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Full-Text Articles in Education Economics

Eliciting Information About Teacher Applicants Using Open-Ended Questions, Joseph Aguilar-Bohorquez, Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Elton Mykerezi, Prayash Pathak, Aaron Sojourner Sep 2026

Eliciting Information About Teacher Applicants Using Open-Ended Questions, Joseph Aguilar-Bohorquez, Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Elton Mykerezi, Prayash Pathak, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Employers commonly use open-ended questions in hiring, but usually responses aren’t recorded, and knowledge about the usefulness of such responses is limited. This study investigates properties of written responses to open-ended questions collected over many years via an application tracking platform that school districts use to hire teachers. We develop a scalable process to discover topics within the corpus of responses to each question and then to classify each response with respect to the topics while preserving interpretability and transparency. It adapts a traditional qualitative topic modeling approach, Inductive Thematic Analysis, to best combine the strengths of researcher judgment and …


Human Capital And Labor Market Effects Of Elite Schooling In England, Scotland, And Wales: New Causal Evidence From Nonparametric Bounds, Zhanhan Yu, Vikesh Amin, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Giuseppe Germinario Feb 2026

Human Capital And Labor Market Effects Of Elite Schooling In England, Scotland, And Wales: New Causal Evidence From Nonparametric Bounds, Zhanhan Yu, Vikesh Amin, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Giuseppe Germinario

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the causal effect of attending elite schools in England, Scotland, and Wales on human capital and labor market outcomes for cohorts of children from the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study. For identification, we employ a nonparametric partial-identification approach that provides bounds on the causal effect by assuming that, on average, there is positive selection into elite school attendance, and that attending an elite school does not worsen average potential human capital or labor market outcomes. The bounds indicate that there could possibly be large education and labor market returns from attending an …


Are Teacher Pensions "Hazardous" For Schools?, Patten Priestley Mahler Dec 2017

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 …


Investing In Schools: Capital Spending, Facility Conditions, And Student Achievement (Revised And Edited), Paco Martorell, Kevin Stange, Isaac Mcfarlin Jr. May 2016

Investing In Schools: Capital Spending, Facility Conditions, And Student Achievement (Revised And Edited), Paco Martorell, Kevin Stange, Isaac Mcfarlin Jr.

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Public investments in repairs, modernization, and construction of schools cost billions. However, little is known about the nature of school facility investments, whether such investments actually change the physical condition of public schools, and the subsequent causal impacts on student achievement. We study the achievement effects of nearly 1,400 capital campaigns initiated and financed by local school districts, comparing districts where school capital bonds were either narrowly approved or narrowly defeated by district voters. Overall, we find little evidence that school capital campaigns improve student achievement. Our event-study analyses focusing on students that attend targeted schools and therefore are exposed …


The Role Of Performance Management In Good Governance And Its Application In Public Education, Carolyn J. Heinrich Jul 2015

The Role Of Performance Management In Good Governance And Its Application In Public Education, Carolyn J. Heinrich

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


The Road Toward K-12 Excellence In Michigan: How An Upgraded Financing System Can Better Support Enhanced Student Achievement, Kevin Hollenbeck, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams May 2015

The Road Toward K-12 Excellence In Michigan: How An Upgraded Financing System Can Better Support Enhanced Student Achievement, Kevin Hollenbeck, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams

Reports

No abstract provided.


Did No Child Left Behind Affect Teacher Attendance?: Evidence From North Carolina, Seth Gershenson Apr 2015

Did No Child Left Behind Affect Teacher Attendance?: Evidence From North Carolina, Seth Gershenson

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Intergovernmental (Dis)Incentives, Free-Riding, Teacher Salaries And Teacher Pensions, Maria D. Fitzpatrick Feb 2015

Intergovernmental (Dis)Incentives, Free-Riding, Teacher Salaries And Teacher Pensions, Maria D. Fitzpatrick

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In this paper, I document evidence that intergovernmental incentives inherent in public sector defined benefit pension systems distort the amount and timing of income for public school teachers. This intergovernmental incentive stems from the fact that, in many states, local school districts are responsible for setting the compensation that determines the size of pensions, but are not required to make contributions to cover the resulting pension fund liabilities. I use the introduction of a policy that required experience-rating on compensation increases above a certain limit in a differences-in-differences framework to identify whether districts are willing to pay the full costs …


Performance Standards And Employee Effort: Evidence From Teacher Absences, Seth Gershenson Jan 2015

Performance Standards And Employee Effort: Evidence From Teacher Absences, Seth Gershenson

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title 1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the first year of NCLB on teacher effort in the subsequent year suggest that, on average, teacher absences in North Carolina fell by about 10 percent, and the probability of being absent 15 or more times fell by about 30 percent. Reductions in teacher absences were driven by within-teacher increases in effort and were larger among …


Preschool Teaching At A Crossroads, Marcy Whitebook Jul 2013

Preschool Teaching At A Crossroads, Marcy Whitebook

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Effects Of The Pre-K Program Of Kalamazoo County Ready 4s On Kindergarten Entry Test Scores: Estimates Based On Data From The Fall Of 2011 And The Fall Of 2012, Timothy J. Bartik Jun 2013

Effects Of The Pre-K Program Of Kalamazoo County Ready 4s On Kindergarten Entry Test Scores: Estimates Based On Data From The Fall Of 2011 And The Fall Of 2012, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper uses a regression discontinuity model to examine the effects on kindergarten entrance assessments of the Kalamazoo County Ready 4s (KC Ready 4s) program, a half-day pre-K program for four-year-olds in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. The results are based on test scores and other characteristics of up to 220 children participating in KC Ready 4s, with data coming from both 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 participants in the program. The estimates find consistently statistically significant effects of this pre-K program on improving entering kindergartners’ math test scores. Some estimates also suggest marginally statistically significant effects of KC Ready 4s on vocabulary test …


Family Income, Student Achievement, And Educational Costs, Timothy J. Bartik Feb 2013

Family Income, Student Achievement, And Educational Costs, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.


The Short-Term Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On Student Outcomes, Timothy J. Bartik, Marta Lachowska Aug 2012

The Short-Term Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On Student Outcomes, Timothy J. Bartik, Marta Lachowska

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In order to study whether college scholarships can be an effective tool in raising students’ performance in secondary school, we use one aspect of the Kalamazoo Promise that resembles a quasi-experiment. The surprise announcement of the scholarship created a large change in expected college tuition costs that varied across different groups of students based on past enrollment decisions. This variation is arguably exogenous to unobserved student characteristics. We estimate the effects of this change by a set of “difference-in-differences” regressions where we compare the change in student outcomes in secondary school across time for different student “length of enrollment” groups. …


Beating The Odds, Michael F. Addonizio, C. Philip Kearney Jan 2012

Beating The Odds, Michael F. Addonizio, C. Philip Kearney

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


The Kalamazoo Promise, And Enrollment And Achievement Trends In Kalamazoo Public Schools, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang Oct 2010

The Kalamazoo Promise, And Enrollment And Achievement Trends In Kalamazoo Public Schools, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang

Conference Papers

This paper examines three types of KPS trends that may represent Promise effects: 1) trends in overall enrollment, 2) trends in relative enrollment by ethnic group, and 3) trends in KPS achievement on the standardized test used by the state of Michigan for No Child Left Behind accountability, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test.


Net Impact Analysis Of Reading Recovery® In Kalamazoo Public Schools: Concept And Preliminary Findings, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang Sep 2010

Net Impact Analysis Of Reading Recovery® In Kalamazoo Public Schools: Concept And Preliminary Findings, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang

Presentations

This analysis estimated the net impact of Reading Recovery® as it was conducted in Kalamazoo Public Schools for first graders in the 2003/04 cohort. Results suggest that Reading Recovery® has helped students who demonstrated difficulties with literacy skills at the beginning of the year to perform at levels much closer to their peers by the end of the year. Three comparison groups were used in the analysis: RR students only, all other first graders, and matched first graders. Analysis using all three comparison groups found evidence that students in Reading Recovery® raised their test scores more than students that were …


How Important Are Classroom Peer Effects? Evidence From Boston's Metco Program, Joshua David Angrist, Kevin Lang Oct 2002

How Important Are Classroom Peer Effects? Evidence From Boston's Metco Program, Joshua David Angrist, Kevin Lang

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Most integration programs transfer students between schools within districts. In this paper, we study the impact of Metco, a long-running desegregation program that sends mostly black students out of the Boston public school district to attend schools in more affluent suburban districts. We focus on the impact of Metco on the students in one of the largest Metco-receiving districts. In the 2000 school year, Metco increased the proportion black in this district from about 7.5 percent to almost 12.5 percent. Because Metco students have substantially lower test scores than local students, this inflow generates a significant decline in scores, with …


Impact Of Charter School Attendance On Student Achievement In Michigan, Randall W. Eberts, Kevin Hollenbeck Apr 2002

Impact Of Charter School Attendance On Student Achievement In Michigan, Randall W. Eberts, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Proponents of school reform have argued that charter schools and vouchers can provide adequate market pressure to improve the performance of traditional public schools. While the number of charter schools and student enrollment have burgeoned, relatively little attention has been paid to their effects on student achievement. Proponents of charter schools suggest a direct effect on student achievement through the restructuring of teaching and learning processes and an indirect effect through peer effects on learning and through the market forces of competition. Of course, competitive pressures may result in higher achievement in traditional public schools as well. This paper focuses …


Does Charter School Attendance Improve Test Scores?: Comments And Reactions On The Arizona Achievement Study, Christopher Nelson, Kevin Hollenbeck Jul 2001

Does Charter School Attendance Improve Test Scores?: Comments And Reactions On The Arizona Achievement Study, Christopher Nelson, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In a recent report, Solmon, Paark, and Garcia (2001) seek to identify the impact of attending charter schools on student achievement using data from Arizona. Based on a sophisticated statistical analysis, these authors report that charter school attendance increases test score gains of students. This note raises some questions about the interpretation of the results reported and some questions about the empirical approach and underlying data. First, the report relies on a 2-x-2 evaluation design with type of school (charter or traditional) attended in a base year as the rows and type of school in the ensuing year as the …


High School Career Academies, Nan L. Maxwell, Victor Rubin Jan 2001

High School Career Academies, Nan L. Maxwell, Victor Rubin

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Use And Effectiveness Of Formal Course And Career Planning Forms In Secondary Schools In The Ottawa Area Intermediate School District, Kevin Hollenbeck, Noyna Debburman Sep 2000

Use And Effectiveness Of Formal Course And Career Planning Forms In Secondary Schools In The Ottawa Area Intermediate School District, Kevin Hollenbeck, Noyna Debburman

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.


Development Of Core Indicators Of The Impact Of Career Preparation In The South Central Michigan Works! Region, Kevin Hollenbeck Oct 1999

Development Of Core Indicators Of The Impact Of Career Preparation In The South Central Michigan Works! Region, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.


School-To-Work Programs To Facilitate Youth Employment And Learning, Kevin Hollenbeck Apr 1996

School-To-Work Programs To Facilitate Youth Employment And Learning, Kevin Hollenbeck

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


Essays On The Economics Of Education, Emily P. Hoffman Editor Jan 1993

Essays On The Economics Of Education, Emily P. Hoffman Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors provide an economic perspective on a wide range of education-related issues related to K-12 and higher education.