returns to an MBA

In a recent issue of Economic Inquiry, Wayne Grove (Le Moyne) and Andrew Hussey (U Memphis) estimate the expected return from earning an MBA. They compare the effects of field of study and school quality. From their abstract:

We find approximately 7% returns for most MBAs but roughly double that for finance and management information systems (MIS). Thus, MBA area of study can matter as much or more than program quality: only attending a top 10, but not 11-25, MBA program trumped studying finance and MIS at a nontop 25 program.

Read the paper here.

school choice is good

In a new paper in the Review of Economic Studies, Victor Lavy (Hebrew U) considers what happens when students can attend any public school they want. That is, he looks at the impact that free public school choice has on graduation rates, student performance, and other outcomes. From the abstract:

Across identification methods and comparison groups, the results consistently suggest that choice significantly reduces the drop-out rate and increases the cognitive achievements of high-school students. It also improves behavioural outcomes such as teacher–student relationships and students' social acclimation and satisfaction at school, and reduces the level of violence and classroom disruption.

Across the board, school choice looks like a winning policy. Download the paper here.

paying students to perform better

In a new NBER working paper, Roland Fryer (Harvard) looks at data from randomized trials that paid students based on school performance. From the abstract:

Our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are given for inputs to the educational production function, but incentives tied to output are not effective. Relative to popular education reforms of the past few decades, student incentives based on inputs produce similar gains in achievement at lower costs.

So, paying students to put more time in, to complete assignments, etc. works; but paying them based on final grade doesn't. Furthermore, they find no evidence that the incentives (once discontinued) will decrease student's intrinsic motivation to perform well.

Read the paper here.

physical attractiveness and performance

Previous papers have shown that physical attractiveness has a positive impact on student performance. However, the past studies tend to not control for other characteristics that may be highly correlated with attractiveness, including personality and grooming. In a recent paper in Labour Economics, Michael French, Philip Robins, Jenny Homer, and Lauren Tapsell (all at U Miami) conclude:

Including personality and grooming, the effect of physical attractiveness turns negative for both groups, but is only statistically significant for males. For male and female students, being very well groomed is associated with a statistically significant GPA premium. While grooming has the largest effect on GPA for male students, having a very attractive personality is most important for female students.

Link to the paper here. Or read about it here.

did no child left behind work?

Thomas Dee (Swarthmore) and Brian Jacob (Harvard) empirically consider the impact of No Child Left Behind legislation in the U.S. From the abstract:

Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of 4th graders as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. There is also evidence of improvements in 8th grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low-achieving groups and at the lower percentiles. However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased reading achievement in either 4th or 8th grade.

From the introduction:

The lack of any effect in reading, and the fact that NCLB appears to have generated only modestly larger impacts among disadvantaged subgroups in math (and thus only made minimal headway in closing achievement gaps), suggests that, to date, the impact of NCLB has fallen short of its ambitious “moon-shot rhetoric”

Download it here, or here.

longer school days and student performance

In the current issue of Economics of Education Review, Cristián Bellei (U Chile) considers whether lengthening the school day increases student achievement. Looking at a change in the length of a school day in Chile, the paper shows that more classroom time increases achievement in mathematics and language. This impact is larger for public school, rural, and high-achieving students.

Link to the paper here.

parents, child self confidence, and child performance

In a recent paper, Rajeev Darolia (George Washington) and Bruce Wydick (U San Francisco) test how parents can affect the academic effort and performance of a child through "signals," such as praise or financial rewards. From the abstract:

Our results show that some complementary actions before college, such as parental praise, foster academic achievement above what natural ability would predict. Conversely, we find that some substitutionary actions before college, e.g. providing cars as gifts, are associated with lower effort in college and underachievement.

I was particularly amused by the car-buying result. The article is forthcoming in Economica. Link to it here, or here.

pro-girl teacher biases

Victor Lavy (Hebrew U) looks for gender biases held by high school teachers in Israel. His results suggest that girls benefit from teacher biases, which is largely contrary to popular beliefs that teacher biases may harm girls. The abstract:

Schools and teachers are often said to be a source of stereotypes that harm girls. This paper tests for the existence of gender stereotyping and discrimination by public high-school teachers in Israel. It uses a natural experiment based on blind and non-blind scores that students receive on matriculation exams in their senior year. Using data on test results in several subjects in the humanities and sciences, I found, contrary to expectations, that male students face discrimination in each subject. These biases widen the female–male achievement difference because girls outperform boys in all subjects, except English, and at all levels of the curriculum. The bias is evident in all segments of the ability and performance distribution and is robust to various individual controls. Several explanations based on differential behavior between boys and girls are not supported empirically. However, the size of the difference is very sensitive to teachers' characteristics, suggesting that the bias against male students is the result of teachers', and not students', behavior.

The paper is recently published in the Journal of Public Economics. Download it here.

does merit based aid increase college attendance? nope

Jashua Goodman (Columbia) considers the impact of Massachusetts' Adam Scholarship on college attendance decisions. The Adam Scholarship is a state-funded, merit-based financial aid program similar to those found in most other states. His findings are interesting, mostly because the program appears to have little effect on college attendance decisions.

From the abstract: "most funds flowed to students who would have enrolled in public colleges absent the scholarship and the aid had no effect on winners' overall college enrollment rate, which already exceeded 90%." He also finds that the scholarship "induced 6% of winners to choose four-year public colleges instead of four-year private colleges;" an effect which does not increase overall college attainment. He concludes,

The Adams Scholarship would annually add 80 college-educated workers to the state's workforce, at an annual cost of $50,000 per added worker. It seems implausible that the benefits to the state in additional tax revenue would exceed this amount, or that the proportion of college-educated workers would rise enough to induce the [previously claimed benefits].

Download the paper, which was recently published in the Journal of Public Economics.

information availability and school choice program participation

It has been shown that low-income families put less weight on academic quality when choosing schools. They are less likely to take part in school-choice programs, in which they can apply for their children to attend a different school than originally assigned based on geography. This implies that school-choice programs may not have as large of a benefit for low-income families than may be possible, if they were more likely to take advantage of such programs.

In a recent QJE article, Justine S. Hastings (Yale) and Jeffrey M. Weinstein (Syracuse) consider show that providing low-income families with data on school performance increases the probability that they participate in a school-choice program. They find "that school choice will most effectively increase academic achievement for disadvantaged students when parents have easy access to test score information and good options from which to choose."

Download the article.

holding kids back and graduation rates

Brian A. Jacob (U Mich) and Lars Lefgren (BYU) study the impact that holding grade school students back has on graduation rates. Their abstract:

Low-achieving students in many school districts are retained in a grade in order to allow them to gain the academic or social skills that teachers believe are necessary to succeed academically. In this paper, we use plausibly exogenous variation in retention generated by a test-based promotion policy to assess the causal impact of grade retention on high school completion. We find that retention among younger students does not affect the likelihood of high school completion, but that retaining low-achieving eighth grade students in elementary school substantially increases the probability that these students will drop out of high school.

Download the article.

donations to universities to help one's child get accepted

Jonathan Meer (Stanford) and Harvey S. Rosen (Princeton) study alumni donations to a university, and show that alumni are more likely to give money as their children approach college age. Their abstract:

We study alumni contributions to an anonymous research university. If alumni believe donations will increase the likelihood of their child’s admission, and if this belief helps motivate their giving, then the pattern of giving should vary systematically with the ages of their children, whether the children ultimately apply to the university, and the admissions outcome. We call this pattern the child cycle of alumni giving. The evidence is consistent with the child-cycle pattern. Thus, while altruism drives some giving, the hope for a reciprocal benefit also plays a role. We compute rough estimates of the proportion of giving due to selfish motives.

So, their story only requires that alumni believe that contributions increase the probability of their children being accepted. Now, I would like to see someone determine whether this belief has support in the data.

Download the article.

computers aided versus traditional instruction

Lisa Barrow (Chicago Fed), Lisa Markman (Princeton), and Cecilia Elena Rouse (Princeton) study the use of computer instruction in teaching mathematics. Their abstract:

We present results from a randomized study of a well-defined use of computers in schools: a popular instructional computer program for pre-algebra and algebra. We primarily assess the program using a test designed to target pre-algebra and algebra skills. Students randomly assigned to computer-aided instruction score significantly higher on a pre-algebra and algebra test than students randomly assigned to traditional instruction. We hypothesize that this effectiveness arises from increased individualized instruction as the effects appear larger for students in larger classes and in classes with high student absentee rates.

Read the paper.

teacher testing & teaching quality

By requiring teachers to pass tests or receive certifications, we can ensure that public school teachers obtain some minimum level of education and knowledge. Does imposing such requirements increase student performance?

Joshua D. Angrista (MIT) and Jonathan Guryanb (U Chicago) find no evidence that increasing teacher requirements increases teacher quality. This may be because the increased requirements makes it more difficult to become a teacher, which likely affects the types of students who choose to become teachers. It also forces schools to hire along this one-dimension, even if the school believes that an uncertified teacher would make the better teacher.

What's more, the authors show that the increase in requirements increases teacher wages (without increasing teacher quality). This is unsurprising since increasing teacher requirments likely decrease the supply of teachers--in the labor market this means higher wages. This article suggests that increasing teacher teasting and certification requirments increases the cost of education without increasing the quality of education.

link to the article

can television make kids smarter?

In the previous post, we learned that television might cause autism. Before banning television from your house, you should also consider the following article by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, both at the University of Chicago. It appeared in a recent issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Preschool Television Viewing and Adolescent Test Scores

They find evidence that exposure to television when in preschool may increase average adolescent test scores. Admittedly, the overall the effects are small. However, "the effects are largest for children from households where English is not the primary language, for children whose mothers have less than a high school education, and for nonwhite children."

So, this suggests that tv might not be completely bad. It may provide exposure to knowledge or experiences that are otherwise unavailable. Taken together what do the two television studies imply?