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This paper draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts (Gleason et al., 2010) to describe the challenges associated with lottery-based research. In that study, covering 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, we found that charter schools did not affect student achievement or behavior on average, although there was substantial variation across schools. In this paper, we discuss the prevalence of oversubscribed charter schools at the time the study was conducted (the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years), which was lower than commonly reported. We then describe how the sample of schools that participated in the study compared to all other charter middle schools nationwide, to provide some insight into the generalizabilty of findings from lottery-based studies. In general, oversubscribed charter schools were more likely to be located in urban areas and serve a higher-achieving population of students than those without excess demand. We also describe common features of school lotteries and waitlists, and examine implications of these features for a school's ability to support a lottery-based study. Finally, we summarize lessons learned for conducting lottery-based research on charter schools, drawing on our observations of the schools' lotteries and analysis of the data from these lotteries. (Contains 6 figures and 5 tables.)

Using detailed longitudinal data for the state of California, this paper estimates the effect of year-round school calendars on nationally standardized test performance of traditionally disadvantaged students. The student subgroups studied in this paper are: low socioeconomic status, limited English proficiency, Hispanic and Latino, and African American students. I find significant negative effects of multi-track year-round calendars on academic achievement for all subgroups examined, with only the limited English proficiency student subgroup producing unreliable estimates. Negative and significant results for another type of year-round calendar, single-track, are also found for the full sample of students and low socioeconomic status students. (Contains 27 tables.)

Over the period 1995-1998 Italy experienced an expansion of its higher education supply with the aim of reducing regional differences in educational attainment. This paper evaluates the effects of this policy on enrolment, drop out and academic performance. The paper combines differences across provinces in the number of campuses constructed with differences across cohorts of secondary school leavers. Findings suggest that enrollment rose, particularly among middle ability individuals from less favorable backgrounds, as well as the probability of being retained in the university system. The decline in passed exams, especially experienced in Southern regions, casts doubts on the policy effectiveness in reducing regional disparities. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality or selectivity of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research attempts to produce evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents the first evidence in the literature on the potential short and intermediate term effects of attending a selective college on health behaviors during and following college attendance. Using a variety of empirical methods, this paper shows strong evidence that college selectivity reduces tobacco and marijuana use but has small and possibly positive effects on binge drinking. The effects on weight behaviors are suggestive of reduced weight, potentially through diet, but not exercise change. (Contains 8 tables.)

This paper estimates the causal effect of taking a course in quantitative reasoning on students' academic performance and classroom peer-group composition at a liberal arts college. To identify effects, the paper compares the outcomes of otherwise similar students who barely passed a baseline quantitative skills assessment (not taking the course) with students who barely failed (taking the course). The regression-discontinuity estimates show little impact on academic outcomes for student close to the passing cutoff, including grades on subsequent courses with quantitative content, but we are unable to distinguish small from zero effects. Exogenous course assignment does affect the composition of students' classroom peer groups in subsequent years. The effects can only be generalized to students in the vicinity of the passing threshold (but not students with much worse quantitative skills at the baseline). We discuss implications for research and policy on remediation. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students' test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the "Bono de Desarrollo Humano" of Ecuador, on students' cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and sample used, we find no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

Because classroom size reduction (CSR) and standards based testing were implemented at the same time in California during the mid-1990s, it is difficult to isolate the effects of classroom size on outcomes from the effects of curriculum changes. As a result, the main comparison in this paper is very specific--the effect of reduced sized kindergarten classrooms on test performance in second grade. The main result of the paper is that the effect of classroom size reduction is small, especially when compared to the other determinants of student achievement at the second grade level. There is a very small effect of classroom size reduction on student achievement in reading and math, and no effect in language and spelling. Of the two offsetting effects of CSR controlling for spending--the direct effect of smaller classes and the indirect effect on teacher quality, the class-size effect is larger. Over time, the negative effect on teacher quality is reduced as new teachers gain experience and credentials. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

The size of schools and districts in which they are located has become a salient policy issue in recent years. While consolidation of school districts and expanding high school size were in vogue from the 1960s until recently, funding agencies are now sponsoring projects to reduce school size under the assumption that smaller schools will lead to higher academic achievement. There has been some scholarly work that focuses on the effects of size on achievement and recently, this literature has included district size and the competitive effects that size might generate on educational outcomes. In this paper, we focus explicitly on both district size and school size and look at a particular aspect of educational output. We argue that average daily attendance (ADA) is an output variable that is influenced by the enrollment in a school and the number of schools in a district. School attendance is critical to both achievement and dropout rates and is a directly measurable attribute of schooling. We use data from Texas schools and school districts to estimate size effects on this important policy variable.

Private tutoring is a widespread phenomenon in many developing countries, including Vietnam. Using the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys 1997-1998 and 1992-1993 for analysis, this paper finds evidence that private tutoring in Vietnam is a necessity in the household budget for both primary students and lower secondary students, and the trend to attend private tutoring is stronger at higher education levels. There is no evidence of gender discrimination in expenditure on private tutoring. Ethnic minority students spend less on private tutoring at the primary level but not at the lower secondary level, as do students living in rural areas. However, spending on private tutoring would fall significantly if the qualifications of primary school teachers are increased. Private tutoring is found to have significant impact on a student's academic performance, but the influence is larger for lower secondary students. This paper contributes to the available estimation techniques by extending the simultaneous Tobit model of Amemiya [(1974). Multivariate regression and simultaneous equation models when the dependent variables are truncated normal. "Econometrica, 42"(6), 999-1012] to a joint Tobit-ordered probit econometric model to address the possible endogeneity of household spending on private tutoring.

Understanding the relationship between teacher test scores and student achievement is important in an accountability environment that favors using quantitative measures of teaching quality, as is the case with Mexico's national "Carrera Magisterial" (CM) teacher incentive program. The results of this paper suggest that teacher test scores have a small positive relationship with average student achievement scores. This effect is larger in secondary schools than in primary schools. In the case of secondary schools, average teacher test scores on subject-matter and teaching methodology sections of the test are positively associated with student achievement. To estimate these relationships this paper uses panel data from Mexico's national teacher incentive program CM from 1996 to 2000.

With teacher quality repeatedly cited as the most important "schooling" factor influencing student achievement, there has been increased interest in examining the efficacy of teacher training programs. This paper presents the results of research investigating the relationship between teachers who graduate from different training programs and student achievement on state reading and math tests. Using a novel methodology that allows teacher training effects to decay, we find that training institution indicators explain a statistically significant portion of the variation in student achievement in reading, but not in math. Moreover, there is evidence that graduates from some specific training programs are differentially effective at teaching reading than the average teacher trained out-of-state and that these differences are large enough to be educationally meaningful. (Contains 2 figures and 6 tables.)

The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity increased dramatically in the United States during the past three decades. This increase has adverse public health implications, but its implication for children's academic outcomes is less clear. This paper uses data from five waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten to examine how children's weight is related to their scores on standardized tests and to their teachers' assessments of their academic ability. The results indicate that children's weight is more negatively related to teacher assessments of their academic performance than to test scores. (Contains 1 figure and 6 tables.)

Wealth and assets have a reliable positive relationship with the achievement outcomes of students. Various approaches to understanding student achievement may inform the understanding of how wealth seems to influence children's educational experiences. This paper describes several perspectives from the student achievement literature within the fields of economics and psychology that are categorized as either resource-based or person-based. Resource-based approaches prioritize the importance of investments that are made in youth to enrich contexts, expand opportunities, and improve outcomes. Person-based approaches, on the other hand, focus on how beliefs, values, and perceptions shape achievement. To better understand wealth effects, an integrative framework presents identity as a unifying construct that is contextually-constructed through a combination of resource- and person-based influences to drive student motivation and achievement. (Contains 1 figure.)

Undergraduate study behaviours, principally lecture attendance and additional study, are shown to predict better student achievement by many researchers. Despite this, there is not much evidence on the determinants of these behaviours. This is the first paper to explore the determinants of study behaviours across multiple subject areas; and is the first to incorporate students' noncognitive traits into such a model; that the authors are aware of. This enables the formation of policy that can improve academic achievement by encouraging study behaviour. The results show that students' noncognitive traits, in particular conscientiousness and future-orientation, are important determinants of lecture attendance and additional study hours. In fact, there is very little that explains undergraduate study behaviour besides noncognitive traits. Standard economic factors, such as family income, financial aid and parental transfers, are not predictive of study behaviours. Some comments are provided on a potential behavioural economics approach to encouraging study behaviours. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Many school accountability programs are built on the premise that the sanctions attached to failure will produce higher future student achievement. Furthermore, such programs often include subgroup achievement rules that attempt to hold schools accountable for the performance of all demographic classes of students. This paper looks at two issues: the degree to which such rules increase the likelihood of school failure, and the effect of failure to meet a performance standard on subsequent student achievement. Using data from California's state accountability program, I find that subgroup rules lead to otherwise similar schools having different probabilities of failure. I also find that subgroup induced failure leads to lower future student achievement under both the state's system and its' implementation of No Child Left Behind. This implies that small demographic differences play a large role in how schools are judged and how they perform under current accountability systems. (Contains 7 tables and 4 figures.)

This paper shows mutually consistent evidence to support female advantage in education and disadvantage in labor markets observed in the Philippines. We set up a model that shows multiple Nash equilibria to explain schooling and labor market behaviors for females and males. Our evidence from unique sibling data of schooling and work history and from the Philippine Labor Force Survey support that family arrangement to tighten commitment between daughters and parents keeps a high level of schooling investments in daughters. Because wage penalty to females in labor markets means that education is relatively important as a determinant of their earnings, parental investments in their daughters' education has larger impacts on the income of their daughters than on their sons. Parents expect larger income shared from better-educated adult daughters. In contrast, males stay in an equilibrium, with low levels of schooling investment and income sharing. Our results also imply that the above institutional arrangement is stronger among poor families. (Contains 11 tables and 1 figure.)

Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999 to 2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start times within schools over time, the effect is a two percentile point gain in math test scores -- roughly fourteen percent of the black-white test score gap. I find similar results for reading scores and using variation in start times across schools. The effect is stronger for students in the lower end of the distribution of test scores. I find evidence supporting increased sleep as a mechanism through which start times affect test scores. Later start times compare favorably on cost grounds to other education interventions which result in similar test score gains. (Contains 8 figures and 10 tables.)

This paper estimates the impact of the use of structured methods on the quality of education for students in primary public school in Brazil. Structured methods encompass a range of pedagogical and managerial instruments applied in the educational system. In recent years, several municipalities in the state of Sao Paulo have contracted out private educational providers to implement these structured methods in their schooling systems. Their pedagogical proposal involves structuring of curriculum content, development of teacher and student textbooks, and the training and supervision of teachers and instructors. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that the 4th- and 8th-grade students in the municipalities with structured methods performed better in Portuguese and mathematics than did students in municipalities not exposed to these methods. We find no differences in passing rates. A robustness test supports the assumption that there is no unobserved municipal characteristics associated with proficiency changes over time that may affect the results. (Contains 10 tables.)

A relatively small state, Utah presents an interesting case to study charter schools given its friendly policy environment and its significant growth in charter school enrollment. Based on longitudinal student-level data from 2004 to 2009, this paper utilizes two approaches to evaluate the Utah charter school effectiveness: (a) hierarchical linear growth models with matched sample, and (b) general methods of moments with student-fixed effects regressions. Both methods yield consistent results that charter schools on average perform slightly worse as compared to traditional public schools, a result that is primarily affected by the low effectiveness and high student mobility of newly opened charter schools. Interestingly, when charter schools gain more experience they become as effective as traditional public schools, and in some cases more effective than traditional public schools. This research has implications for local and state charter school policies, particularly policies that avoid "start-up" costs associated with new charter schools. (Contains 7 tables.)

This paper studies the optimal allocation of resources--in terms of school management, teachers, supporting employees and materials--in secondary schools. We use a flexible budget constrained output distance function model to estimate both technical and allocative efficiency scores for 448 Dutch secondary schools between 2002 and 2007. The results indicate that the average technical efficiency amounts to about 78 percent, implying that, with the given resources, schools could improve students' educational performance by 28 percent. In terms of allocative efficiency, we estimate a 0.65 percent overutilization of teachers while management and supporting personnel are underutilized. The outcomes indicate that, despite the significant variation among schools, the average school is close to the optimal allocation of teachers. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

A critical issue facing a number of colleges and universities is how to allocate first year places to incoming students. The decision to admit students is often based on a number of factors, but a key statistic is a student's high school grades. This paper reports on a case study of the subsequent performance at the University of Winnipeg of high school students from 84 Manitoba high schools. By tracking the university performance of students admitted for the years 1997-2002, we are able to estimate the likelihood of success of subsequent students based on their characteristics as well as their high school grades. In doing so, we use a number of alternative estimators including a Least Squares Dummy Variable Model and a Hierarchical Linear Model. The methodology should be of interest to admissions officers at other universities as an input into estimating the subsequent performance of first year students. (Contains 5 tables.)

While some educators argue that teacher-student gender matching improves student performance, there is little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. This paper assesses the impact of teacher-student gender matching on academic achievement across fifteen OECD countries using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). One attractive feature of TIMSS is that it provides information on test scores and teacher characteristics, including gender, for both math and science thereby allowing for student fixed effects estimation. The results provide little support for the conjecture that students benefit from teacher-student gender matching. (Contains 8 tables.)

This paper uses student level data from New York City to study the relationship between a public school losing enrollment to charter school competitors and the academic achievement of students who remain enrolled in it. Geographic measures most often used to study the effect of school choice policies on public school student achievement are not well suited for densely populated urban environments. I adopt a direct approach and measure charter school exposure as the percentage of a public school's students who exited for a charter school at the end of the previous year. Depending on model specification, I find evidence that students in schools losing more students to charter schools either are unaffected by the competitive pressures of the choice option or benefit mildly in both math and English. (Contains 5 tables.)

The first charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991 and with it, a new school reform movement began. After two decades, 41 states and Washington D.C. have adopted charter legislation. This special issue provides an opportunity for scholars to reflect upon the promises and limitations of charter schools and to offer policy advice for those in a position to influence future reforms. Together, the papers within this special issue examine the achievement effects of charter schools, their cost effectiveness, the competitive pressure created by charter schools, the degree to which charter schools are innovative and how some of the operational and policy features of charter schools may affect outcomes.

In this paper we analyze the relationship between charter school authorizers and student achievement. We perform this analysis using a 10-year panel dataset from Minnesota, a state that permits four distinct types of authorizers--local school boards, postsecondary institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the Minnesota Department of Education. The results of the analysis indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between charter school authorizing type and mean levels of student achievement. However, the analysis also reveals that schools authorized by nonprofit organizations exhibit substantially more variability in achievement than schools authorized by local school boards. (Contains 2 figures and 5 tables.)

This paper contributes to research on affirmative action by examining issues of equity in the context of racial quotas in Brazil. We study the experience of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. Based on university admissions data and a student survey conducted by the authors, we find evidence that race, socioeconomic status, and gender were considerable barriers to college attendance and achievement. For example, first-difference regressions involving pairs of siblings indicate that black identity and gender had a negative effect on entrance exam scores. Moreover, we compare displaced and displacing applicants and find that racial quotas helped promote equity to some extent. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of redistribution were highly limited, and the vast majority of Brazilians had little chance of attending college, suggesting that more still needs to be done. (Contains 6 tables.)

The No Child Left Behind Act imposes sanctions on schools if the fraction of any of five racial groups of students demonstrating proficiency on a high stakes exam falls below a statewide pass rate. This system places pressure on school administrators to redirect educational resources from groups of students likely to demonstrate proficiency towards those who are marginally below proficient. Using statewide observations of 3rd and 4th grade math tests, this paper demonstrates that students of successful racial groups at schools likely to be sanctioned gain less academically over their subsequent test year than comparable peers at passing schools. This effect is stronger at schools more likely to suffer from NCLB sanctions and is robust to corrections for non-random sample selection. (Contains 6 tables.)

In this paper we investigate how schoolmates influence high school dropout intentions in Catalonia, Spain. Our analysis uses self-reported friends to identify possible peers by assuming that peer influence flows in one direction in cases where one student identifies another as a friend, but the other does not reciprocate. We first estimate the effects of education aspirations of non-reciprocating friends on students' own education aspirations, with and without conditioning on a large set of personality and cognitive characteristics. We then investigate the extent to which the estimated effects are associated with friends' height, weight, BMI, gender and cognitive ability. The estimated impact of non-reciprocating peers' dropout intentions is small and generally not statistically significant: a 10 percentage point increase in the fraction of non-reciprocating peers that intend to drop out increases students' chances of dropping out by about 0.2 percentage points. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

The general-equilibrium effects of performance-related teacher pay include long-term incentive and teacher-sorting mechanisms that usually elude experimental studies but are captured in cross-country comparisons. Combining country-level performance-pay measures with rich PISA-2003 international achievement micro data, this paper estimates student-level international education production functions. The use of teacher salary adjustments for outstanding performance is significantly associated with math, science, and reading achievement across countries. Scores in countries with performance-related pay are about one quarter standard deviations higher. Results avoid bias from within-country selection and are robust to continental fixed effects and to controlling for non-performance-based forms of teacher salary adjustments.

Improving weak teaching may be one of the most effective means of raising pupil achievement. However, teachers' classroom practices and the teaching "process" may matter more to student learning than teachers' observed resume characteristics (such as certification and experience). There may also be important differences in teacher characteristics across government and private schools which may help explain the large documented public-private achievement differences often found in studies. This paper delves into the black-box representing "teaching" to uncover the teacher characteristics and teaching practices that matter most to pupil achievement. This is done using unique school-based data, collected in 2002-2003 from government and private schools from one district in Punjab province in Pakistan. The data allow exploitation of an identification strategy that permits the matching of students' test scores in language and mathematics to the characteristics of teachers that teach those subjects. Within pupil (across subject rather than across time) variation is used to examine whether the characteristics of different subject teachers are related to a students' mark across subjects. The data are also unique in asking all subject teachers questions pertaining to their teaching practices and these, often unobserved, "process" variables are included in achievement function estimates. Our pupil fixed-effects findings reveal that the standard resume characteristics of teachers do not significantly matter to pupil achievement. Perversely, however, teachers are found to be rewarded with higher pay for possessing these characteristics, highlighting the highly inefficient nature of teacher pay schedules. Our findings also show that teaching "process" variables matter significantly to student achievement. There are important differences across school-types.

Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. This provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers that comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness "annually" generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

This paper uses public schools data to examine the effects of age on student academic achievement in light of recent trends to delay children's entry into kindergarten. To avoid problems of endogeneity, students' quarters of birth is employed as an instrument for age at entry. In particular, the effects of students' quarters of birth on math and reading standardized test scores and grade retention at the elementary school level are estimated. Evidence of benefits to being among the oldest in one's age-grade cohort is found. Interestingly, over time, the youngest students begin to perform approximately on par with the oldest students, creating a u-shaped pattern to the data. (Contains 6 tables.)

Child wellbeing at school and enjoyment of the learning environment are important economic outcomes, in particular because a growing body of research shows they are strongly linked to later educational attainments and labour market success. However, the standard working assumption in the economics of education is that parents choose schools on the basis of test-score performance, and concerns about child happiness are largely ignored. In this paper, we address this omission and investigate to what extent parents' and children's views of their school are linked to test-score based performance, and to what extent parents' judgements of school quality are linked to their child's happiness. To do so, we use information on stated attitudes from the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to administrative records on pupil achievements in England. Our results suggest that test-score based measures of school quality tend to dominate parental satisfaction with the learning environment. However, school quality along this dimension is not strongly associated with pupil happiness and wellbeing at school. (Contains 10 tables.)

Using Dutch data on pupils in elementary school this paper is the first empirical study to analyze whether assigning homework has a heterogeneous impact on pupil achievement. Addressing potential biases by using a difference-in-difference approach, I find that the test score gap is larger in classes where everybody gets homework than in classes where nobody gets homework. More precisely pupils belonging to the upper part of the socioeconomic scale perform better when homework is given, whereas pupils from the lowest part are unaffected. At the same time more disadvantaged children get less help from their parents with their homework. Homework can therefore amplify existing inequalities through complementarities with home inputs. (Contains 1 figure and 11 tables.)

This paper examines the effects of alcohol use on high school students' quality of learning. We estimate fixed-effects models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our primary measure of academic achievement is the student's grade point average (GPA) abstracted from official school transcripts. We find that increases in alcohol consumption result in small yet statistically significant reductions in GPA for male students and in statistically non-significant changes for females. For females, however, higher levels of drinking result in self-reported academic difficulty. The fixed-effects results are substantially smaller than OLS estimates, underscoring the importance of addressing unobserved individual heterogeneity. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper examines a range of historical and geographic factors that determine the quality of public school education in post-apartheid South Africa. Empirical analysis shows, first, that population groups are still spatially segregated due to the legacy of apartheid, which implies that, given the positive correlation between school quality and school fees, quality education is concentrated in formerly white, coloured and Indian schools in areas where the majority is non-African. Second, school quality, measured by the learner-educator ratio, improves as school fee and government subsidy increase. In this sense, school fee can be decreased with an increase in government subsidy to maintain school quality. It is also shown that government subsidy is allocated to schools with lower quality and fees, increasing the number of subsidized teachers. To address the current imbalance, financial support to disadvantaged locales and schools should be strengthened further. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

This paper investigates empirically whether immigrant students in Switzerland perform poorly compared to their native counterparts and provides some explanations. Using a national sample of the 2000 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) database, we first analyze the impact of immigrant status on pupils' achievement. We find a negative and significant impact of immigrant status on test scores in reading, mathematics and science literacy, even after controlling for a set of characteristics. We then decompose the observed reading score gap between Swiss and immigrant students to identify whether gaps in endowments explain test score differences along the distribution. Lower endowments explain most of the achievement gap in reading between Swiss and second-generation immigrants. However, lower returns explain around one quarter of the achievement gap between Swiss and first-generation immigrants for the weakest pupils. (Contains 6 figures and 10 tables.)

Over the last 20 years, states and provinces have become increasingly involved in the financing and administration of elementary and secondary education. Local school boards, however, still retain control over key aspects of the provision of education. Historically, these boards were organized at the community level so as to meet the wants of the local community. Today, states and provinces have become more interested in consolidating school boards and moving to a more centralized funding scheme. Do these changes result in improved student achievement? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining the school board consolidation and funding changes instituted by the province of Ontario. We differentiate the effects of the policy changes based on observed differences in the school boards prior to consolidation. We show that students in previously high wealth school boards perform worse after the policy change compared to students in previously low wealth school boards. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

This paper measures and decomposes socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement in 15 European Union member states. Data is taken from the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). There is socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement, favoring the higher socioeconomic groups in each country. There are important differences among countries. The inequality is higher in Germany, Greece, Great Britain, Belgium, and Portugal and is lower in Sweden and Finland. Socioeconomic factors represent between 14.9% and 34.6% of the overall inequality in education. The decomposition exercises add important insights for policy. Despite the differences, EU-15 member states can be categorized into two main groups. The first includes the Nordic countries plus Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Greece, where socioeconomic-related inequality appears to be explained mainly by the students' background characteristics. In Portugal and, to a lesser extent, in Spain the high contribution of socioeconomic background is mainly due to the prevalence of high socioeconomic inequality and socioeconomic concentration of educational resources. The second group includes Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and France. In these countries, the high impact of schools' composition on individual achievement is the main driver of the studied inequality. Differences between countries are also explored. (Contains 11 tables and 2 figures.)

This paper evaluates the impact of teaching innovations, introduced in public primary schools under the Children Resources International (CRI) Program, on student outcomes. We estimate students' learning based on their scores on standardized tests. We match schools and children within the treatment and comparison group and find that the CRI Program has been effective in raising learning achievement. Moreover, the results are robust to unobserved selection bias. The average gain for a CRI student represents an improvement of 0.40 standard deviations. The results stay unchanged when we use alternative estimators for the treatment effect including the bias-corrected estimator proposed by Abadie and Imbens (2006). (Contains 4 figures and 11 tables.)

In this paper we estimate the effect of class attendance on exam performance by implementing a policy in three large economics classes that required students scoring below the median on the midterm exam to attend class. This policy generated a large discontinuity in the rate of post-midterm attendance at the median of the midterm score. We estimate that near the policy threshold, the post-midterm attendance rate was 36 percentage points higher for those students facing compulsory attendance. The discontinuous attendance policy is also associated with a significant difference in performance on the final exam. We estimate that a 10 percentage point increase in a student's overall attendance rate results in a 0.17 standard deviation increase in the final exam score without adversely affecting performance on other classes taken concurrently. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

This paper examines the relationship between admission status and college performance. In particular, we analyze admissions data from Hamilton College and find that students who applied through the Early Decision Plan II program have significantly lower GPAs and are less likely to receive departmental honors, fellowships, and outside scholarships than those admitted through the regular decision process. However, the results for Early Decision Plan I students are less consistent. These students have lower outcomes for some measures of academic achievement, but not others, than regular decision students. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper provides detailed evidence regarding the nature of selection into a school voucher system. We use micro-data on scholarship applications matched with state student-level records on test scores, schools attended, and demographic background characteristics to describe the attributes of students who choose to participate in Florida's Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, a means-tested scholarship program that is the largest of its type in the United States. We find evidence that those who choose to participate in the program tend to be lower-performing students from poorly performing schools, and that students of different backgrounds tend to choose different types of private schools. Students participating in the program tend to select schools that have more white students and fewer minority students, regardless of student race. (Contains 7 figures and 9 tables.)

An important criticism of high-stakes testing policies--policies that reward or sanction schools based on their students' performance on standardized tests--is that they provide schools with an incentive to focus on those subjects that play a role in the accountability system while decreasing attention to those subjects that are not part of the program. This paper utilizes a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of Florida's high-stakes testing policy on student proficiency in the low-stakes subject of science. We confirm prior results that students in schools facing more immediate sanctions under the policy made substantial gains in the high-stakes subjects of math and reading. Contrary to the crowding-out hypothesis, we find that students in these schools made substantial achievement gains in the low-stakes subject of science as well. (Contains 4 tables.)

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has created pressure for districts to improve their students' proficiency levels on state tests. Districts that fail to meet their academic targets for 3 years must use their Title I funds to pay for supplemental education services (SES) that provide tutoring or other academic instruction. Many districts, including the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), have also adopted additional tutoring programs designed to help students reach proficiency goals. This paper examines student participation and achievement in two PPS tutoring programs--the NCLB-mandated SES program and a state-developed tutoring program. We examine the characteristics of students participating in each program, the effects of participation on student achievement, and the program features that are associated with improved achievement.

In this paper, we follow up the important class size reduction randomized experiment in Tennessee in the mid 1980s (Project STAR) to attempt to further understand the long-lasting influences of early education interventions. While STAR led to large test score benefits during the intervention, these benefits quickly faded at its conclusion. However, research has recently shown that the STAR experiment led to long term benefits, including increases in college entrance exams participation (ACT/SAT), especially for minority students. We collect new follow up data on high school participation in extracurricular activities to examine whether (1) STAR increased participation in high school activities and (2) whether this increase in participation in high school is the explanation behind the long term benefits of the intervention. We find suggestive evidence that STAR did indeed increase some aspects of high school participation, including scholastic honors and participation in sports, especially for minority students. In contrast, we find little evidence that this increase in participation is the mechanism that has conferred higher rates of college-going to the STAR students. (Contains 9 tables.)

This paper examines the competitive effects of charter schools on the efficiency of traditional public schools. The analysis utilizes a statewide school-level longitudinal dataset of Michigan schools from 1994 to 2004. Fixed effect and two alternative estimation methods are employed. Overall, the results suggest that charter competition had a negative impact on student achievement and school efficiency in Michigan's traditional public schools. The effect is small or negligible in the short run, but becomes more substantial in the long run. (Contains 9 tables.)

Children enter kindergarten with disparate rudimentary reading and mathematics skills; capabilities for paying attention, sitting still and making friends; mental health; and inclinations for aggressive behavior. The role of these characteristics in producing fifth-grade school achievement is the subject of this paper. We find considerable impacts for school-entry academic skills but, with the exception of a kindergartener's capacity to pay attention, virtually no impacts for the collection of socioemotional skills. This finding holds both for the overall sample and for subgroups defined by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The most powerful pre-school avenue for boosting fifth-grade achievement appears to be improving the basic academic skills of low-achieving children prior to kindergarten entry. (Contains 5 tables.)

This paper examines an increase in upper elementary class sizes in California associated with the K-3 class size reduction program. I also use the variation in fourth and fifth grade class size generated by idiosyncratic first and second grade reductions required to meet program rules to identify a negative impact of larger class sizes on achievement in upper elementary grades. These quasi-experimental findings generally agree with results of prior foreign and fixed-effects studies on upper grade levels, though my estimates are larger in some cases. The findings also imply that any evaluation strategy for class size reduction that uses upper grades as implicit or explicit controls is likely flawed. (Contains 2 figures and 6 tables.)

This paper estimates the impact of private education on the academic achievement of low-income students in Chile. To deal with selection bias, we use propensity score matching to compare the test scores of reduced-fee paying, low-income students in fee-charging private voucher schools to those of similar students in public schools and free private voucher schools. Our results reveal that students in fee-charging private voucher schools score slightly higher than students in public schools. The difference in standardized test scores is approximately 10 points, a test score gain of 0.2 standard deviations. We find no difference in the academic achievement of students in the fee-charging private voucher treatment group relative to their counterparts in free private voucher schools. (Contains 6 tables.)