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Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research
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- School choice (8)
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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Education
Helping Hand Or A Hurdle Too High? An Evaluation Of Developmental Coursework At Arkansas's Flagship University, Evan Rhinesmith
Helping Hand Or A Hurdle Too High? An Evaluation Of Developmental Coursework At Arkansas's Flagship University, Evan Rhinesmith
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
High school graduation serves as an important gateway to increased professional opportunities. Not only does a high school graduate improve the national economy, a high school diploma is the key to opening the door to college. However, obtaining a high school degree does not necessarily ensure college readiness. In fact, many high school graduates are not prepared for college coursework, but still apply to and attend college in our college for all system. The class of 2013 saw only 38 percent of students test at a level considered prepared for college on the reading portion of the NAEP, but the …
Promises Fulfilled? A Systematic Review Of The Impacts Of Promise Programs, Elise Swanson, Angela Watson, Gary W. Ritter, Malachi Nichols
Promises Fulfilled? A Systematic Review Of The Impacts Of Promise Programs, Elise Swanson, Angela Watson, Gary W. Ritter, Malachi Nichols
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
This review examines the existing evidence on the impacts of Promise Programs on community development, K-12 academic achievement, and student postsecondary outcomes. Promise Programs are place-based, guaranteed college scholarships offered to all students who graduate from a certain school or district while meeting the minimum thresholds of the program. We delineate Promise Programs by their design - whether the scholarships are available to all students, are awarded based on merit, or are awarded based on need. We also note the applicability of Promise Programs - whether the funds be used at a wide range of postsecondary institutions, or if they …
Whether To Approve An Education Savings Account Program In Texas: Preventing Crime Does Pay, Corey A. Deangelis, Patrick J. Wolf
Whether To Approve An Education Savings Account Program In Texas: Preventing Crime Does Pay, Corey A. Deangelis, Patrick J. Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Decision-makers in Texas have proposed an Education Savings Account (ESA) that would allow all families to take a fraction of their public education financing to a school of their choice. If the ESA funding amount exceeds the school tuition level, families would be able to use these funds for other educational expenses such as tutoring, textbooks, educational therapy, online learning, and college costs. While this is may be viewed as obvious benefits to individual children and their families, the impacts on society overall are less clear. We estimate the impact of the proposed ESA on criminality from 2016 to 2035. …
Cross-Subsidization Of Teacher Pension Normal Cost: The Case Of Calstrs, Robert M. Costrell, Josh B. Mcgee
Cross-Subsidization Of Teacher Pension Normal Cost: The Case Of Calstrs, Robert M. Costrell, Josh B. Mcgee
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Under traditional defined benefit pension plans, annual contributions are set at a uniform percentage of pay to fund accruing benefits. That normal cost rate masks wide variation in the cost of individual benefits, generating an extensive and non-transparent pattern of cross-subsidization. We provide a comprehensive analysis of cross-subsidies in employer contributions across all entry and exit ages. The gains and losses of winners and losers must add up to zero, and we explain why they do not in some previous work, which claims that nearly all teachers are winners in the California Teachers Retirement System. To the contrary, we find …
Boosting Graduation Rates In Texas Through Education Savings Accounts, Patrick J. Wolf
Boosting Graduation Rates In Texas Through Education Savings Accounts, Patrick J. Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Graduating from high school is a crucial outcome for young people. Unfortunately, 12 percent of Texas students fail to earn the vital credential of a high school diploma. Private school choice has a proven track record of increasing graduation rates. In this study I draw upon prior research, Texas demographics, and conservative assumptions to forecast that the launch of a universal private school choice program in the form of Education Savings Accounts in the fall of 2017 would generate 11,809 additional high school graduates in the Lone Star State by 2022. In other words, of those students attending high school …
Kids Vs. Adults: Using Observations And Student Surveys To Evaluate The Arkansas Teacher Corps, Elise Swanson, Gary W. Ritter
Kids Vs. Adults: Using Observations And Student Surveys To Evaluate The Arkansas Teacher Corps, Elise Swanson, Gary W. Ritter
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
This study is an evaluation of the Arkansas Teacher Corps, an alternative teacher certification program that places teachers in high needs schools in rural, southern Arkansas. This evaluation focuses on an intermediate goal of the organization — effective teaching practices — and uses a matching strategy to determine the effectiveness of Arkansas Teacher Corps Fellows. Data comes from third party observations and student surveys. ATC teachers are rated significantly higher on constructs of content knowledge, teacher-student relationships in class, and teacher-student relationships out of class by students. There are no significant differences between ATC and non-ATC teachers noted by observers …
When Students Don't Care: Reexamining International Differences In Achievement And Non-Cognitive Skills, Gema Zamarro, Collin Hitt, Ildefonso Mendez
When Students Don't Care: Reexamining International Differences In Achievement And Non-Cognitive Skills, Gema Zamarro, Collin Hitt, Ildefonso Mendez
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Policy debates in education are often framed by using international test scores, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The obvious presumption is that observed differences in test scores within and across countries reflect differences in cognitive skills and general content knowledge, the things which achievement tests are designed to measure. We challenge this presumption, by studying how much of the within-country and between-country variation in PISA test scores is associated with student effort, rather than true academic content knowledge. Drawing heavily on recent literature, we posit that our measures of student effort are actually proxy measures of …
Personality As A Predictor Of Unit Nonresponse In Panel Data: An Analysis Of An Internet-Based Survey, Albert Cheng, Gema Zamarro, Bart Orriens
Personality As A Predictor Of Unit Nonresponse In Panel Data: An Analysis Of An Internet-Based Survey, Albert Cheng, Gema Zamarro, Bart Orriens
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Unit nonresponse or attrition in panel data sets is often a source of nonrandom measurement error. Why certain individuals attrite from longitudinal studies and how to minimize this phenomenon have been examined by researchers. However, this research has typically focused on data sets collected via telephone, postal mail, or face-to-face interviews. Moreover, this research usually focuses on using demographic characteristics such as educational attainment or income to explain variation in the incidence of unit nonresponse. We make two contributions to the existing literature. First, we examine the incidence of unit nonresponse in an internet panel, a relatively new, and hence …
Comparing Performance Of Methods To Deal With Differential Attrition In Lottery Based Evaluations, Gema Zamarro, Kaitlin Anderson, Jennifer L. Steele, Trey Miller
Comparing Performance Of Methods To Deal With Differential Attrition In Lottery Based Evaluations, Gema Zamarro, Kaitlin Anderson, Jennifer L. Steele, Trey Miller
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
In randomized controlled trials, it is common for attrition rates to differ by lottery status, jeopardizing the identification of causal effects. Inverse probability weighting methods (Hirano et al, 2003; Busso et al., 2014) and estimation of informative bounds for the treatment effects (e.g. Lee, 2009; Angrist et al., 2006) have been used frequently to deal with differential attrition bias. This paper studies the performance of various methods by comparing the results using two datasets: a district-sourced dataset subject to considerable differential attrition, and an expanded state-sourced dataset with much less attrition, differential and overall. We compared the performance of different …
School Choice: The Personal And The Political, James V. Shuls
School Choice: The Personal And The Political, James V. Shuls
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Enrollment in school choice programs is growing, so is overall support for school choice. Many have analyzed what demographic characteristics impact attitudes towards school choice. This paper adds to the literature by exploring the interaction between personal decisions regarding school choice and broader support for school choice programs. Focus groups were conducted in St. Louis and Kansas City with 35 parents of school age children. Participant responses indicate that school choice programs illicit mixed emotions from parents. Most participants personally support school choice and exercise choice themselves by sending their children to magnet, charter, or private schools. At the same …
You Can Often Get What You Want: Assessing The Match Between Parent Preferences And Private Schools Of Choice, Evan Rhinesmith, Patrick J. Wolf
You Can Often Get What You Want: Assessing The Match Between Parent Preferences And Private Schools Of Choice, Evan Rhinesmith, Patrick J. Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Providing parents choices in education has become an increasingly popular instrument for reforming education in the United States. While existing research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs shows that parents are satisfied with the schools they have chosen, there is not much to explain their satisfaction. Previous research using parent surveys asks parents to rate and/or grade their school of choice, while comparing their response to their thoughts on their previous public school. This paper reports new empirical evidence that looks to offer a possible explanation for parents’ satisfaction. Using data from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, we …
Disparate Use Of Exclusionary Discipline: Evidence On Inequities In School Discipline From A U.S. State, Kaitlin Anderson, Gary W. Ritter
Disparate Use Of Exclusionary Discipline: Evidence On Inequities In School Discipline From A U.S. State, Kaitlin Anderson, Gary W. Ritter
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
There is much discussion in the United States about exclusionary discipline (suspensions and expulsions) in schools. According to a 2014 report from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Black students represent 15% of students, but 44% of students suspended more than once, and 36% of expelled students. This analysis uses seven years of individual infraction-level data from public schools in Arkansas. We examine whether disproportionalities exist within schools, or are instead, a function of the type of school attended. We find that marginalized students are more likely to receive exclusionary discipline, even after controlling for the nature …
The Participant Effects Of Private School Vouchers Across The Globe: A Meta-Analytic And Systematic Review, M. Danish Shakeel, Kaitlin Anderson, Patrick J. Wolf
The Participant Effects Of Private School Vouchers Across The Globe: A Meta-Analytic And Systematic Review, M. Danish Shakeel, Kaitlin Anderson, Patrick J. Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
School voucher programs (a.k.a. opportunity scholarships) are scholarship programs - frequently government funded - that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. Many private school vouchers programs have been initiated around the world with the goal of increasing the academic performance of students. Voucher programs are often viewed as a way to increase achievement and satisfaction for individual students and families, while at the same time creating competitive pressures that encourage other schools in the area to improve. Countries like Chile and India have developed extensive school voucher programs. While many studies have been conducted on school …
Comparing And Validating Measures Of Character Skills: Findings From A Nationally Representative Sample, Gema Zamarro, Albert Cheng, M. Danish Shakeel, Collin Hitt
Comparing And Validating Measures Of Character Skills: Findings From A Nationally Representative Sample, Gema Zamarro, Albert Cheng, M. Danish Shakeel, Collin Hitt
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Though researchers now are aware of the potential importance of character skills, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, and a growth mindset, researchers struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. In this paper, we use data collected from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative internet panel to study the validity of innovative measures of character skills based on measures of survey effort. We believe surveys themselves can be seen as a behavioral tasks and that respondents provide meaningful information about their character skills by way of the effort they put forward on surveys. In particular, we compare measures of …
Measuring Teacher Conscientiousness And Its Impact On Students: Insight From The Measures Of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database, Albert Cheng, Gema Zamarro
Measuring Teacher Conscientiousness And Its Impact On Students: Insight From The Measures Of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database, Albert Cheng, Gema Zamarro
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Although research has been unable to find strong links between observable teacher characteristics and a teacher’s ability to improve student achievement, it has generally not considered the role that teacher non-cognitive skills play in affecting student outcomes. In this article, we validate several novel performance-task measures of teacher conscientiousness based upon the effort that teachers exert completing a survey and use these measures to examine the role that teacher conscientiousness plays in affecting both student test scores and student non-cognitive skills. We conduct our analysis using the Measure of Effective Teaching Longitudinal Database where teachers were randomly assigned to their …
The Fiscal Effects Of Eliminating The Louisiana Scholarship Program On State Education Expenditures, Julie R. Trivitt, Corey A. Deangelis
The Fiscal Effects Of Eliminating The Louisiana Scholarship Program On State Education Expenditures, Julie R. Trivitt, Corey A. Deangelis
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Eliminating the Louisiana Scholarship Program has been proposed as a way to reduce state education expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year. Drawing upon Louisiana’s education funding formulas, we determine that the overall effect of removing the program will increase state education expenditures. It is true that the state would avoid $41.6 million of spending if the voucher program is eliminated. However, each current voucher student who returns to a public school increases the local district’s necessary education expenditures without increasing the local tax revenue for schools, obligating the state to provide increased funding to the district. While our results depend …
The 80 Percent Pension Funding Target, High Assumed Returns, And Generational Inequity, Robert M. Costrell
The 80 Percent Pension Funding Target, High Assumed Returns, And Generational Inequity, Robert M. Costrell
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Generational inequity in pension funding is highly sensitive to the lax policies of 80- percent funding targets and high assumed returns to investment. I develop a simple, powerful relationship between steady-state (SS) inequity in contributions – the percent of extra contributions to fund prior cohorts – and the SS unfunded ratio. I then show how the SS unfunded ratio is governed by x-percent funding targets and the gap between assumed and true returns. The SS degree of inequity is over 60 percent under an 80 percent funding target and over 50 percent with a one point gap between assumed and …
The School Choice Voucher: A 'Get Out Of Jail' Card?, Corey A. Deangelis, Patrick J. Wolf
The School Choice Voucher: A 'Get Out Of Jail' Card?, Corey A. Deangelis, Patrick J. Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
In this report we examine crime rates for young adults who experienced Milwaukee's citywide voucher program as high school students and a comparable group of their peers who had been public school students. Using unique data collected as part of a longitudinal evaluation of the program, we consider criminal activity by youth initially exposed to voucher schools and those in public schools at the same time. We also consider subsequent criminal activity by the students that stayed in the voucher program through 12th grade compared to those who were in public schools for the same period. We show that the …
Measures Of Student Non-Cognitive Skills And Political Tolerance After Two Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Jonathan N. Mills, Albert Cheng, Collin Hitt, Patrick J. Wolf, Jay P. Greene
Measures Of Student Non-Cognitive Skills And Political Tolerance After Two Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Jonathan N. Mills, Albert Cheng, Collin Hitt, Patrick J. Wolf, Jay P. Greene
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
This report examines the short-term effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on students’ non-cognitive skills and civic values. While a growing number of studies have evaluated K-12 school voucher programs along academic dimensions, few have focused on the development of non-cognitive skills and civic values. This study aims to address that gap by providing the first analysis of differences in self-reported measures of grit, locus of control, self esteem, and political tolerance associated with the LSP. Using results from a phone survey of applicants to the program, we find little evidence of differences between LSP scholarship recipients and non-recipients. …
The Impact Of The Louisiana Scolarship Program On Racial Segregation In Louisiana Schools, Anna J. Egalite, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick Wolf
The Impact Of The Louisiana Scolarship Program On Racial Segregation In Louisiana Schools, Anna J. Egalite, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick Wolf
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
The question of how school choice programs affect the racial stratification of schools is highly salient in the field of education policy. We use a student-level panel data set to analyze the impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on racial segregation in public and private schools. This targeted school voucher program provides funding for low-income, mostly minority students in the lowest-graded public schools to enroll in participating private schools. Our analysis indicates that the vast majority (82%) of LSP transfers have reduced racial segregation in the voucher students’ former public schools. LSP transfers have marginally increased segregation in the …
The Competitive Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Public School Performance, Anna J. Egalite
The Competitive Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Public School Performance, Anna J. Egalite
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Given the significant growth rate and geographic expansion of private school choice programs over the past two decades, it is important to examine how traditional public schools respond to the sudden injection of competition for students and resources. This article uses 1) a school fixed effects approach, and 2) a regression discontinuity framework to examine the achievement impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). This targeted school voucher program has provided public funds for low-income students in low-performing public schools to enroll in participating private schools since the 2012-13 school year. The main findings of the competitive effects analysis reveal …
The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Two Years, Jonathan N. Mills
The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Two Years, Jonathan N. Mills
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide initiative offering publicly-funded vouchers to enroll in local private schools to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This paper examines the experimental effects of using an LSP scholarship to enroll in a private school on student achievement in the first two years following the program’s expansion. Our results indicate that the use of an LSP scholarship has negatively impacted both ELA and math achievement, …