the effect of recessions on schools. This paper starts to fill this gap. Exploiting detailed data on a multitude of school finance indicators and a trend shift analysis, it examines how the Great Recession affected school funding in NY. While we find no evidence of effects on either total revenue or expenditure, there were important compositional changes to both. There is strong evidence of substitution of funds on the revenue side--the infusion of funds with the federal stimulus occurred simultaneously with statistically and economically significant cuts in state and local financing, especially the former. On the expenditure side, instructional expenditure was maintained, while several non-instruction categories like transportation, student activities and utilities suffered. Important heterogeneities in experiences are also observed by poverty, metro areas, size, and urban status. Affluent districts were hurt the most, while analysis by metro areas reveal that the NYC metropolitan area, and especially Nassau, sustained largest losses. The findings of this study promise to facilitate our understanding of how recessions affect schools and the role policy can play to mitigate the consequences.
Do Vouchers Lead to Sorting under Random Private School Selection? Evidence from the Milwaukee Voucher Program. Working Paper #09-02
Author: Chakrabarti, Rajashri
Date: 2009-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Vouchers,Private Schools,Urban Schools,Income,Ability,Models,Predictive Validity,Selection,Student Placement

This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting, and more specifically investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting. It studies these questions in the context of the first five years of the Milwaukee voucher program. Much of the existing literature investigates the question of sorting where private schools can screen students. However, the publicly funded U.S. voucher programs require private schools to accept all students unless oversubscribed and to pick students randomly if oversubscribed. This paper focuses on two crucial features of the Milwaukee voucher program--random private school selection and the absence of topping up of vouchers. In the context of a theoretical model, it argues that random private school selection alone cannot prevent student sorting. However, random private school selection coupled with the absence of topping up can preclude sorting by income, although there is still sorting by ability. Sorting by ability is not caused here by private school selection, but rather by parental self selection. Using a logit model and student level data from the Milwaukee voucher program for 1990-94, it then establishes that random selection has indeed taken place so that it provides an appropriate setting to test the corresponding theoretical predictions in the data. Next, using several alternative logit specifications, it demonstrates that these predictions are validated empirically. These findings have important policy implications.
Precarious Slopes? The Great Recession, Federal Stimulus, and New Jersey Schools. Working Paper #02-12
Author: Chakrabarti, Rajashri
Date: 2012-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Economic Climate,Educational Finance,Federal Aid,Federal Legislation,Income,Expenditures,Financial Support,Trend Analysis,Budgets,Job Layoff,Teacher Salaries,Teaching Experience,Urban Schools,Poverty,Disadvantaged Schools,School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Court Litigation

While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions, on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools have a fundamental role in fostering human capital formation and economic growth. We exploit unique panel data and trend shift analysis to analyze how New Jersey school finances were affected during the Great Recession and the ARRA federal stimulus period. Our results show strong evidence of downward shifts in both revenue and expenditure following the recession. Federal stimulus seemed to have helped in 2010, however both revenue and expenditure still declined. While total revenue declined, the various components of revenue did not witness symmetric changes. The infusion of funds with the federal stimulus occurred simultaneously with statistically and economically significant cuts in state and local financing, especially the former. Our results also show a compositional shift in expenditures in favor of categories that are linked most closely to instruction, while several non-instruction categories including transportation and utilities declined. Interestingly, budgetary stress seems to have led to significant lay-offs for untenured teachers, leading to a rightward shift of the teacher salary and experience distributions. Heterogeneity analysis shows that high poverty and urban districts sustained the largest falls in the post-recession era, with Abbott districts specifically falling the furthest from pre-recession trends. Of importance, the Abbott districts were the only group in our expansive analysis to show statistically significant negative shifts in instructional expenditure even with the federal stimulus. The findings of this paper contribute valuable insight regarding schools' financial situations during recession and can serve as a guide to aid future policy decisions.
Museums, Zoos, and Gardens: How Formal-Informal Partnerships Can Impact Urban Students' Performance. Working Paper #04-13
Author: Weinstein, Meryle
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Urban Schools,Public Schools,Middle Schools,Museums,Recreational Facilities,Institutional Cooperation,Science Education,Informal Education,School Community Programs,Faculty Development,Grade 8,Science Achievement,Standardized Tests,Program Effectiveness,Experiential Learning,STEM Education,Statistical Analysis

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's ISIs, bringing these institutions together with NYC public schools to improve science education through intensive professional development, access to ISIs for teachers and students, and other science resources. We conclude that attending a UA school in eighth grade increases middle school science achievement, and there is some evidence that it may also increase the likelihood of passing standardized science exams in high school. [Major public support for Urban Advantage is provided by the Speaker and the City Council of New York and the New York City Department of Education.]