Browsing by Subject "Economics of education"
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Item Economic decisions in the financing and timing of higher education(2010-08) Chenevert, Rebecca Lynn; Hamermesh, Daniel S.; Abrevaya, Jason I.; Oettinger, Gerald S.; Williams III, Roberton C.; Muller, ChandraThis dissertation is a collection of three studies in the field of higher education. Chapter 2 evaluates the higher education tax benefits which began in 1998. This study analyzes whether the tax treatment has caused changes in the enrollment behavior among those eligible. It explores the effects on full time and part time enrollment and the effects of the rule changes in 2002 and 2003, as well as examines how marginal changes in the tax benefits affect the probability of enrollment. There is an increase in overall enrollment which can be attributed to the tax benefits, although the expansion of the program had very small effects and there were very few changes in full time student status due to the program. The second essay examines students who take a break in their schooling but return to school before beginning their careers. This can cause two separate effects; as time passes, they are growing older, maturing and learning about themselves. However, they also risk depreciation of the human capital they have acquired. This study examines these competing effects on outcomes for individuals who took time off between completing their undergraduate studies and attending law school. Results indicate that those who take time off earn higher grades on average, but that the effect on earnings is dependent on what the individual did during the schooling gap. There does appear to be a small but persistent penalty for those who have a gap in schooling. In the third essay, a model is where altruistic parents care about the bundle of goods their children consume is presented and analyzed. The model results in some empirically testable predictions, which are tested using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS). In particular, students whose parents pay the entire cost of schooling should have a lower return to the amount invested than those who pay some of the cost themselves. However, the data show very little difference in the return to the amount invested between the two groups.Item Essays on the economics of education of underserved populations(2016-05) Farber, Matthew Scott; Linden, Leigh L., 1975-; Heinrich, Carolyn J; Kline, Brendan A; Lincove, Jane A; Murphy, RichardThis dissertation examines how current targeted accountability and funding provisions under federal guidelines impact the academic outcomes of the country's more underserved populations.The first chapter demonstrates that accountability at the race level leads to increased reading and math achievement for students. I investigate the impact of school-level accountability on racial subgroups within a school, using a regression-discontinuity design with student-level Texas panel data on third through eighth graders from 2004 through 2011. The targeted incentives increase passing rates by 1-2 percentage points and the scores by .03 standard deviations in both math and reading. These results persist for two to three years after intervention, but fade out by the fourth year. Furthermore, students outside the targeted group are not hindered, with no effect on passing rates and scores. A deeper analysis suggests that schools are not focusing on high-leverage students but rather implementing wide-ranging interventions. I also find that the majority of gains are due to gains among Black students, though it is not clear whether this is due to racial targeting. In the second chapter, I analyze the impact of federally designed and funded interventions on student achievement, both of targeted students and non-targeted students. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act of 2001, schools with less than 40% low-income students use federal Title I funds for a Targeted Assistance Program, where schools above 40% are free to use those same funds as general school money. This paper uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around the 40% threshold with student-level Texas panel data on third through eighth graders from 2004 through 2011 to investigate. The evidence suggests that there is no difference in student outcomes, on the whole or among subsamples, between the methods of using the federal funding. The third chapter of my dissertation shows that the impact of Title I funding on student achievement is complex, benefiting certain subgroups of students while impacting others negatively. I use an instrumental variable research design in order to estimate impacts while keeping external validity through exploiting the large data set available, which includes student-level panel data on Texas public school students from the years 2004 through 2011. Title I funding increases math passing rates by 3 percentage points and has no impact on neither reading passing rates nor standardized scores for either subject. Elementary school students are impacted negatively by Title I funding in both math and reading, while lower-performing and low-income middle school students show large, though insignificant, effects of the funding on both math and reading exams. Unfortunately, this study cannot speak to the impacts on high school students.Item Strings attached : performance and privatization in an urban public school(2011-05) Brown, Amy Elizabeth, 1979-; Foley, Douglas E.; Gordon, Edmund T.; Costa Vargas, Joao H.; Brown, Keffrelyn; Bryce, NadineThis dissertation breaks new ground in qualitative educational research by looking closely at the community and curricula of a well-resourced seven-year-old public high school in a New York City borough, which I call the Legal Studies Academy (LSA). This school created its own nonprofit organization in order to accrue private donations. Its most important “funder and founder” is an elite Manhattan law firm. The relationship between the firm and the school is emblematic of the direction that many urban public schools in the United States are moving: toward increased dependence on private funds to secure the resources deemed necessary for quality twenty-first century education (Anyon 1997; Lipman 2004; 2005). My project explores how the privatization of public institutions affects definitions of social justice and good education in the United States. I document the ways that students and teachers in the LSA community both reproduce and contest school norms. My methods in this two-year study included: teacher-research, participant observation of teachers and students, extensive interviews with teachers, students and parents, conduct of a summer book club / cultural circle, and analysis of data from a schoolwide student questionnaire. I also examine materials the school uses to solicit donations from its funders in relation to cultural constructions of urban students and their teachers in literature and the media. I explore what students’ and teachers’ daily practices of resistance or conformity to these cultural constructions might reveal about the place of democracy, humanization, character education, and critical pedagogy in U.S. public schools that depend on private or corporate philanthropists for resources. This ethnography nuances the often polarized debate around issues of achievement in education in the context of the demands of a global economy by documenting how the daily practices of students, families and teachers reflect on a social structure of education and achievement that, in the United States, ever more unequivocally aligns one’s identity and success with marketability. On a larger scale, it inspires critical questions about the place of democracy and citizenship as juxtaposed with inequities furthered by global racial capitalism.