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on Education |
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Issue of 2015‒06‒05
twelve papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Andrabi,Tahir; Das,Jishnu; Khwaja,Asim Ijaz |
| Abstract: | Even as primary-school enrollments have increased in most low-income countries, levels of learning remain low and highly unequal. Responding to greater parental demand for quality, low-cost private schools have emerged as one of the fastest growing schooling options, challenging the monopoly of state-provided education and broadening the set of educational providers. Historically, the rise of private schooling is always deeply intertwined with debates around who chooses what schooling is about and who represents the interests of children. This time is no different. But rather than first resolve the question of how child welfare is to be adjudicated, this paper argues instead for a `pragmatic framework?. In this pragmatic framework, policy takes into account the full schooling environment?which includes public, private and other types of providers?and is actively concerned with first alleviating constraints that prohibit parents and schools from fulfilling their own stated objectives. Using policy actionable experiments as examples, this paper shows that the pragmatic approach can lead to better schooling for children. Alleviating constraints by providing better information, better access to finance or greater access to skilled teachers brings more children into school and increases test-scores in language and mathematics. These areas of improvement are very similar to those where there is already a broad societal consensus that improvement is required. |
| Keywords: | Primary Education,Education For All,Secondary Education,Tertiary Education,Effective Schools and Teachers |
| Date: | 2015–05–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7277&r=edu |
| By: | Denise G. Meister (Penn State Harrisburg) |
| Abstract: | The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 in the United States mandated standardized testing to measure student achievement. Over time, this act began close scrutiny and criticism of curriculum and instruction. As schools struggled with meeting the mandate, Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion United States Department of Education contest, was created in 2009 to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education. States were awarded points for satisfying certain educational policies, such as implementing performance-based standards for teachers and principals, complying with Common Core standards, turning around the lowest-performing schools, and building data systems. In order to apply for this competitive grant, school districts had to demonstrate a systematic evaluation of teachers’ performance through their students’ achievement. This initiative has led to mandated teacher evaluation systems that include one component tying student test scores to teacher performance. With teachers’ yearly evaluations now being tied to student test scores, district administrators are weary of supporting student teachers in their schools. A way to allow teachers to continue to have a teaching presence with a student teacher placement is through co-teaching. This method of instruction allows the mentor teacher to collaborate with the student teacher in various instructional strategies. Committed to making co-teaching an integral part of our clinical practice, our faculty members trained in the co-teaching model and, in turn, trained student teachers, mentor teachers, principals, and college supervisors in the model. We will share the principles of co-teaching and their first efforts at co-teaching Spring 2014. We will explain why we adopted this model and how we formed partnerships with school districts. We will share what we learned, what curriculum changes we made, the assessment instruments we used, and our next steps. Finally, we will share the findings of a research study. This study included three in-depth interviews with six mathematics and social studies student teachers and their mentor teachers to study their perceptions of co-teaching. |
| Keywords: | Reference Jane Wilburne |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:0702461&r=edu |
| By: | Jo Blanden; Emilia Del Bono; Sandra McNally; Birgitta Rabe |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of free pre-school education on child outcomes in primary school. We exploit the staggered implementation of free part-time pre-school for three-year-olds across Local Education Authorities in England in the early 2000s. The policy led to small improvements in attainment at age five, with no apparent benefits by age 11. We argue that this is because the expansion of free places largely crowded out privately paid care, with small changes in total participation, and was achieved through an increase in private provision, where quality is lower on average than in the public sector. |
| Keywords: | Childcare, child outcomes, publicly provided goods |
| JEL: | I21 I24 H44 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1352&r=edu |
| By: | Nadir Altinok; Abdurrahman Aydemir |
| Abstract: | The gender gap in education against females becomes smaller as the level of development increases and turns in their favor in developed countries. Through analysis of regional variation in the gender gap within Turkey, which displays a similar pattern to the crosscountry pattern, this paper studies the factors that lead to the emergence of a gender gap against females. The data for student achievement and aspirations for further education during compulsory school show that females are just as well prepared and motivated for further education as their male counterparts across regions with very different levels of development. Despite this fact, large gaps arise in high school registration and completion in less developed regions, but not in developed ones. We find that larger sibship size is the main driver of gender gaps in less developed regions. While social norms have a negative influence on female education beyond compulsory school, they play a relatively small role in the emergence of gender gaps. These results are consistent with the fact that resource-constrained families give priority to males for further education, leading to the emergence of education gender gaps. |
| Keywords: | gender gap, education, achievement, social norms. |
| JEL: | I2 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2015-13&r=edu |
| By: | Juan Carlos, Campaña; J. Ignacio, Giménez-Nadal; Jose Alberto, Molina |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the factors associated with student satisfaction in a sample of undergraduate students from the University of Zaragoza (Spain). In addition to considering socio-demographic characteristics, we also examine factors related to expectations and motivations. Using data from a survey carried out during the academic year 2011/2012, we show that the level of satisfaction of the students varies according to their field of study, finding that students in Engineering and Science are comparatively less satisfied than those in other disciplines. Also, expectations about whether having a university degree will be enough to obtain a job are associated with their level of satisfaction. Moreover, alcohol consumption is positively associated with their level of satisfaction. Analyzing the correlates of student satisfaction is important to understand student retention and persistence |
| Keywords: | Undergraduate students, satisfaction, field of study, expectations. |
| JEL: | D10 I31 |
| Date: | 2015–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:64727&r=edu |
| By: | Isa Hafalir; Rustamdjan Hakimov; Dorothea Kubler; Morimitsu Kurino |
| Abstract: | We theoretically and experimentally study a college admissions problem in which colleges accept students by ranking students’ efforts in entrance exams. Students’ ability levels affect the cost of their efforts. We solve and compare equilibria of “centralized college admissions” (CCA) where students apply to all colleges and “decentralized college admissions” (DCA) where students only apply to one college. We show that lower ability students prefer DCA whereas higher ability students prefer CCA. Many predictions of the theory are supported by the experiments, yet we find a number of differences that render DCA less attractive than CCA compared to the equilibrium benchmark. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmu:gsiawp:-566341594&r=edu |
| By: | Stephen Gibbons; Stephen Machin; Olmo Silva |
| Abstract: | Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal better quality teaching and academic value-added, or higher ability, sought-after intakes. In our research, we show decisively that value-added drives households' demand for good schooling. However, prior achievement - linked to the background of children in school - also matters. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of experiments and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%. |
| Keywords: | house prices; school quality; boundary discontinuities |
| JEL: | C21 H75 I20 R21 |
| Date: | 2013–11–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:45246&r=edu |
| By: | Pettersson, Gunilla |
| Abstract: | In 1969, Indonesia established a national family planning programme and total fertility has declined rapidly since but there is little consensus over the relative contribution of family planning to the observed decline. The first chapter constructs a new measure of family planning exposure to examine the role of family planning in reducing fertility. The causal effects of infant mortality is also examined based on a new instrumental variable, water supply and sanitation programme exposure, and that of schooling using father’s schooling as an instrument. The findings strongly indicate that family planning contributes to lower fertility together with reductions in infant deaths and improvements in women’s schooling, and that the effects of family planning and decreases in infant mortality are larger than that of schooling. In 2002, nearly one-in-ten men and more than one-in-five women in Indonesia were overweight and noncommunicable diseases had become the main cause of death but there exists no evidence on the causal effect of schooling on BMI for developing countries. The second chapter assesses whether more schooling causes healthier BMI in Indonesia by using two instrumental variables to capture exogenous variation in schooling. The first instrument takes advantage of the primary school construction programme (SD INPRES) in the 1970s; the second instrument is father’s schooling. Two results stand out: more schooling causes higher BMI for men and there is no causal effect of schooling on BMI for women. This chapter also provides some very preliminary evidence that the shift from blue collar to white collar and service sector occupations is one contributing factor to why more schooling increases BMI for men. The third chapter also uses the SD INPRES programme but to examine the effect of increased school supply on schooling attainment: overall, by gender, and by socioeconomic background. It also constructs a new SD INPRES programme exposure variable as an instrument for schooling to assess the causal effect of schooling on wages. The results strongly suggest that the SD INPRES programme increased schooling for men and women but that women benefited more as did individuals from less advantageous socioeconomic backgrounds. More schooling also causes higher wages and there appears to be an added positive effect for women through the additional schooling induced by the SD INPRES programme. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sus:susphd:0213&r=edu |
| By: | Jon Kristian Pareliussen; Margherita Bussi; Christophe André; Vincent Koen |
| Abstract: | A highly skilled workforce is crucial to sustain competitiveness and contain the rise in income inequality. Recent surveys of adult skills and educational performance suggest that younger cohorts are doing less well than their predecessors. Many immigrants struggle both in school and in the labour market partly because of low skills and language difficulties. Educational outcomes could be improved through raising the attractiveness of the teacher profession, improving teacher education and increasing support for struggling students. A more flexible labour market would facilitate access to jobs for youth with low qualifications and immigrants. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Sweden www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-sweden.htm<P>Compétences et croissance inclusive en Suède<BR>Il est essentiel que la Suède dispose d'une main-d'oeuvre hautement qualifiée pour rester compétitive et limiter la montée des inégalités de revenus. Des enquêtes récentes sur les compétences des adultes et les résultats scolaires laissent à penser que les cohortes jeunes font moins bien que les précédentes. De nombreux immigrés sont en difficulté tant dans le système scolaire que sur le marché du travail, en partie en raison de leur faible niveau de qualification et de leurs difficultés linguistiques. Les résultats du système d'enseignement pourraient être améliorés en rendant plus attractive la profession d'enseignant, en améliorant la formation des enseignants et en renforçant le soutien apporté aux élèves en difficulté. Un marché du travail plus flexible rendrait l’emploi plus accessible aux jeunes peu qualifiés et aux immigrés. Ce Document de travail a trait à l’Étude économique de l’OCDE de la Suède, 2015 www.oecd.org/fr/eco/etudes/etude-economi que-suede.htm |
| Keywords: | immigration, PISA, education, employment, inequality, PIAAC, adult skills, compétences des adultes, emploi, PIAAC, éducation, PISA, immigration, inégalité |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J08 J21 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2015–05–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1232-en&r=edu |
| By: | Zurab Abramishvili; Lasha Lanchava |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact on university enrollment of an unconditional cash transfer in Georgia, designed to help households living below the subsistence level. The program, introduced in 2005, selects recipients based upon a quantitative poverty threshold, which gives us the ability to implement a regression discontinuity design. We use data on program recipients from the Social Service Agency of Georgia (SSA) and on university admissions from the National Examination Center (NAEC) to create a single dataset and compare applicants who are above and below the threshold, while controlling for the main effect of the assignment variable itself. This paper is the first rigorous evaluation of this particular program. We find that being a program recipient significantly increases a student’s likelihood of university enrollment, by 6.3%. We also find a gender specific impact on enrollment. The impact is stronger for males; being a male child of a beneficiary family results in a 13.3% greater chance of university enrollment. |
| Keywords: | unconditional cash transfer; university enrollment; gender; |
| JEL: | O15 I23 D13 J16 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp542&r=edu |
| By: | Peter Savelyev (Vanderbilt University); Kegon Tan (University of Wisconsin-Medison) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effects of education and five well-established socioemotional skills on essential life outcomes including health behaviors, health-related lifestyles, earnings, as well as general and mental health. We supplement results in papers that treat socioemotional skills as a single-dimensional variable and find important heterogeneity that a one-dimensional representation does not capture. By combining factor-analytic modeling with a powerful procedure to account for multiple-hypothesis testing, we control for the ability bias, for the measurement error in proxies of socioemotional skills, and for the family-wise error rate. We also contribute to the still controversial discussion about the causal effect of education on health-related outcomes by using alternative methods to the use of natural experiments. We use the Terman data, a unique longitudinal study. |
| Keywords: | college education, Big Five personality taxonomy, health behaviors, lifestyles, earnings, health, longevity |
| JEL: | I0 J0 |
| Date: | 2015–05–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:van:wpaper:vuecon-15-00007&r=edu |
| By: | Nathaniel G. Hilger |
| Abstract: | Tax records indicate that intergenerational mobility (IM) has been stable for cohorts entering the labor market since the 1990s. I show that when using educational attainment as a proxy for adult income, stable IM is a new phenomenon: IM rose significantly for cohorts entering the labor market from 1940 to 1980. I measure IM directly in historical Census data for children still living with their parents at ages 22-25, and indirectly for other children using an imputation procedure that I validate in multiple data sets with parent-child links spanning the full 1940-2000 period. Post-war mobility gains were larger in the South and for blacks, and were driven by gains in high school rather than college enrollment. Controlling for region and year, states with higher IM have had lower income inequality, higher income levels, more educational inputs, higher minimum dropout ages, and lower teen birth rates. IM gains plausibly increased aggregate annual earnings growth by 0.125-0.25 percentage points over the 1940-1980 period. |
| JEL: | J1 J24 J62 N01 N3 O15 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21217&r=edu |