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Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

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Articles 151 - 163 of 163

Full-Text Articles in Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research

The Intergenerational Transmission Of Noncognitive Skills And Their Effect On Education And Employment Outcomes, Ildefonso Mendez, Gema Zamarro Jun 2015

The Intergenerational Transmission Of Noncognitive Skills And Their Effect On Education And Employment Outcomes, Ildefonso Mendez, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We use information on second-generation migrants to study the existence of a cultural component on the formation process of noncognitive skills and its effect on education and employment outcomes. Our measures of noncognitive skills include: personality traits that children are encouraged to learn and civic capital. Individuals whose cultural heritage places a lower value on child qualities positively associated to the conscientiousness personality factor report lower education, worse occupational status and lower wages on average. Individuals with a higher inherited civic capital declare a higher educational level, but we find no effect of civic capital on adult labor market outcomes.

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Collective Bargaining And District Costs For Teacher Health Insurance: An Examination Of The Data From The Bls And Wisconsin, Robert M. Costrell May 2015

Collective Bargaining And District Costs For Teacher Health Insurance: An Examination Of The Data From The Bls And Wisconsin, Robert M. Costrell

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

District costs for teachers’ health insurance are, on average, higher than employer costs for private-sector professionals. How much of this is attributable to collective bargaining? This paper examines the question using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the state of Wisconsin. In addition, the impact of collective bargaining on employer costs is decomposed into the impact on total premiums and the employer’s share of those premiums. The BLS data show that unionization is associated with higher total premiums, higher employer costs, and lower employee contributions in both the public and private …

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Does Financial Literacy Contribute To Food Security?, Katherine Grace Carman, Gema Zamarro Jan 2015

Does Financial Literacy Contribute To Food Security?, Katherine Grace Carman, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Food insecurity, not having consistent access to adequate food for active, healthy lives for all household members is most common among low income households. However, income alone is not sufficient to explain who experiences food insecurity. This study investigates the relationship between financial literacy and food security. We find that low income households who exhibit financial literacy are less likely to experience food insecurity.

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Does Retirement Make You Happy? A Simultaneous Equations Approach, Raquel Fonseca, Arie Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro Sep 2014

Does Retirement Make You Happy? A Simultaneous Equations Approach, Raquel Fonseca, Arie Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Continued improvements in life expectancy and fiscal insolvency of public pensions have led to an increase in pension entitlement ages in several countries, but its consequences for subjective well-being are largely unknown. Financial consequences of retirement complicate the estimation of effects of retirement on subjective well-being as financial circumstances may influence subjective well-being, and therefore, the effects of retirement are likely to be confounded by the change in income. At the same time, unobservable determinants of income are probably related with unobservable determinants of subjective wellbeing, making income possibly endogenous if used as control in subjective wellbeing regressions. To address …

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Finance For All: The Impact Of Financial Literacy Training In Compulsory Secondary Education In Spain, Laura Hospido, Ernesto Villanueva, Gema Zamarro Jun 2014

Finance For All: The Impact Of Financial Literacy Training In Compulsory Secondary Education In Spain, Laura Hospido, Ernesto Villanueva, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We estimate the impact on objective measures of financial literacy of a 10-hour financial education program among 15-year-old students in compulsory secondary schooling. We use a matched sample of students and teachers in Madrid and two different estimation strategies. Firstly, we use reweighting estimators to compare the performance in a test of financial knowledge of students in treatment and control schools. In another specification, we use school fixed-effect estimates of the effect of the course on changes in scores in tests of financial knowledge. The program increased treated students’ financial knowledge by between one-fourth and one-third of a standard deviation. …

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Disentangling Disadvantage: Can We Distinguish Good Teaching From Classroom Composition?, Gema Zamarro, John Engberg, Juan Esteban Saavedra, Jennifer Steele Jan 2014

Disentangling Disadvantage: Can We Distinguish Good Teaching From Classroom Composition?, Gema Zamarro, John Engberg, Juan Esteban Saavedra, Jennifer Steele

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This paper focuses on the use of teacher value-added estimates to assess the distribution of effective teaching across students of varying socioeconomic disadvantage. We use simulation methods to examine the extent to which different commonly used teacher-value added estimators accurately capture both the rank correlation between true and estimated teacher effects and the distribution of effective teaching across student characteristics in the presence of classroom composition effects. Varying the amount of teacher sorting by student characteristics, the withinteacher variability in classroom composition, and the amount of student learning decay, we compare aggregated residuals, teacher random effects, and teacher fixed effects …

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Induced Entry Into The Social Security Disability Program: Using Past Sga Changes As A Natural Experiment, Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen, Gema Zamarro Aug 2012

Induced Entry Into The Social Security Disability Program: Using Past Sga Changes As A Natural Experiment, Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The number of American adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has increased dramatically over the past several decades. A proposed solution to rising program costs is to change program rules to encourage fully or partially recovered SSDI beneficiaries to return to work. One such option is a benefit offset policy, which would reduce SSDI benefits by $1 for every $2 of earned income. While a benefit offset could generate savings from increased labor supply and program exit among current beneficiaries, it could also generate unintended costs if the more generous work rules induce significant numbers …

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Boot Camps And Science Camps: Comparing The Kipp And Harmony Charter School Networks, Robert Maranto Aug 2011

Boot Camps And Science Camps: Comparing The Kipp And Harmony Charter School Networks, Robert Maranto

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Obama administration has encouraged "high quality" charter school networks to improve the achievement of disadvantaged students, viewing this as a struggle for civil rights (Maranto and McShane 2011; Paige and Witty 2010). The best known of these is the 109 campus strong Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which started in Houston in 1994. KIPP now serves 32,000 students in 20 states and the District of Columbia, more than 90% African American or Latino/a, and more than 80% low income (KIPP Foundation 2011). Journalists (Mathews 2009; Guggenheim 2010) and scholars (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 2003; Maranto and Maranto 2006; Macey et …

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Family Labor Participation And Child Care Decisions: The Role Of Grannies, Gema Zamarro Jan 2011

Family Labor Participation And Child Care Decisions: The Role Of Grannies, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

One of the most significant long term trends in the labor market in most OECD countries has been the increase in the proportion of working mothers. However, not all countries show the same pattern. Countries in Southern Europe (Italy, Greece and Spain) show an average participation rate of about 45% whereas the participation rates in Northern countries (Denmark, Sweden) are around 75%. The characteristics of child care systems also differ significantly across OECD countries. This along with the characteristics of the labor market may have led families to get the necessary social services in an alternative way, i.e. through grandmothers. …

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What Explains The Gender Gap In Financial Literacy? The Role Of Household Decision-Making, Raquel Fonseca, Kathleen J. Mullen, Gema Zamarro, Julie Zissimopoulos Jun 2010

What Explains The Gender Gap In Financial Literacy? The Role Of Household Decision-Making, Raquel Fonseca, Kathleen J. Mullen, Gema Zamarro, Julie Zissimopoulos

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Research has shown that financial illiteracy is widespread among women, and that many women are unfamiliar with even the most basic economic concepts needed to make saving and investment decisions. This gender gap in financial literacy may contribute to the differential levels of retirement preparedness between women and men. However, little is known about the determinants of the gender gap in financial literacy. Using data from the RAND American Life Panel, we examined potential explanations for the gender gap including the role of marriage and division of financial decision-making among couples. We found that differences in the demographic characteristics of …

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Bush’S Brain (No, Not Karl Rove): How Bush’S Psyche Shaped His Decision Making, Robert Maranto, Richard E. Redding Sep 2009

Bush’S Brain (No, Not Karl Rove): How Bush’S Psyche Shaped His Decision Making, Robert Maranto, Richard E. Redding

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We will summarize the most systematic work on George W. Bush's psyche, stressing that leader personality traits should not be judged as good nor bad: Rather traits which match some situations mismatch others. SAT scores and other available measures indicate that Bush has sufficient intelligence to serve as president. Yet the best studies, in which raters evaluate statements without being aware of their source, suggest that Bush lacks integrative complexity and thus views issues without nuance (Thoemmes and Conway 2007). The leading personality theory (the “5-Factor Model”), as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory, suggests that Bush is highly extraverted …

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Teacher Effectiveness In Urban High Schools, Richard Buddin, Gema Zamarro Aug 2009

Teacher Effectiveness In Urban High Schools, Richard Buddin, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect high school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show little relationship between traditional measures of teacher quality (e.g., experience and education level) and student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) or math. Similarly, teacher aptitude and subject-matter knowledge, as measured on state licensure tests, have no significant effects on student achievement. Achievement outcomes differ substantially from teacher to teacher, however, and the …

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Teacher Qualifications And Middle School Student Achievement, Richard Buddin, Gema Zamarro Jun 2009

Teacher Qualifications And Middle School Student Achievement, Richard Buddin, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect middle school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show little relationship between traditional measures of teacher quality (e.g., experience and education level) and student achievement in reading or math. Similarly, licensure test scores in general aptitude, subject-matter knowledge, and reading pedagogy had no significant effects on student achievement. Teachers with elementary school credentials had slightly better success in the classroom than did …

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