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EdWorkingPapers

Maxwell J. Cook, Cory Koedel, Michael Reda.

We estimate the education and earnings returns to enrolling in technical two-year degree programs at community colleges in Missouri. A unique feature of the Missouri context is the presence of a highly-regarded, nationally-ranked technical college: State Technical College of Missouri (State Tech). Compared to enrolling in a non-technical community college program, we find that enrolling in a technical program at State Tech greatly increases students’ likelihoods of graduation and earnings. In contrast, there is no evidence that technical education programs at other Missouri community colleges increase graduation rates, and our estimates of the earnings impacts of these other programs are much smaller than for State Tech. Our findings exemplify the importance of institutional differences in driving the efficacy of technical education and suggest great potential for high-quality programs to improve student outcomes.

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Brendan Bartanen, Aliza N. Husain.

A growing literature uses value-added (VA) models to quantify principals' contributions to improving student outcomes. Principal VA is typically estimated using a connected networks model that includes both principal and school fixed effects (FE) to isolate principal effectiveness from fixed school factors that principals cannot control. While conceptually appealing, high-dimensional FE regression models require sufficient variation to produce accurate VA estimates. Using simulation methods applied to administrative data from Tennessee and New York City, we show that limited mobility of principals among schools yields connected networks that are extremely sparse, where VA estimates are either highly localized or statistically unreliable. Employing a random effects shrinkage estimator, however, can alleviate estimation error to increase the reliability of principal VA.

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Sarah A. Cordes, Agustina Laurito.

In this paper we estimate the effect of charter schools on the diversity of nearby traditional public schools (TPSs) and neighborhoods in New York City. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the differences in the expansion of the charter sector between grades in the same school. This approach allows us to isolate the effect of charter schools from other neighborhood demographic changes. Our results show small positive effects of charter school expansion on TPS diversity as measured by the entropy score. This change is explained by small increases in the number of White students attending nearby TPSs and larger reductions in the number of Black and Hispanic students in these schools. We also find descriptive evidence that while both neighborhoods and TPSs are slightly more diverse following charter school expansion, schools are changing faster than their surrounding neighborhoods.

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Kaitlin P. Anderson.

Black and Latinx students are under-represented in Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment (DE), and implicit bias of educators has been discussed as one potential contributing factor. In this study, I test whether implicit and explicit racial bias are related to AP and DE participation and racial/ethnic gaps in participation, controlling for various observable contextual factors. I find a small relationship between implicit racial bias and disparate AP participation for Black students relative to White students, and suggestive evidence of a relationship between explicit racial bias and disparate DE participation for Black students relative to White students. Further, more explicitly-biased communities tend to have lower AP participation rates overall. Implications for school leaders regarding implicit bias training and other ways to address systemic inequities in access are discussed.

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George Bulman, Robert Fairlie.

Although enrollment at California’s four-year public universities mostly remained unchanged by the pandemic, the effects were substantial for students at California Community Colleges, the largest higher education system in the country. This paper provides a detailed analysis of how the pandemic impacted the enrollment patterns, fields of study, and academic outcomes of these students through the first four semesters after it started. Consistent with national trends, enrollment dropped precipitously during the pandemic – the total number of enrolled students fell by 11 percent from fall 2019 to fall 2020 and by another 7 percent from fall 2020 to fall 2021. The California Community College system lost nearly 300,000 students over this period. Our analysis reveals that enrollment reductions were largest among African-American and Latinx students, and were larger among continuing students than first-time students. We find no evidence that having a large online presence prior to the pandemic protected colleges from these negative effects. Enrollment changes were substantial across a wide range of fields and were large for both vocational courses and academic courses that can be transferred to four-year institutions. In terms of course performance, changes in completion rates, withdrawal rates, and grades primarily occurred in the spring of 2020. These findings of the effects of the pandemic at community colleges have implications for policy, impending budgetary pressures, and future research.

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Dan Goldhaber, Matt Kasman, Vanessa Quince, Roddy Theobald, Malcolm Wolff.

We use publicly available, longitudinal data from Washington state to study the extent to which three interrelated processes—teacher attrition from the state teaching workforce, teacher mobility between teaching positions, and teacher hiring for open positions—contribute to “teacher quality gaps” (TQGs) between students of color and other students in K–12 public schools. Specifically, we develop and implement an agent-based model simulation of decisions about attrition, mobility, and hiring to assess the extent to which each process contributes to observed TQGs. We find that eliminating inequities in teacher mobility and hiring across different schools would close TQGs within 5 years, while just eliminating inequities in teacher hiring would close gaps within 10 years. On the other hand, eliminating inequities in teacher attrition without addressing mobility and hiring does little to close gaps.

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Ilana Umansky, Taiyo Itoh, Jioanna Carjuzaa.

English learner (EL) education is widely conceived as services for immigrant-origin students, however nearly one in ten American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students are classified in school as ELs. Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) defines EL eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students with implications for who is identified as an EL and how best to serve their academic and linguistic interests. This study presents findings from a 50-state review of Indigenous EL identification policy. We find that states fall into four categories ranging from no differentiation in Indigenous EL identification to clear differentiation. We describe each of these four categories and conclude with reflections on how this wide variation in state policies has implications for Indigenous students’ educational resources and experiences.

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Kenneth A. Shores, Matthew P. Steinberg.

We synthesize and critique federal fiscal policy during the Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic. First, the amount of aid during both crises was inadequate to meet policy goals. Second, the mechanisms used to distribute funds was disconnected from policy goals and provided different levels of aid to districts with equivalent levels of economic disadvantage. Third, data tools are missing making it difficult to understand whether funds were used to meet policy goals. Details for these results are provided along with policy recommendations.

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Lucas Husted, Isaac M. Opper, R. Jisung Park.

We show that natural disasters affect a region’s aggregate human capital through at least four channels. In addition to causing out-migration, natural disasters reduce student achievement, lower high school graduation rates, and decrease post-secondary attendance. We estimate that disasters that cause at least $500 in per capita property damage reduce the net present value (NPV) of an affected county’s human capital by an average of $505 per person. These negative effects on human capital are not restricted to large disasters: less severe events – disasters with property damages of $100-$500 per capita – also cause significant and persistent reductions in student achievement and post-secondary attendance.

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Luis A. Rodriguez, Julie Pham, Briana K. Gonçalves.

Disparate turnover among teachers of color remains a persistent educational challenge, yet little research explores the link between school leadership, peer teaching staff, and turnover disparities. This study explores whether principal and peer teacher demographics predict teacher turnover in New York City, and whether they do so differently for teachers of color. We find teachers are less likely to exit when their principal and a higher share of peer teachers are of the same race/ethnicity, with Black teachers having especially lower transfer rates with a higher share of Black peer teachers. However, results suggest school leadership style and positive teacher relationships are not differentially associated with turnover for teachers of color. We conclude with a discussion of implications.

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