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Full-Text Articles in Education
Is Student Loan Debt Discouraging Homeownership Among Young Adults?, Jason N. Houle, Lawrence Berger
Is Student Loan Debt Discouraging Homeownership Among Young Adults?, Jason N. Houle, Lawrence Berger
Dartmouth Scholarship
Amid concern that rising student loan debt has social and economic consequences for young adults, many suggest that student loan debt is leading young adults to forgo home buying. However, there is little empirical evidence on this topic. In this study, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to estimate associations of student loan debt with homeownership, mortgage amount, and home equity. We use a variety of methodological techniques and test several model specifications. While we find a negative association between debt and homeownership in some models, the association is substantively modest in size and is …
School Choice, School Quality And Postsecondary Attainment, David J. Deming, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
School Choice, School Quality And Postsecondary Attainment, David J. Deming, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth Scholarship
We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools on college enrollment and degree completion. We find a significant overall increase in college attainment among lottery winners who attend their first choice school. Using rich administrative data on peers, teachers, course offerings and other inputs, we show that the impacts of choice are strongly predicted by gains on several measures of school quality. Gains in attainment are concentrated among girls. Girls respond to attending a better school with higher grades and increases in college-preparatory course-taking, while boys do not.
Local Responses To Federal Grants: Evidence From The Introduction Of Title I In The South, Elizabeth U. Cascio, Nora Gordon, Sarah Reber
Local Responses To Federal Grants: Evidence From The Introduction Of Title I In The South, Elizabeth U. Cascio, Nora Gordon, Sarah Reber
Dartmouth Scholarship
We analyze the effects of the introduction of Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a large federal grants program designed to increase poor students' educational services and achievement. We focus on the South, the poorest region of the country. Title I increased school spending by $0.50 on the dollar in the average southern school district and by more in districts with less ability to offset grants through local tax reductions. Title I-induced increases in school budgets appear to have reduced high school dropout rates of whites, but not blacks.
The Poverty Gap In School Spending Following The Introduction Of Title I, Elizabeth U. Cascio, Sarah Reber
The Poverty Gap In School Spending Following The Introduction Of Title I, Elizabeth U. Cascio, Sarah Reber
Dartmouth Scholarship
Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act explicitly directed more federal aid for K-12 education to poorer areas for the first time in US history, with a goal of promoting regional convergence in school spending. Using newly collected data, we find some evidence that Title I narrowed the gap in per-pupil school spending between richer and poorer states in the short- to medium-run. However, the program was small relative to then-existing poverty gaps in school spending; even in the absence of crowd-out by local or state governments, the program could have reduced the gap by only 15 …
Cracks In The Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, And Segregation, Elizabeth U U. Cascio, Ethan G. Lewis
Cracks In The Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, And Segregation, Elizabeth U U. Cascio, Ethan G. Lewis
Dartmouth Scholarship
We examine whether low-skilled immigration to the United States has contributed to immigrants' residential isolation by reducing native demand for public schools. We address endogeneity in school demographics using established Mexican settlement patterns in California and use a comparison group to account for immigration's broader effects. We estimate that between 1970 and 2000, the average California school district lost more than 14 non-Hispanic households with children to other districts in its metropolitan area for every 10 additional households enrolling low-English Hispanics in its public schools. By disproportionately isolating children, the native reaction to immigration may have longer-run consequences than previously …
Searching For Effective Teachers With Imperfect Information, Douglas O. Staiger, Jonah E. Rockoff
Searching For Effective Teachers With Imperfect Information, Douglas O. Staiger, Jonah E. Rockoff
Dartmouth Scholarship
Over the past four decades, empirical researchers -- many of them economists -- have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers. In this paper, we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit, evaluate, and retain teachers. We begin by summarizing the evidence on five key points, referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation's two largest school districts: Los Angeles and New York City. First, teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains. Second, estimates of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement data …
Education And The Age Profile Of Literacy Into Adulthood, Elizabeth Cascio, Damon Clark, Nora Gordon
Education And The Age Profile Of Literacy Into Adulthood, Elizabeth Cascio, Damon Clark, Nora Gordon
Dartmouth Scholarship
American teenagers perform considerably worse on international assessments of achievement than do teenagers in other high-income countries. This observation has been a source of great concern since the first international tests were administered in the 1960s. But does this skill gap persist into adulthood? We examine this question using the first international assessment of adult literacy, conducted in the 1990s. We find that, consistent with other assessments of the school-age population, U.S. teenagers perform relatively poorly, ranking behind teenagers in the twelve other rich countries surveyed. However, by their late twenties, Americans compare much more favorably to their counterparts abroad: …
Gender And Performance: Evidence From School Assignment By Randomized Lottery, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
Gender And Performance: Evidence From School Assignment By Randomized Lottery, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Promise And Pitfalls Of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
The Promise And Pitfalls Of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures, Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth Scholarship
In recent years, most states have constructed elaborate accountability systems using school-level test scores. However, because the median elementary school contains only 69 children per grade level, such measures are quite imprecise. We evaluate the implications for school accountability systems. For instance, rewards or sanctions for schools with scores at either extreme primarily affect small schools and provide weak incentives to large ones. Nevertheless, we conclude that accountability systems may be worthwhile. Even in states with aggressive financial incentives, the marginal reward to schools for raising student performance is a small fraction of the potential labor market value for students.