The effect of wage compression and alternative labor market opportunities on teacher quality in Venezuela

This paper examines the effect of teacher relative wages and teacher wage dispersion on high school graduates’ preferences for teaching majors in College. This approximation to teacher quality is appropriate in a country like Venezuela as opposed to the US since the rigidity of the tertiary school system significantly limits mobility between majors. I combine data from the national college entrance examination from 1984 to 2003 with labor market data from the household surveys to construct a panel of data for quintiles of the test score distribution and age groups by states. The results suggest that teacher wage premia and wage dispersion have little effect on the quality mix of applicants to teaching. Most students’ preference for teaching is unresponsive to wage levels relative to other occupations and to wage growth prospects within teaching. If wages have a positive effect on the performance of educational systems, this paper argues that it is unlikely to be through the selection of the most talented individuals.     

Changes in the returns to education and college quality

This paper estimates changes in the effects of educational attainment and college quality on three cohorts of students observed during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Consistent with most of the prior literature, I find that educational attainment and college quality raise earnings, and the magnitudes of these effects have increased over time. The new contributions of this paper are the following: (1) changes in these effects are disaggregated by sex, race, and parent's SES, and include estimates of effects on earnings, labor force participation, family formation, and civic participation; (2) evidence of larger increases in the effects of education on earnings and labor force participation for men, Blacks, and Hispanics; (3) declining effects of educational attainment on voter registration; and (4) increasing effects of college quality on delaying marriage and childbearing, particularly for males.     

Local amenities,unobserved quality,and market clearing: Adjusting teacher compensation to provide equal education opportunities

Local school districts differ in their ability to pay for teacher quality, and in the amenities they offer as places to live and work. Market clearing with heterogeneous quality yields geographically varying teacher salary levels that confound scarcity with unobserved differences in quality. The paper discusses identification and estimation of a model of quality-adjusted teacher salaries in local markets with unobserved market-clearing prices. Exogenous variables in the model include community and district characteristics, job characteristics and working conditions, and individual characteristics. We apply the model to estimate the relative cost of providing comparably qualified teachers for urban and rural public schools in the state of Alaska, which has high geographic variation in amenities and local financial resources. The quality-adjusted geographic salary differentials implied by the results suggest much larger compensation differentials for isolated rural schools than most of these school districts can afford under current levels of state support.     

The impact of short-term economic fluctuations on kindergarten enrollment

For some 5-year-olds, delayed kindergarten enrollment may result in long-term academic benefits. Although waiting an additional year allows for further development prior to the start of formal education, the economic costs of the next best alternatives can be significant. This study examines the impact of short-term economic fluctuations on a household's kindergarten enrollment decision. I find that during economic downturns kindergarten enrollment increases. To explore a potential mechanism through which this effect may arise, I propose an instrumental variables approach to identify the causal effect of fluctuations in household resources due to the business cycle on the timing of kindergarten enrollment.     

How do substitute teachers substitute? An empirical study of substitute-teacher labor supply

This paper examines the daily labor supply of a potentially important, but often overlooked, source of instruction in U.S. public schools: substitute teachers. I estimate a sequential binary-choice model of substitute teachers’ job-offer acceptance decisions using data on job offers made by a randomized automated calling system. Importantly, this randomization generates exogenous variation in offer quality. I find that determinants of substitutes’ offer-acceptance decisions include the offer's arrival time, commute time, day of week, classroom type, school type, and school quality. Interestingly, conditional on school quality student demographics do not significantly influence substitutes’ decisions. Longer and higher paying full-day jobs are preferred to half-day jobs, although conditional on daily pay, job length does not significantly impact daily labor-supply decisions. Preferences for several job characteristics are found to vary with substitutes’ regular-teacher certification status. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Cross-country evidence on teacher performance pay

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.     

Observed characteristics and teacher quality: Impacts of sample selection on a value added model

We measure the impact of observed teacher characteristics on student math and reading proficiency using a rich dataset from Florida. We expand upon prior work by accounting directly for nonrandom attrition of teachers from the classroom in a sample selection framework. We find evidence that sample selection is present in the estimation of the influence of teacher characteristics, but that failure to account for it does not appear to substantially bias estimation. Further, our procedure produces some evidence that more effective teachers are more likely to exit the classroom.     

A low-subsidy problem in public higher education

With an exogenous public subsidy and a break-even restriction on university net revenue, tuition discrimination supports a quasi-efficient departure from marginal-cost pricing. In contrast, when the legislature and university interact in their subsidy and tuition decisions, the public subsidy becomes endogenous. With an endogenous public subsidy, support by legislatures is affected by the same factors that influence tuition; this leads to a situation where higher tuition revenue is accompanied by a lower public subsidy. The welfare of students declines when this “low-subsidy” case develops. The university's ability to address this issue depends on its being able to commit to a tuition policy, and credible commitment appears consistent with existing institutional conditions.     

It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness

Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001-2002 through 2008-2009.     

The role of educational quality and quantity in the process of economic development

We develop a theory of human capital investment to study the effects of school quality on student choices of education, and to understand its effect on economic growth. In a dynamic general equilibrium closed economy, primary education is mandatory but there is an opportunity to continue to secondary education and beyond. High-quality education increases the returns to schooling, and hence the incentives to accumulate human capital. This is caused by two different channels: higher quality makes education accessible to more people (extensive margin), and once individuals decide to participate in higher education, higher-quality increases the investment made per individual (intensive margin). Furthermore, educational quality determines human capital composition and growth. Cross-country data evidence shows that the proposed channels are quantitatively important and that the effect of the quality and quantity of education on growth depends on the stage of development.     

The impact of international students on measured learning and standards in Australian higher education

International students, who are also often from non-English language speaking backgrounds (NESB students), are an important source of revenue for Australian universities. Yet little large-scale evidence exists about their performance once they arrive. Do these students perform worse than other students in Australian undergraduate classrooms? What happens to other students’ performance when these students are added to classrooms? I provide new empirical evidence on these questions using recent administrative panel data from the business schools of two Australian Technology Network universities. Results show strong and highly statistically significant main effects and spillover effects, raising concerns about the integration of international NESB students into the Australian tertiary environment.     

Monetary returns to academic ability in the public teacher labor market

Previous research has established the returns to academic ability in the general labor market, and this paper investigates such returns in the teacher labor market. Using a nationally representative sample of public school teachers, I find that teachers who graduate from the most selective undergraduate institutions have salaries that are between 7% and 14% higher than those who graduate from the least selective colleges. An empirical investigation of the source of these returns reveals that the majority of this difference is due to high-ability teachers sorting into higher paying districts, though a non-trivial amount arises from within-district deviations from the salary schedule.     

On reconstructing school segregation: The efficacy and equity of single-sex schooling

A change to Title IX has spurred new single-sex public schooling in the US. Until recently, nearly all gender-segregated schools were private, and comprehensive data for public school comparisons are not yet available. To investigate the effects of single-sex education, I focus on within private sector comparisons, and additionally address selection bias using an index comparing expectations to outcomes and quantile regressions. Compared to graduates from private coed schools, girls’ school alumnae are no more likely to pursue college degrees, and both genders are less likely to meet their own educational expectations. However, single-sex schooling may support gender equity, as single-sex schools yield the least segregated college major choices. On the other hand, higher mean starting salaries among single-sex school graduates do not persistent in regression results. Much of the benefit from single-sex schooling accrues to students already likely to succeed, but selection bias does not explain all gains. There are some benefits for African-American men and low income students.     

Do students expect compensation for wage risk?

We use a unique data set about the wage distribution that Swiss students expect for themselves ex ante, deriving parametric and non-parametric measures to capture expected wage risk. These wage risk measures are unfettered by heterogeneity which handicapped the use of actual market wage dispersion as risk measure in earlier studies. Students in our sample anticipate that the market provides compensation for risk, as has been established with risk augmented Mincer earnings equations estimated on market data: higher wage risk for educational groups is associated with higher mean wages. With observations on risk as expected by students we find compensation at similar elasticities as observed in market data. The results are robust to different specifications and estimation models.     

The academic impact on children of maternal post-secondary enrollment

Numerous empirical studies have found that maternal educational attainment is correlated positively with desirable outcomes for children, including academic achievement. At the same time, little is known about the effect of the timing of mothers’ schooling on the same set of child outcomes. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), I find a positive effect of full-time maternal post-secondary enrollment on the reading scores of kindergarten students after controlling for child-specific, time-persistent unobserved heterogeneity. This effect is especially strong when the sample is narrowed to children with married mothers or in households where a father is present. No similar effect is found for kindergarten math scores.     

The spatial geography of teacher labor markets: Evidence from a developing country

An unequal distribution of teacher quality is a problem underlying the unequal distribution of educational outcomes in developing countries. However, we know little about how the labor market produces such a distribution. Using data from two regions in Peru, we investigate whether there is a national teacher market or smaller regional markets. We estimate discrete-choice multinomial models to identify variables (including teacher characteristics, institutional features and geographical factors) associated with the location of teachers in the first jobs of their careers. Results indicate that teacher markets are regional in scope. Being born in a certain province (sub-area of a region) substantially increases the probability of having a first teaching position in that same province. We also find evidence that the geographic mobility of teachers is quite limited. Results suggest that policies to strengthen teacher educational systems and reduce inequities should focus on the regional level.     

The effect of instructor race and gender on student persistence in STEM fields

The objective of this study is to determine if minority and female students are more likely to persist in a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) major when they enroll in classes taught by instructors of their own race or gender. Using data from public 4-year universities in the state of Ohio, I analyze first semester STEM courses to see if the race or gender of the instructor effects persistence of initial STEM majors in a STEM field after the first semester and first year. Results indicate that black students are more likely to persist in a STEM major if they have a STEM course taught by a black instructor. Similar to previous findings, female students are less likely to persist when more of their STEM courses are taught by female instructors.