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.     

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.     

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 determinants of school district salary incentives: An empirical analysis of,where and why

Most public school districts in the United States use a salary schedule to determine compensation for teachers within the district. However, some school districts have implemented incentive pay schemes that allow flexibility at the school or even individual teacher level. These compensation schemes in some ways may more closely approximate a competitive labor market. This study examines the factors that influence a district's decision to offer incentive pay using districts from the 1999 to 2000 Schools and Staffing Survey. The results suggest that school districts that face barriers to recruitment or retention and districts that face competition from non-sectarian private schools are more likely to offer incentive pay.     

Career effects of occupation-related vocational education: Evidence from the military's internal labor market

Prior research on the labor market success of secondary vocational education has produced mixed results, with several studies finding wage gains only for individuals who work in training-related occupations. We contribute to this debate by focusing on a single occupation and organization and by comparing the careers of employees with and without occupation-related training in high school. We use longitudinal data on the careers of military recruits who completed high school Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a military science program that has features of a vocational training and school-to-work program. We find that the occupation-specific training received via JROTC reduces early turnover and improves long-run job stability for those who choose military jobs, suggesting that an important effect of vocational training is to improve job match quality. We also find that promotion rates for vocational graduates are similar to their peers, suggesting that vocational education in general works by improving occupational sorting.     

School quality, clustering and government subsidy in post-apartheid South Africa

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.     

Teachers’ unions and compensation: The impact of collective bargaining on salary schedules and performance pay schemes

This study examines the impact that collective bargaining has on multiple dimensions of teacher compensation, including average and starting salaries, early and late returns to experience, returns to graduate degrees, and the incidence of different pay for performance schemes. Using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and a more recent data set, the Teacher Rules, Roles and Rights (TR3), we find that collective bargaining has a significant impact on all aspects of current, qualification-specific salary schedules. Further, we find some evidence that bargaining impacts the design of performance pay plans. Specifically, unions tend to encourage teacher bonuses that are based on additional qualifications or duties, but discourage bonuses that directly reward improved student test scores.     

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.     

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.     

Migration,remittances, and children's high school attendance: The case of rural China

This paper uses a large nationally representative survey data to examine the impact of China's rural–urban migration on high school attendance of left-behind children by disentangling the effect of remittances from that of migration. The results show that the absence of adult household members has a negative impact on the high school attendance of left-behind children in rural areas, while the remittances can partially compensate for this loss. The effects are especially prominent for girls and those children from poor households since girls are usually disadvantaged in rural China and poor households are more likely to be liquidity-constrained.     

Formal education,mismatch and wages after transition: Assessing the impact of unobserved heterogeneity using matching estimators

This paper studies the incidence and consequences of the mismatch between formal education and the educational requirements of jobs in Estonia during the years 1997–2003. We find large wage penalties associated with the phenomenon of educational mismatch. Moreover, the incidence and wage penalty of mismatches increase with age. This suggests that structural educational mismatches can occur after fast transition periods. Our results are robust for various methodologies, and more importantly regarding departures from the exogeneity assumptions inherent in the matching estimators used in our analysis.     

Intergenerational conflict and public education expenditure when there is co-residence between the elderly and young

The main objective of this paper is to show that a family arrangement in which the elderly co-reside with the young determines that the elderly support the public education expenditure. Considering that this type of family arrangement is more common in Latin American countries than in the United States, our study is concentrated in Brazil. This study is based on a panel of 2054 Brazilian municipalities using data from the 1991 and 2000 censuses.     

The chicken soup effect: The role of recreation and intramural participation in boosting freshman grade point average

Freshman grade point average, in particular first semester grade point average, is an important predictor of survival and eventual student success in college. As many institutions of higher learning are searching for ways to improve student success, one would hope that policies geared towards the success of freshmen have long term benefits reflected in eventual graduation. In this paper, we look at whether participation in Intramural and Recreation programs is associated with freshman grade point average at a mid-sized public institution with extensive recreational opportunities. We find a strong positive association between freshman grade point average and participation in recreation. Our results suggest that investments in recreational opportunities for students are complementary to the institution's academic mission rather than a distraction from it.     

Unequal education,poverty and low growth—A theoretical framework for rural education of China

This paper constructs an intertemporal substitution educational model based on endogenous growth theory and examines the rural education, farmer income and rural economic growth problems in China. It shows that the households originally with the same economic endowment but different education endowment take different growth routes, the income difference between low- and high-income families can be enlarged as they take different educational growth routes, and the low-income family has the chance to get into the “poverty trap”. In the mean time, urban and rural, developed and underdeveloped rural areas, as they take the different education growth routes the difference of economic growth tend to be expanded for the flow of high-quality labor and different industrialization, and they also have the risk of “poverty trap”. The key to solve this problem is the active public policies that promote the equal education, rational income and equilibrium development.     

Education and labor market risk: Understanding the role of data cleaning

This paper examines whether conclusions about the relationship between education and labor market risk depend on the use of commonly applied procedures to clean data of extreme values. The analysis uses fifteen years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to demonstrate that conclusions about the relationship between education and labor market risk are sensitive to how extreme values of labor income are treated. The untrimmed estimates imply that college graduates experience 75% less transitory labor market risk than high school dropouts. However, applying commonly used trimming procedures results in estimates of a one standard deviation transitory labor market shock for high school dropouts being reduced by between $2700 and $4500, or 14% and 24% of annual earnings. The results demonstrate that seemingly innocuous sample selection procedures can have substantive implications.     

Three measures of returns to education: An illustration for the case of Spain

In this article, in a context of wage equations with sample selection, we propose a novel interpretation of the partial effects linked to education as additional measures of returns to education that complement the traditional one, which is directly obtained from the estimation of the wage offer equation. Using European Household Panel data for Spain these partial effects were calculated. The results show that there are incentives in Spain for investing in education not only because it means an increase in wages but also because it raises the probability of obtaining any wage at all.     

On the relationship between student tastes and motivations,higher education decisions,and annual earnings

We examine the degree to which measures of student tastes and motivations are associated with the outcomes of three important higher education decisions and subsequent annual earnings. Within a sample of nearly 9000 students from the Baccalaureate and Beyond, we find that these measures are correlated with college type, college major, and highest postgraduate degree earned in generally predictable ways. For instance, students claiming it important to be well-off financially are significantly more likely to attend top public universities and major in Business or Engineering while students claiming it important to live near family are significantly less likely to attend top quality private institutions and significantly more likely to major in education.     

Improving teacher preparation and selection: lessons from the Pennsylvania experience

This paper examines Pennsylvania's teacher preparation and selection processes over the last decade. Teacher test scores are examined across colleges of education, and extreme differences in teacher test scores are found. Also, extreme variations are evident among districts' employed teachers. A unique survey of district employment practices reveals that, on average, 40% of a district's teachers previously attended there as students. An exploratory econometric model indicates that the higher the unemployment rate in a district, the more likely it will hire its former students to teach, and that the greater the fraction of former students now in the district's teacher force, the lower is student achievement. The paper concludes with a discussion of conventional and unconventional strategies to improve the quality of teachers actually hired by school boards.     

Funding higher education and wage uncertainty: Income contingent loan versus mortgage loan

We propose a simple theoretical model which shows how the combined effect of wage uncertainty and risk aversion can modify the individual willingness to pay for a HE system financed by an ICL or a ML. We calibrate our model using real data from the 1970 British Cohort Survey together with the features of the English HE financing system. We allow for individual heterogeneity by considering different family backgrounds and occupations. We find that graduates from poor families, males and graduates working in the private sector are more willing to pay to switch to an ICL. Using the UK Labour Force Survey we evaluate the distributive effects of our model. We compute the repayment burdens and taxpayer subsidies for average, low and high earnings graduates. The results confirm the important insurance benefits of an ICL compared to a ML, with lower burdens and higher subsidies for poorer graduates.