Education Commons^™

School District Consolidation Policies: Endogenous Cost Inefficiency And Saving Reversals, Mustafa U. Karakaplan, Levent Kutlu

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

Some education policy studies suggest that consolidation of public school districts saves resources. However, endogeneity in cost models would result in incorrect estimates of the effects of consolidation. We use a new stochastic frontier methodology to examine district expenditures while handling endogeneity. Using the data from California, we find that the effects of student achievement and education market concentration on expenditure per pupil are substantially larger when endogeneity is handled. Our findings are robust to concerns such as instrumental variable adequacy and spatial interactions. Our consolidation simulations indicate that failure to address endogeneity can result in unrealistic expectations of savings.

Tax Reform And Higher Education, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ultimate Tradeoff For Colleges: Academic Quality Or Consumption Amenities, Maura Mullaney

Economics Department Student Scholarship

This thesis examines the recent rise in tuition expenses and its relation to college operation costs. My focus delves into the finances of American institutions of higher education to observe where money is actually being spent and to which areas of the college money is being dispersed. It further examines whether students are actually stimulating their own tuition growth through their costly demands on colleges and the luxury services colleges are now offering. In particular, this paper analyzes the current-day trade off for American colleges: spending on consumption amenities as opposed to spending on academic quality. From my research and …

Are Teacher Pensions "Hazardous" For Schools?, Patten Priestley Mahler

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

I use a detailed panel of data and a unique modeling specification to explore how public schoolteachers respond to the incentives embedded in North Carolina’s retirement system. Like most public-sector retirement plans, North Carolina’s teacher pension implicitly encourages teachers to continue working until they are eligible for their pension benefits, and then leave soon afterward. I find that teachers with higher levels of quality, as measured by a teacher’s value-added to her students’ achievement test scores, are more responsive to the “pull” of teacher pensions. Younger teachers, those with higher salaries, and nonwhite teachers are also more likely to stay …

School Resources And Student Outcomes: Evidence From The State Of Illinois, Alyssa Cooper

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Literature on the subject of school resources and student outcomes tends to find that there is a positive relationship between both variables. Most literature uses per-pupil spending (PPS) or teacher salaries as a measure of school resources. While I have modeled both in my paper, my focus in this paper is on per-pupil spending. Using data from the Illinois State Board of Education from 2006-2016 and measuring student outcomes through average ACT scores, operational PPS is found to be insignificant, whereas instructional PPS is found to be positive and significant at the 5% level. Estimates suggest that a 1 standard …

Alternative Measures Of Noncognitive Skills And Their Effect On Retirement Preparation And Financial Capability, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Social science, more than ever, is drawing upon the insights of personality psychology. Though researchers now know that noncognitive skills and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, or a growth mindset could be important for life outcomes, they struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. Self-reports are often used for analysis, but these measures have been found to be affected by important biases. We study the validity of innovative, more robust measures of noncognitive skills based on performance tasks. Our first proposed measure is an adaptation, for the adult population, of the Academic Diligence Task (ADT) developed and …

Building Research Skills In The Macalester Economics Major, J. Peter Ferderer, Gary Krueger

Faculty Publications

Economics majors at Macalester College have won numerous awards for their research papers, and this success has helped them land jobs in finance, consulting, and the nonprofit sector, as well as gain admission to top graduate programs. This article describes how the Economics Department at Macalester promotes economic research among its students.

Sandwiches, Social Capital And Barriers To Mobility, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Colleges Help Encourage Social Mixing*, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Early Childhood Education And Local Economic Development, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Co-Op Research Matters, Matthew Rempel

Publications and Scholarship

Matthew Rempel (Associate Dean, Career Education and Co-curricular Learning, Sheridan College) discusses Clarke's article Rethinking graduate employability: The role of capital, individual attributes and context (2017). Matthew touches on how the term “employability” is very complex and how Clarkes model may require further research.

Exploring The Questionable Academic Practice Of Conference Paper Double Dipping, Krista B. Lewellyn, William Q. Judge, Adam Smith

Management Faculty Publications

We develop a conceptual framework and provide empirical evidence that helps to explain why management scholars submit the same paper to more than one scholarly conference, a practice referred to as "double dipping." Drawing from general strain theory,we find that certain features of the social and national institutional context in which these scholars are embedded provides motivation for and facilitates rationalization of engagement in the double-dipping practice. Specifically, our results show that the incidence of conference paper double dipping is greater for junior scholars and for those currently affiliated with research-intensive universities. We also find that authors who received their …

In Solidarity, Musselman Library, Salma Monani, Sarah M. Principato, Dave Powell, Brent C. Talbot, Charles L. Weise, Bruce A. Larson, Scott Hancock, Mckinley E. Melton, David S. Walsh, Jennifer Q. Mccary, Kristina G. Chamberlin

Next Page

This edition of Next Page is a departure from our usual question and answer format with a featured campus reader. Instead, we asked speakers who participated in the College’s recent Student Solidarity Rally (March 1, 2017) to recommend readings that might further our understanding of the topics on which they spoke.

Interview Of Richard Mshomba, Ph.D., Richard Mshomba Ph.D., Daniel Miller

All Oral Histories

Dr. Richard Mshomba is an economics professor at La Salle University. He was born in Tanzania and spent his early adult life working for the Tanzanian government. When he was 27 he came to the United States to attend school at La Salle College. While attending La Salle he lived with the brother of a local Bishop who helped to get Richard accepted to La Salle. Richard spent three years at La Salle College earning his degree in Economics. After talking with his professor Richard Garrison, he decided to apply to graduate school at the University of Delaware. While he …

‘Community Of Schools’: A Case Study Of Development, Participation And Integration In Cato Manor Township, South Africa, Anthony L. Wagner

Student Publications

By the end of the twentieth century, a subfield of anthropology known as critical development studies emerged - in large part due to the work of James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar - as a critique of post-colonial development programs and NGOs of the West that were at work in much of the developing world - most notably sub-Saharan Africa. Development was largely panned by these early researchers as a means by which Western powers habituated problems in the developing world so as to create a profitable industry of development. Contemporary anthropological inquiries have called for an increasingly field-based approach to …

Compounded Inequities: Assessing School Finance Equity For Low-Income English Language Learners, David S. Knight, Jesus E. Mendoza

Working Papers

School districts face different costs to produce the same level of educational opportunity because of differences in student population, geographical costs of living, and district size. However, in many states, the school finance system fails to take these factors into account when distributing funds to school districts. Most prior analyses of state school finance systems focus on the relationship between district funding and the percent of low-income students in that district or the percent of emergent bilinguals, who are typically classified as English language learners (ELLs).

We present the first longitudinal descriptive evidence of the extent to which state school …

Coal Trains And Home Values: The Effect Of The Gateway Pacific Terminal Project On Housing Prices In Bellingham, Washington, Rose G. Howe

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The proposal to build the Gateway Pacific Terminal generated much controversy in Bellingham, Washington. As a deep-water port slated to export large quantities of coal and other commodities, the Gateway Pacific Terminal (GPT) threatened to increase the amount of rail traffic passing through the region.The following study uses a hedonic price model to test whether proximity to the railroad affected the sales price of houses in Bellingham after the announcement of the GPT environmental review process. Little previous research focuses on the effect of rail traffic on housing prices in the Pacific Northwest and no empirical studies have examined the …

“Free” College Tuition Doesn’T Add Up*, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Education On Political Ideology: Evidence From European Compulsory Education Reforms, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Previous research documents a correlation between education and political ideology, usually indicating a positive relationship between education and left-wing political views. In this paper, I examine to what extent this association is causal. I merge political ideology data from 25 waves of Eurobarometer surveys with information on 18 educational reforms in 11 European countries. I then instrument for educational attainment with a regression discontinuity design that estimates the increase in education due to compulsory educational reforms. Notably, it appears that omitted variables bias is important here. I find a significant causal effect of education moving individuals to the right when …

An Oracle For Higher Education?, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

A Timeless Mission For The New Year, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Tuition Increases Geaux Away? Evidence From Voting On Louisiana's Amendment 2, Joshua C. Hall, Serkan Karadas

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

In many states, public institutions of higher education have the autonomy to raise tuition. This has not been the case in Louisiana since a 1995 constitutional amend-ment required a two-thirds majority of the state legislature for any tuition increase. In November of 2016, voters in Louisiana rejected Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment that would have given state institutions of higher education autonomy in setting tuition. We examine parish-level voting on Amendment 2 using an empirical political economy model and find that parishes with a greater percentage of African-Americans and university employees were more likely to vote yes. Student enrollment at …

Teaching Size And Power Properties Of Hypothesis Tests Through Simulations, Suleyman Taspinar, Osman Dogan

Publications and Research

In this study, we review the graphical methods suggested in Davidson and MacKinnon (Davidson, Russell, and James G. MacKinnon. 1998. “Graphical Methods for Investigating the Size and Power of Hypothesis Tests.” The Manchester School 66 (1): 1–26.) that can be used to investigate size and power properties of hypothesis tests for undergraduate and graduate econometrics courses. These methods can be used to assess finite sample properties of various hypothesis tests through simulation studies. In addition, these methods can be effectively used in classrooms to reinforce students’ understanding of basic hypothesis testing concepts such as Type I error, Type II error, …

Positive Education Federalism: The Promise Of Equality After The Every Student Succeeds Act, Christian Sundquist

Articles

This Article examines the nature of the federal role in public education following the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015 (“ESSA”). Public education was largely unregulated for much of our Nation’s history, with the federal government deferring to states’ traditional “police powers” despite the de jure entrenchment of racial and class-based inequalities. A nascent policy of education federalism finally took root following the Brown v. Board decision and the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (“ESEA”) with the explicit purpose of eradicating such educational inequality.

This timely Article argues that current federal education …