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Cognition, a component of human capital, is fundamental for decision-making, and understanding the causes of human capital depreciation in old age is especially important in aging societies. Using various proxy measures of cognitive performance from a longitudinal survey in South Africa, we study how education affects cognition in late adulthood. We show that an extra year of schooling improves memory performance and general cognition. We find evidence of heterogeneous effects by gender: the effects are stronger among women. We explore potential mechanisms, and we show that a more supportive social environment, improved health habits, and reduced stress levels likely play a critical role in mediating the beneficial effects of educational attainment on cognition among the elderly.
Hiring quality teachers that best meet localized needs to provide students with authentic learning opportunities is crucial to both school and student success. Despite the clear importance of teacher hiring, especially in the current teacher labor market, a review of literature that synthesizes the full body of teacher hiring literature has long been missing from the field. This integrative literature review of 71 empirical studies in an era of federal accountability (2001-2020) provides a full portrait of K-12 teacher hiring research. In so doing, we identify what is known while also unearthing the many knowledge gaps that exist due to factors such as sample and methodological limitations. As such, this review of the literature provides practitioners and policymakers with a number of guideposts to help them with hiring decisions. This review also shows how much more there is to learn and signals to researchers where and how they might build off of the current knowledge base.
In this paper I study the impact of court-mandated school desegregation by race on student suspensions and special education classification. Simple descriptive statistics using student enrollment and outcome data collected from the largest school districts across the country in the 1970s and 1980s show that Black-White school integration was increasing for districts under court order, but not for a set of comparison districts. Similarly, Black student suspension rates were increasing at faster rates in integrating districts relative to comparison districts, and their classification rates as having an intellectual disability were decreasing at slower rates. Differences-in-differences and event study models confirm these patterns I observe in the raw data: after integration, school districts experienced statistically and practically significant reductions in racial isolation across schools and growth in racial disparities in discipline and special education classification. The impacts of integration are immediate, sustained, and robust for student suspensions in particular. My results thus provide causal evidence confirming prior descriptive and theoretical work suggesting that the racial composition of schools may influence measures of categorical inequality by race.
One of the most obvious and not sufficiently well understood political decisions in education regards the optimal amount of instruction time required to improve academic performance. This paper considers an unexpected, exogenous regulatory change that reduced the school calendar of non-fee-paying schools (public and charter schools) in the Madrid region (Spain) by two weeks during the 2017/2018 school year. Using difference-in-differences regression, we found that this regulatory change contributed to a significant deterioration in academic performance, particularly in Spanish and English. We further explored non-linear (quantile) effects across the distribution of scores in standardized exams, finding that the disruption due to the new regulations affected more students in the upper quartile of the distribution. Overall, we found a reduction in the gap across non-fee-paying schools and an increase in the gap between non-fee- and fee-paying schools (private schools).
In education settings, treatments are often non-randomly assigned to clusters, such as schools or classrooms, while outcomes are measured for students. This research design is called the clustered observational study (COS). We examine the consequences of common support violations in the COS context. Common support violations occur when the covariate distributions of treated and control units do not overlap. Such violations are likely to occur in a COS, especially with a small number of treated clusters. One common technique for dealing with common support violations is trimming treated units. We demonstrate how this practice can yield nonsensical results in some COSs. More specifically, we show how trimming the data can result in an uninterpretable estimand. We use data on Catholic schools to illustrate concepts throughout.
Using detailed classroom-level data for North Carolina, we build on previous research to examine racial gaps in access to high-quality teachers. We calculate the exposure of White, Black and Hispanic students to teachers with various characteristics in 4th grade, 7th grade math and English, and 10th grade math and English. We find that across the state White students enjoy sizable advantages over both Black and Hispanic students in the form of higher exposure to teachers with strong credentials and lower exposure to teachers with weak credentials. Remarkably, we also find this pattern of White advantage in most individual counties, with the largest White advantage occurring in the largest counties by enrollment. A decomposition of the White advantages shows that the bulk of them can be attributed to differences across counties and differences between schools within counties. Only in 10th grade are differences across classrooms within schools important in explaining the White advantage.
This paper provides a longitudinal examination of teacher turnover across all publicly-funded, center-based early childhood sites in Louisiana. We follow 4,465 early educators teaching in fall 2016 up to seven times through the fall of 2019. We provide the first statewide estimates of within-year turnover in ECE, as well as the first statewide study tracking turnover rates in ECE over multiple years. We find high within-year turnover: about 10% of teachers observed in the fall are not teaching the following spring. We also show that over 60% of fall 2016 teachers are no longer teaching at the same site in fall 2019. Turnover is particularly high among child care teachers, teachers of toddlers, and new teachers.
Children exposed to Interparental Verbal Conflict (IPVC) exert negative spillovers on their peers. Using nationally representative survey data from middle schools in China, focusing on schools that randomly assign students into classrooms, and using both (1) within-school, across-classroom variation and (2) within-student, year-to-year variation to identify effects, we find that being assigned to classes where more classmates experience IPVC reduces mental wellbeing, diminishes self-confidence, lowers social engagement, and increases the likelihood of problem behaviors. Effects operate by damaging relationships between classmates. There is no evidence of impacts on test scores or teacher’s outcomes.
Many prior studies have examined whether there are average differences in levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs); other studies have investigated which features of preparation predict graduates’ average levels of teaching effectiveness. This is the first study to examine whether there are average differences between TPPs in terms of graduates’ average growth, rather than levels, in teaching effectiveness, and to consider which features predict this growth. Examining all graduates from Tennessee TPPs from 2010 to 2018, we find meaningful differences between TPPs in terms of both levels and growth in teaching effectiveness. We also find that different TPP features, including areas of endorsement, program type, clinical placement type and length, program size, and faculty composition explain part of these differences. Yet, the features that predict initial teaching effectiveness are not the same features that predict growth.
Philanthropic investment in education has evolved considerably over the past several decades. This paper provides early evidence of another distinct adaptation, which we dub design philanthropy. In contrast to the macro-level structural reforms recently supported by large foundations, design philanthropy seeks to directly influence the instructional core. We describe the broad contours and characteristics of design philanthropy, which employs a centralized management and design system to support a decentralized approach to implementation. Through a case study of one design philanthropy’s reform initiative, we explore how participants experience this emergent process and manage a series of tensions inherent in the approach.