Cross-Country Heterogeneity In Students’ Reporting Behavior: The Use Of The Anchoring Vignette Method, Hana Vonkova, Gema Zamarro, Collin Hitt
Dec 2017
Cross-Country Heterogeneity In Students’ Reporting Behavior: The Use Of The Anchoring Vignette Method, Hana Vonkova, Gema Zamarro, Collin Hitt
Gema Zamarro
Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but they are often affected by heterogeneity in reporting behavior. Failing to correct for this heterogeneity can lead to invalid comparisons across groups. We use the parametric anchoring vignette method to correct for cross-country incomparability of students’ reports on teacher’s classroom management. Our analysis is based on the data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012. We show significant variation in implicit standards across countries. Correlations between countries’ average teacher classroom management levels and external variables like students test scores and public expenditure per pupil change substantially after our …
Comparing And Validating Measures Of Character Skills: Findings From A Nationally Representative Sample
Apr 2017
Comparing And Validating Measures Of Character Skills: Findings From A Nationally Representative Sample
Gema Zamarro
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 …
Effects Of Dual-Language Immersion On Students' Academic Performance, Jennifer Steele, Robert Slater, Gema Zamarro, Trey Miller, Jennifer Li, Susan Burkhauser, Michael Bacon
Dec 2015
Effects Of Dual-Language Immersion On Students' Academic Performance, Jennifer Steele, Robert Slater, Gema Zamarro, Trey Miller, Jennifer Li, Susan Burkhauser, Michael Bacon
Gema Zamarro
Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion on students’ test scores in reading, mathematics, and science, and on English learners’ (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in fifth and eighth grades, ranging from 13 to 22 percent of a standard deviation, reflecting 7 to 9 months of learning. We find little benefit in terms of mathematics and science performance, but also no detriment. By sixth and seventh grade, lottery winners’ probabilities of remaining classified as EL are three to …
Disentangling Disadvantage: Can We Distinguish Good Teaching From Classroom Composition?, Gema Zamarro, John Engberg, Juan Saavedra, Jennifer Steele
Dec 2014
Disentangling Disadvantage: Can We Distinguish Good Teaching From Classroom Composition?, Gema Zamarro, John Engberg, Juan Saavedra, Jennifer Steele
Gema Zamarro
This article investigates the use of teacher value-added estimates to assess the distribution of effective teaching across students of varying socioeconomic disadvantage in the presence of classroom composition effects. We examine, via simulations, how accurately commonly used teacher value-added estimators recover the rank correlation between true and estimated teacher effects and a parameter representing the distribution of effective teaching. We consider various scenarios of teacher assignment, within-teacher variability in classroom composition, the importance of classroom com- position effects, and the presence of student unobserved heterogeneity. No single model recovers without bias estimates of the distribution parameter in all the scenarios …
