Education Economics Commons^™

Equity In Education: How High School Attributes Determine An Admission Into Elite Colleges, Alexia Y. Ortiz

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the question “Does the type of high school and location affect one’s admission to the three elite colleges: Claremont McKenna College (CMC), Pomona College (Pomona), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)?” I used a dataset of high schools from five counties in Southern California, San Diego, Imperial, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles, to create a regression model that determines whether students from charter, magnet, private, or public schools, and where one’s high school is located neighborhood’s income levels have different rates of admission.

This study found that attending public high school negatively …

Climate And Cognitive Performance: Examining The Relationship Between Extreme Temperatures And Students’ Academic Achievement In The United States, Sophia Kestell

CMC Senior Theses

This study explores how exposure to high temperatures throughout the school year affects students' academic performance in the United States, focusing on third- and eighth-graders and economically disadvantaged students. This paper uses math and reading assessment data for students from the Standard Education Data Archive (SEDA) and temperature data from the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State. Using a fixed-effects ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model specification, this analysis investigates the relationship between temperature threshold and academic achievement in 333 US counties from 2010 through 2019. Additionally, county air conditioning coverage data are used to explore the relationship between temperatures …

Education Inequality In The United States: A Wicked Problem With A Wicked Solution, Lincoln Bernard

CMC Senior Theses

A problem wicked in its complexity and detriment; the United States has failed most of its students in its inability to address the unashamedly rampant inequality throughout its public education system. The inequality in American public schools appears evident and boundless, but the causes of that inequality, and especially its solutions, are not as obvious. It is easy to explain away the system’s failures as a product of the United States’ ultra-varied environment, but further investigation reveals much of the systems problems are self-caused, resulting from the United States’ uniquely local approach to supporting its schools. A misguided fear of …

Observing The Effects Of Diversity On Performance In Ugandan Primary Schools, Sydney Baffour

CMC Senior Theses

The goal of all firms is to improve efficiency and performance, and previous literature suggests that diversity among teammates is a mechanism to improve productivity. This research uniquely extends previous understandings of horizontal and vertical diversity by examining school performance metrics as an important indicator of economic outcomes. Using data from the Centre for the Study of African Economies(CSAE) at the University of Oxford, I analyze vertical and horizontal diversity and its effects on teacher groups within Ugandan primary schools. Overall, my results suggest a minimally significant, but positive effect of gender and ethnic diversity on student performance outcomes. My …

Evaluating The Effects Of Nutritional Intake During Adolescence On Educational Attainment And Labor Market Earnings As An Adult, Mikaela Connell

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I analyze whether nutritional intake at the time of adolescence can impact academic attainment and earnings later on in life. Millions of children in the United States are living in food insecure households and do not have access to an adequate nutritious diet. Since adolescence is a time period of intense growth and development, it is essential to meet nutritional needs at this time. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), I measure the nutrition of a nationally representative sample of youth in the United States through their daily food intake, …

Diversity: Is It Worth It?, Christopher Jackson

CMC Senior Theses

This paper takes a dive into understanding if funding extra diversity initiatives at Claremont McKenna College currently spurred on by students are worth the cost to the institution. Resources like that of Claremont McKenna’s C.A.R.E. Center (Civility, Access, Resources, and Expression) and funding for representative student organizations place large pressures on the institution’s available budget and there is not much proof that they will pay off in the long-run. In this paper, financial costs for supporting diverse students on campus are aggregated and compared to the possible financial benefits that may come of their consequential use. Results show that there …

Peer Misbehavior Effects In The Classroom, Alex Hwung

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to evaluate the effects of peer misbehavior in the classroom on student learning outcomes--namely, if there is any truth behind the old saying that “one bad apple ruins the bunch”. Using experimental data, I show that there is a strong initial relationship between the level of misbehavior in a given classroom and performance on a mathematics evaluation; however, the inclusion of lagged peer achievement in the model causes most of that relationship to be absorbed away, suggesting that the bulk of peer effects stem more from the academic performance of other students than from their behavior.

Examining The Relationship Between Received Remittances And Education In Malawi, Kasvi Malik

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between received remittances and education using random samples from panel survey data from households in rural Malawi collected between 2008 and 2010. Past research as well as that conducted in this paper point to the fact that remittances and education share an important correlation. The results of this study indicate that on a microeconomic level, remittances have a highly significant and positive impact on household education. Other remittance-related factors such as the distance from agent, the remittance amount, and the type of account held by an individual also have a significant impact on the highest …

From Building Blocks To Cell Blocks: An Analysis Of The Effect Of Public School Funding On Juvenile Delinquency, Chandrika Gupta

CMC Senior Theses

In this study, the primary question that is addressed is that of whether there exists a relationship between juvenile arrest rates and public school funding. Using publically available FBI arrest data, data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), and Census data, I used two OLS models to answer this question. The first model suggested that there was no statistically significant correlation between school spending per child and juvenile arrest rates. However, it indicated that juvenile arrest rates were correlated with median income, percentage of children below the poverty line, percentage of Black, Hispanic, and Mixed children in the state. The …