Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

From American Dream To American Reality: The Effect Of Educational Expenditures On Intergenerational Mobility And The Great Gatsby Curve, Isabel Krogh

Honors Projects

Income inequality and intergenerational mobility are two common measures of economic fairness in society. While they measure distinct ideas, they are significantly related in an inverse way across countries as well as across regions in the United States. This relationship is illustrated on the Great Gatsby Curve. Unequal access to education is one factor that has been found to drive the negative relationship between these two measures and therefore create the negatively sloping Great Gatsby Curve. Therefore, creating more equal access to education, such as through government spending, could lessen the connection between these two factors. The primary purpose of …

Federation Divided, Max M. Balton

Capstones

At the start of the 2020 school year, a lack of covid safety plans led teachers like Rosy Clark to protest, urging her union the United Federation of Teachers to act. She and other progressives in the dissident caucus, Movement of Rank and File Educators, were willing to strike to ensure their safety. Union leadership hesitated largely because public union strikes are illegal under the state’s Taylor Law.

This four-part audio documentary looks at the history of the UFT and this contentious state law. The union began striking under more onerous strike prohibition legislation. Its roots are steeped in radical …

World Changers: Inspiring Cultural And Linguistic Excellence In Children, Parents And Teachers, Ana I. Berdecia Med, Caitlin Kosec Mpp, The John S. Watson Institute For Public Policy For Thomas Edison State College

Center for the Positive Development of Urban Children

The New Jersey Cultural Competency and English Language Learners Summer Institute and Mentoring Program hosted its 10th Anniversary, Three-Day Learning Institute, Aug. 23-25, 2016, with the theme, World Changers: Inspiring Cultural and Linguistic Excellence for Children, Parents and Teachers. After the Three- Day Learning Institute, classroom teachers were assigned a mentor who provided monthly supports to the classroom teachers in the adoption English language learners and cultural competency strategies with the goal of creating culturally and linguistic responsive classrooms. Twenty-three teachers from Trenton Public Schools were recruited and received 21 hours of training in best practices for engaging diverse …

Does Participation In High School Sports Influence Your Income?, Marisa Lieberman

Honors Theses

My thesis uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS-88) to examine the relationship between participation in high school athletics and income. NELS-88 follows students from 8th grade through age 25 and asks them questions about family, school, and personal preferences. I use this information to determine if participation in high school sports affects a person’s wage when he or she enters the labor force. Students gain valuable skills from playing on a sports team that help them achieve great things later in life, such as higher paying jobs. However, students who join sports teams may already …

Bootstrap Blues, Hannah M. Frantz

SURGE

Meet David*. In mid-January, he came to the small town Iowa elementary school where I work. David has attended more schools in the two years since he started school than I have in my lifetime. In fact, the school he just moved from only has four days of attendance listed on his record. David moves so often because he’s homeless. His situation is not what we may stereotypically think of as “homeless”—you wouldn’t see him on the streets or even in soup kitchens. Instead, David stays with his mother, and they couch surf from one home to another from week …

An Econometric Analysis Of Anti-Bullying Program Factors On Bullying In Public American Middle Schools And High Schools, Austin B. Beck

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper seeks to answer the question: “Do typical factors of anti-bullying programs reduce the amount of bullying that takes place in American public middle schools and high schools?” An overview of the literature on bullying and anti-bullying programs is provided. Data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety is analyzed using a probit model. The model is tested for accuracy and the results are analyzed. Parental involvement and out-of-school suspension are found to be significant anti-bullying program factors. Other explanatory variables are also discussed and recommendations for further research are provided.

The Effect Of Teach For America Teachers Outside Their Classrooms, Sarah Prenovitz

Honors Papers

Teach for America (TFA) aims to some day make it possible for every American child to receive a great education. As means to that end TFA attempts to get teachers "willing to go above and beyond the constraints of the system to ensure that their students excel" into classrooms, to encourage "long-term, sustained leadership in education;" and to "change the prevailing ideology around educational inequity," which supports a rationalization that poor children achieve less than others because they are unmotivated and do not receive support at home (see www.teachforamerica.org). The organization argues that teachers alone cannot change the system, but …

Scale Economies In Public Education: Evidence From School Level Data, Ryan C. Bosworth

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The structure of school finance regimes in the United States has been a subject of much political and legal debate over the past three decades. Court rulings have required many states to restructure school financing methods in order to pursue some concept of equality. Achieving equality of spending is, of course, a simple matter. Developing a funding mechanism that provides for equality of educational opportunity. however, is difficult since such a system, by definition, must allow for cost differences across schools and districts.

The Us School Breakfast Program: Short- And Long-Term Academic Effects, Chris Rohlfs

Honors Papers

This paper evaluates short- and long-term academic effects of the US School Breakfast Program (SBP). The paper divides into four sections: an introduction (page 4), a literature review (page 11), a statistical model (page 31), and an empirical model (page 38). In the first section, we cover general facts and details about the SBP. In the second section, we first review literature relevant to the SBP (supply, demand, and short-term effects studies). Next, we explore studies of the long-term effects of schooling and of school quality. Many of the techniques and information from these studies relate to our discussion of …

The Supply Of Public School Teachers In The United States: A Study In Human Capital Theory, Andrew W. Bacdayan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study uses the principles of human capital theory to develop and test a theory of a supply of a class of educated manpower services with special reference to school teachers.

In the theory formulation, the determinants of the existing stock of teacher education capital are first identified. These are: (a) the price per man-year of teaching service, WTS, (b) the rate of interest, r, (c) the price of the human capital already embodied in the individual working for a college degree in teacher education, WCS, and (d) private costs of education such as foregone earnings and tuition fees, FERTN. …