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For decades, pundits, politicians, college administrators, and academics have lamented the dismal rates of civic engagement among students who enroll in courses and eventually major in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (i.e., STEM) fields. However, the research supporting this conclusion has faced distinct challenges in terms of data quality. Does STEM actually decrease the odds that young people will be actively involved in democracy? This paper assesses the relationship between studying STEM and voting. To do so, we create a dataset of over 23 million students in the U.S. matched to national validated voting records. The novel dataset is the largest known individual-level dataset in the U.S. connecting high school and college students to voting outcomes. It also contains a rich set of demographic and academic variables, to account for many of the common issues related to students' selection into STEM coursework. We consider two measures of STEM participation ---Advanced Placement (AP) Exam taking in high school and college major. Using both measures, we find that, unconditionally, STEM students are slightly more likely to vote than their non-STEM peers. After including the rich set of controls, the sign reverses and STEM students are slightly less likely to vote than their non-STEM peers. However, these estimated relationships between STEM and voting are small in magnitude---about the same effect size as a single get-out-the-vote mailer---and we can rule out even very modest causal effects of marginally more STEM coursework on voting for the typical STEM student. We cannot rule out modest effects for a few subfields. Our analyses demonstrate that, on average, marginally more STEM coursework in high school and college does not contribute to the dismally low participation rates among young people in the U.S.
Nearly all studies of preschool’s long-run effects examine means-tested programs; little is known about the long-run effects of universal programs. A number of key differences—including population served, scale, and counterfactual options—may cause universal programs to have different effects than previously studied means-tested programs. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I estimate the effects of Georgia’s first-in-the-nation statewide universal pre-K program on adult educational attainment and employment. The program made children 4.5 percent more likely to graduate from high school and 13.7 percent more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree (although the latter effect is imprecise). I find similar results in a supplemental analysis that uses the synthetic control method. I find no effects on associate degree attainment or employment.
In this paper, I study the causal relationship between violence and human capital accumulation. Due to a power vacuum left in conflict zones of Colombia after the 2016 peace agreement, large spikes in violence were reported in the municipalities of the country dominated by the rebel group FARC. I compare student test scores in municipalities that experienced the increase in violence to the ones that did not, before and after the national peace agreement. I find that a 10 percent increase in the homicide rate reduces average high school test scores by approximately 0.03 standard deviations. However, this impact is greater in the case of poor students who suffered a reduction of about 0.1 standard deviations per subject area, equivalent to 3.3 percentage points out of the final score. I also consider heterogeneity by gender finding a slightly larger negative impact on female students. This disparate effect on women and on the poorest students adds new evidence to the literature on the effects of armed conflict on learning outcomes.
Because high-stakes testing for school accountability does not begin until third grade, accountability ratings for elementary schools do not directly measure students’ academic progress in grades K through 2. While it is possible that children’s test scores in grades 3 and above are highly correlated with children’s outcomes in the untested grades, research provides reasons to believe that this might not be the case in all schools. This study explores whether measures of school quality based on test scores in grades 3 through 5 serve as a strong proxy for children’s academic outcomes in grades K through 2. The results show that directly accounting for children’s test scores in the early grades could lead to meaningful changes in schools’ test-based performance ratings. The findings have important implications for accountability policy.
Standards have been at the heart of state and federal efforts to improve education for several decades. Most recently, standards-based reforms have evolved with a focus on more ambitious "college- and career-ready" (CCR) standards. This paper synthesizes the results of a seven-year national research center focused on the implementation and effects of CCR standards. The paper draws on evidence from a quasi-experimental longitudinal study using NAEP data, a cluster-randomized trial of an alignment feedback intervention, and detailed implementation data from state-representative surveys and case studies of five districts. Situating our work in a "policy attributes theory," we find important gaps in the theory of change underlying current standards-based reform efforts. We conclude that the CCR standards movement is not succeeding in achieving its desired outcomes. We make specific suggestions for improving instructional policy, including a) providing more specific instructional guidance, b) reconceptualizing professional learning, c) building buy-in through the involvement of trusted leaders, d) providing better supports for differentiation, and e) devoting attention and guidance to the intersection of content and pedagogy, and f) addressing persistent deficit thinking among educators.
In recent decades, U.S. education leaders have advocated for more intellectually ambitious mathematics instruction in classrooms. Evidence about whether more ambitious mathematics instruction has filtered into contemporary classrooms, however, is largely anecdotal. To address this issue, we analyzed 93 lessons recorded by a national random sample of middle school mathematics teachers. We find that lesson quality varies, with the typical lesson containing some elements of mathematical reasoning and sense-making, but also teacher-directed instruction with limited student input. Lesson quality correlates with teachers’ use of a textbook and with teachers’ mathematical background. We consider these findings in light of efforts to transform U.S. mathematics instruction.
School principals are viewed as critical mechanisms by which to improve student outcomes, but there remain important methodological questions about how to measure principals' effects. We propose a framework for measuring principals' contributions to student outcomes and apply it empirically using data from Tennessee, New York City, and Oregon. We find that using contemporaneous student outcomes to assess principal performance is flawed. Value-added models misattribute to principals changes in student performance caused by factors that principals minimally control. Further, little to none of the variation in average student test scores or attendance is explained by persistent effectiveness differences between principals.
Teachers' sense-making of student behavior determines whether students get in trouble and are formally disciplined. Status categories, such as race, can influence perceptions of student culpability, but the degree to which this contributes to racial disproportionality in discipline receipt is unknown. This study provides the first systematic documentation of teachers' use office discipline referrals (ODRs) in a large, diverse urban school district in California that specifies the identity of both the referred and referring individuals in all ODRs. We identify teachers exhibiting extensive referral behavior, or the top 5% referrers based on the number of ODRs they make in a given year and evaluate their contributions to disciplinary disparities. We find that "top referrers" effectively double the racial gaps in ODRs for both Black-White and Hispanic-White comparisons. These gaps are mainly driven by higher numbers of ODRs issued for Black and Hispanic students due to interpersonal offences and defiance, and also partially convert to racial gaps in suspensions. Both the level and racial compositions of the school sites where "top referrers" serve and their personal traits seem to explain some of their frequent referring behavior. Targeting supports and interventions to "top referrers" might afford an important opportunity to reduce racial disciplinary gaps.