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K-12 Education
Challenging the conventional wisdom that the spread of democracy was a leading driver of the expansion of primary schooling, recent studies show that democratization in fact did not lead to an average increase in primary school enrollment rates. One reason for this null effect is that there was already considerable provision of primary education before democratization. Still, it is possible that the spread of democracy did impact other aspects of education systems, such as the content of education and the extent to which teaching jobs are politicized. Studying this possibility cross-nationally has been infeasible due to data limitations. To address this gap, we take advantage of an original dataset covering 160 countries from 1945 to 2021 that contains information about these aspects of education. We document that transitions to democracy tend to be preceded by a decline in the politicization of both education content and teaching jobs. However, soon after democratization occurs, this decline usually halts. Counterfactual estimates suggest that democratization roughly halves the degree to which teacher hiring and firing decisions are politicized, but has a smaller impact on the content of education. The empirical patterns that we uncover have important implications for future research.
How progressive is school spending when spending is measured at the school-level, instead of the district-level? We use the first dataset on school-level spending across schools throughout the United States to ask to what extent progressivity patterns previously examined across districts are amplified, nullified, or reversed, upon disaggregation to schools. We find that progressivity is systematically greater when we conduct a school-level analysis, rather than district-level analysis. This may be surprising, given the traditional view in public economics that local governments cannot effectively redistribute. We thus probe the data for explanations for this pattern, uncovering evidence that federal policies play an important role in driving within-district progressive allocations. In particular, we can explain about 83% of the within-district contribution to progressivity by the federal component of spending plus allocations that are empirically attributable to special education and English language learning programs. Our findings are thus consistent with the traditional view of redistribution being primarily the purview of central governments, operationalized in this context through mandates.
This is one of the first studies of the mismatch between students’ test scores and teachers’ estimations of those scores in low- and middle-income countries. Prior studies in high-income countries have found strong correlations between these metrics. We leverage data on actual and estimated scores in math and language from India and Bangladesh and find that teachers misestimate their students’ scores and that their estimations reveal their misconceptions about students in most need of support and variability within their class. This pattern is partly explained by teachers’ propensity to overestimate the scores of low-achieving students and to overweight the importance of intelligence. Teachers seem unaware of their errors, expressing confidence in estimations and surprise about their students’ performance once revealed.
A controversial, equity-focused mathematics reform in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) featured delaying Algebra I until ninth grade for all students. This descriptive study examines student-level longitudinal data on mathematics course-taking across successive cohorts of SFUSD students who spanned the reform’s implementation. We observe large changes in ninth and tenth grades (e.g., delaying Algebra I and Geometry). Participation in Advanced Placement (AP) math initially fell 15% (6 pp.) driven by declines in AP Calculus and among Asian/Pacific-Islander students. However, growing participation in acceleration options attenuated these reductions. Large ethnoracial gaps in advanced math course-taking remained.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ experiences in school were widespread. Early research show reductions in test scores across grade levels and student groups. This study extends research evidence to additional student outcomes – absences, course grades, and grad retention – and to examine how pandemic effects are distributed across students. Using a combination of descriptive and regression analyses, we find negative average impacts on all outcomes. These effects are largest at the high end of the absence distribution and the low end of the grade distribution. Effects are also largest in middle school for most outcomes and are typically larger among historically marginalized groups of students. These findings reflect widening achievement gaps and the need for targeted supports.
Prior research has documented substantial inequity across, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines within the population of students identified as gifted. Less attention has paid to the equity of gifted identification for student learning English or those with disabilities and what effect state policies toward gifted education might have on these rates. This paper attempted to fill that void by analyzing data from the Office of Civil Rights Data Collection and Stanford Education Data Archive along with original coding of state gifted education policies. Our findings show that while both groups are substantially underrepresented, state mandates for schools to offer services, requirements for formal gifted education plans, and regular audits for compliance are correlated with much higher rates of gifted service availability and equity for English learners and students with disabilities. We also describe the location and characteristics of the top 5% most equitable schools for English learners and students with disabilities.
We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The intensive, eight-week-long program was delivered by qualified math teachers in groups of two students during after-school hours. The intervention significantly increased standardized test scores (+0.26 SD) and end-of-year math grades (+0.48 SD), while reducing the probability of repeating the school year. The intervention also raised aspirations, as well as self-reported effort at school.
School autonomy has been and continues to be one of the most important education reform strategies around the world despite ambiguity about its theoretical and empirical effects on students learning. We use international data from PISA to test three country-level factors that might account for inconsistent results in prior literature: (1) the selective implementation of school autonomy based on school performance; (2) differential influence on high-risk subgroups; and (3) the presence of accountability policies to prevent opportunism by autonomous schools. We find that the relationship between autonomy and student test performance varies both across countries and within countries across subgroups in both magnitude and direction. Similar results are observed if decentralization is coupled with accountability policies. All of three tested factors influence country-level associations between school decentralization and student learning, which suggests that autonomy is effective only when contextual factors and other policies are aligned.
Public teacher compensation is largely determined by fixed salary schedules that were designed to avoid payment inequalities based on demographic characteristics. Yet, recent research shows female teachers earn less than their male peers after controlling for experience, education, and school characteristics. Building on this literature, this paper examines teacher salaries to provide empirical evidence of the extent of gender wage gaps in the teaching profession and the sources of those gaps. Using data from two waves of the National Teacher and Principal Survey, we show that on average male teachers have an advantage of over $700 in base pay and of $1,500 in supplemental compensation, compared to female teachers with similar characteristics and in similar contexts. Additionally, our estimations indicate that male teachers are both more likely to take on extra duties and receive compensation for those activities than female teachers, and the gap increases when schools have a male principal. Finally, an analysis of wage gaps across collective bargaining contexts suggests that wage gaps are positive for both base pay and extra duties, though the magnitudes of each vary across different CBA contexts. Our results provide insight into teacher compensation policies.
The Advanced Placement (AP) program is nearly ubiquitous in American high schools and is often touted as a way to close racial and socioeconomic gaps in educational outcomes. Using administrative data from Michigan, I exploit variation within high schools across time in AP course offerings to identify the causal effect of AP course availability on college choice and degree attainment. I find that higher income students, White and Asian students, and higher-achieving students are more likely to take advantage of additional AP courses when they are offered, thus widening existing gaps in course-taking. I find little evidence that additional AP availability improves college outcomes for any students. Expanding access to AP courses without additional incentives or support for disadvantaged students to succeed is unlikely to address educational inequality.