School district size and student educational attainment: evidence from Denmark

This paper analyses the effects of the size of school districts on educational attainment of students after compulsory school in Denmark. Using administrative microdata for individual students and their parents, logit models for the probability of obtaining different levels of education are estimated where the explanatory variables include district size, per student expenditure, and a wide range of controls for family background and district socioeconomic characteristics. It is found that attending schools in districts with a population of less than 15,000 (corresponding to less than 1800 students in public primary and lower secondary schools) has negative effects on educational attainment later in life: The probability of completing a secondary education (upper secondary school or vocational education) or a further or higher education is reduced by approximately 3 percentage points compared to having attended primary and lower secondary school in a district with more than 15,000 inhabitants.     

Do school entry laws affect educational attainment and labor market outcomes?

Age based school entry laws force parents and educators to consider an important tradeoff: though students who are the youngest in their school cohort typically have poorer academic performance, on average, they have slightly higher educational attainment. In this paper we document that for a large cohort of California and Texas natives the school entry laws increased educational attainment of students who enter school early, but also lowered their academic performance while in school. However, we find no evidence that the age at which children enter school effects job market outcomes, such as wages or the probability of employment. This suggests that the net effect on adult labor market outcomes of the increased educational attainment and poorer academic performance is close to zero.     

学历层次与劳务市场就业情况的国家内部差异

<正>学历层次的差异不仅存在于国家之间,也存在于国家内部。在许多国家,受过高等教育的人——通常是技能水平最高的人才——大多聚集在首都地区。在许多国家,与接受过高中及以上教育的成年人相比,未受过高中教育的成年人的就业率的地区差异更为明显。在许多国家,一些地区既没有工作、也没有继续接受教育或培训的年轻人(neither in employment nor in education or training,缩写为NEET)所达到的比例是其他地区的两倍。     

12 Equity,adequacy and educational need: the courts and urban school finance

Nearly two decades following the landmark Rodriguez decision in 1973, plaintiffs arguing on behalf of poor urban school districts have found an opening for financial redress. The supreme courts in several states, including New Jersey, Texas and Kentucky, have ruled in the last couple of years that all students are entitled to a ‘minimally adequate’ education. In Abbott v. Burke, in particular, the New Jersey court made reference to the special needs of inner‐city students. In this chapter the authors trace the history of court cases related to urban school finance and analyse both the legal and conceptual basis for recent decisions that may benefit large‐city districts.     

Research-informed practice improvements: exploring linkages between school district use of research evidence and educational outcomes over time

The field of education is progressively building capacity and tools for producing rigorous research evidence to use in improving educational practice and outcomes. The knowledge base is lacking, however, in explicating the dynamics of research-based decision making and exploring connections between the work of research–practice partnerships and changes in educational outcomes. Drawing on experiences and data collected over a decade in mixed-methods research, we describe a case example of how research evidence developed in a multidistrict collaboration was used by one district partner to inform ongoing improvements in publicly funded tutoring programs. We employ both qualitative and quantitative analysis in exploring probable linkages between research-based changes made by the district partner and academic outcomes over time.     

School crowding,year-round schooling,and mobile classroom use: Evidence from North Carolina

This study exploits a unique policy environment and a large panel dataset to evaluate the impact of school crowding on student achievement in Wake County, NC. We also estimate the effects of two education policy initiatives that are often used to address crowding: multi-track year-round calendars and mobile classrooms. We estimate a multi-level fixed effects model to identify effects that are not confounded by other school, family, and individual characteristics. Results suggest that severely crowded schools have a negative impact on reading achievement but have no discernable impact on math achievement. Both mobile classrooms and year-round calendars are found to have a small negative impact on achievement in the absence of crowding, but a positive impact in crowded schools, though these policies are only able to partially offset the negative impact of crowding.     

Impacts of the universal primary education policy on educational attainment and private costs in rural Uganda

While some governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have abolished tuition to achieve universal primary education (UPE), few studies have examined the impacts of the UPE policy beyond school enrolment. This study estimates the impact of the UPE policy in Uganda on overall primary education attainments by using data including 940 rural households. We find that UPE has decreased delayed enrolments and increased grade completion rates up to the fifth grade and its effects are especially large among girls in poor households. Yet, schools in Uganda still face further challenges in terms of low internal efficiency and the unequal quality of education.     

School district merger,busing, and the courts: Implications for school administrators

Many city school systems are faced with a situation of declining tax base, declining enrollments, and disproportionate minority ratios. Merger of city with surrounding school systems is one alternative to improve this situation. When city and surrounding systems contain disproportionate minority ratios the question may arise whether busing to achieve racial balance will likely be required by the courts. Review of desegregation litigation indicates that in the absence of intention to discriminate, the courts are not likely to require busing as a desegregation strategy. Further, school systems having achieved unitary status under court-approved desegregation plans may be allowed to adopt neighborhood school policies despite indications such policies would lead to partial resegregation.     

The effect of Vietnam-era conscription and genetic potential for educational attainment on schooling outcomes

This study examines whether draft lottery estimates of the causal effects of Vietnam-era military service on schooling vary by an individual's genetic propensity toward educational attainment. To capture the complex genetic architecture that underlies the bio-developmental pathways, behavioral traits and evoked environments associated with educational attainment, we construct polygenic scores (PGS) for respondents in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) that aggregate thousands of individual loci across the human genome and weight them by effect sizes derived from a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of years of education. Our findings suggest veterans with below average PGSs for educational attainment may have completed fewer years of schooling than comparable non-veterans. On the other hand, we do not find any difference in the educational attainment of veterans and non-veterans with above average PGSs. Results indicate that public policies and exogenous environments may induce heterogeneous treatment effects by genetic disposition.     

The externalities of crime: The effect of criminal involvement of parents on the educational attainment of their children

The empirical literature on education and crime suggests that both criminal behavior and educational attainment are transferred from parents to children. However, the impact of criminal behavior of parents on educational outcomes of children is generally ignored, even though the entailed social costs may be substantial. This study examines the effect of parents’ criminal involvement on the educational attainment of their children. To identify this effect, we combine a multinomial logit model with a Mahalanobis matching approach. The findings suggest that having criminally involved parents (1) increases the probability of finishing primary education as the highest education level attained (7–9 percentage points), and (2) decreases the probability of attaining higher education (2–6 percentage points). These results are robust to various specifications and are unlikely to be fully driven by differences in unobservables.     

Do school context,student composition and school leadership affect school practice and outcomes in secondary education?

This study examined effects of school context, student composition and school leadership on school practice and outcomes in secondary education in Flanders. The study reveals that relations between school characteristics do exist and that it is possible to explain an important part of the differences in mean effort and mathematics achievement of schools by means of these school characteristics. Furthermore, it was found that school size positively affects school outcomes and that its effect is mediated by school practice characteristics like the amount of cooperation between teachers, which affects school climate and outcomes. School leadership did not affect the school practice much, perhaps because of a lack of a strong educational leadership in most of the Flemish secondary schools. However, the student composition of schools seemed to be very important for school practice, as well as for school outcomes. Nevertheless, the study revealed that schools can affect the outcomes of their students independently of their student composition and context by means of school practice.     

The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham,North Carolina

Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of one's geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfactual scenario in which all students attend their geographically assigned schools. We find that many advantaged students have used school choice programs in Durham to opt out of assigned schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students and to attend schools with higher achieving students. Comparisons of actual peer compositions with the counterfactual scenario indicate only small differences in peer composition for nonchoosers on average. More substantial differences in peer environment emerge, however, for students in schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students and schools located near choice schools attractive to high achievers. The results suggest that expansions of parental choice may have significant adverse effects on the peer environments of a particularly vulnerable group of students.     

Real estate values,school quality,and the pattern of urban development in Charlotte,North Carolina

This study presents estimates of a model that includes the racial composition and academic quality of public schools among the determinants of housing prices. Results suggest that academic quality is a more important factor in the determination of housing values than the racial ratio of pupils in area schools. Drawing on estimates of the model, a school preference index (SPI) is developed. The SPI is found to be positively correlated to the level of the academic achievement and negatively related to the level of nonwhite school enrollment. The SPI also is shown to be positively correlated to the level of new residential construction.     

Secondary school renewal: the effect of classroom learning culture on educational outcomes

The study was grounded on theoretical propositions and empirical research concerning school effectiveness, classroom effectiveness, school improvement and school renewal. In particular, improving student learning outcomes through improving and renewing schools is dependent on changing classroom cultures of learning and teaching. A model of classroom culture consisting of student educational values (dependent variable), formal learning outcomes (dependent variable), and the attitudes and behaviours of students, teachers and parents (independent variables) was proposed. Hypothesised relationships between the dependent and independent variables were tested by multiple regression analysis of data from 988 students obtained from administration of a Rasch-model instrument assessing classroom culture. The classroom learning attitudes and behaviours of students were found to relate directly to educational outcomes, as were teacher expectations and parent attitudes and behaviours. The attitudes and behaviours of students and teachers towards classroom collaboration and caring were not confirmed to relate directly to learning outcomes. The findings of the investigation are discussed in the light of the theoretical assumptions upon which the study was based, including identification of the implications of the empirical results for understanding and facilitating renewal of secondary schools with the intention of improving educational outcomes in classrooms.     

Pupil mobility,attainment and progress in secondary school

This paper is the second of two articles arising from a study of the association between pupil mobility and attainment in national tests and examinations in an inner London borough. Our first article examined the association of pupil mobility with attainment and progress during primary school. It concluded that pupil mobility had little impact on performance in national tests at age 11, once pupils’ prior attainment at age 7 and other pupil background factors such as age, sex, special educational needs, stage of fluency in English and socio‐economic disadvantage were taken into account. The present paper reports the results for secondary schools (age 11–16). The results indicate that pupil mobility continues to have a significant negative association with performance in public examinations at age 16, even after including statistical controls for prior attainment at age 11 and other pupil background factors. Possible reasons for the contrasting results across school phases are explored. The implications for policy and further research are discussed.     

Pupil mobility,attainment and progress in primary school

This article presents an analysis of the association between pupil mobility and educational attainment in the 2002 national end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests for 11‐year‐old pupils in an inner London education authority. The results show that pupil mobility is strongly associated with low attainment in the end of key stage tests. However, the negative association with pupil mobility is reduced by half when account is taken of other pupil background factors known to be related to educational attainment (such as special educational need and socio‐economic disadvantage), and is eliminated entirely when account is also taken of pupils' prior attainment as indicated by end of KS1 test scores at age 7. Thus there is no indication that changing school has a negative impact on educational progress during primary school. Pupils who join their school during KS2 from other schools in England are more likely to be ‘at risk’ of low attainment due to higher levels of socio‐economic disadvantage, a greater need for support in relation to English as an additional language, a higher incidence and greater severity of special educational needs and pre‐existing low attainment at the end of KS1. A key factor in understanding the relationship between mobility and attainment is the reason for mobility. One‐third of mobile pupils had arrived from schools outside of England, often as refugees, asylum seekers or economic migrants, and these pupils accounted for the major part of the effect ascribed to ‘pupil mobility’. The low attainment of these pupils is the result not of ‘changing school’ but of a broad range of factors including substantial cultural, educational and social adjustment.     

School leadership and educational change: Tools and practices in shared school leadership development

This study examines the features of school leadership as it evolved in an upper secondary school attempting to enhance school improvement through a dedicated team of developmental leaders. We study the team leadership’s tools and design over one school year and report on the evolution of a collective approach to leadership for school improvement. Researchers in a formative intervention research project supported the change process. Cultural-historical activity theory and a set of new technologies inspired the intervention design. The study describes how conceptions and practices of leadership gradually emerged as a collective and distributed approach to leading educational change and school improvement. In particular, new tools and designs for school team leadership were explored and implemented. The study addresses the need to develop shared and collaborative conceptions of leadership in schools. The study concludes that careful planning and skilful orchestration of human, cultural and technological resources are needed in order to make sustainable improvements in schools.     

Alleviating or exacerbating disadvantage: does school attended mediate the association between family background and educational attainment?

ABSTRACT

Opportunities for social mobility are generated by education systems designed to alleviate the effects of social origin by providing equality of opportunities and resources. The persistence of the strong association between socioeconomic status (SES) and child’s educational achievement and attainment suggests that social origin continues to play an integral role in the educational outcomes of successive generations of Australians. Sociologists draw on a range of theoretical perspectives to explain this association including Bourdieu’s cultural and social capital theories. Using data collected by the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth 2009 (LSAY09) project, I examine the associations between student SES, school SES and two outcome variables: Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) score and university enrolment. The results indicate that low SES students attending high SES schools perform better on PISA tests than low SES students attending low SES schools. After controlling for PISA score, low SES students were less likely than their high SES peers to enrol at university. Furthermore, students attending low SES schools were less likely than their peers attending high SES schools to enrol at university, net of their individual SES and their PISA scores.     

Violence in School: Risk,safety and fear of crime

There has been an increase in recent years in the number of violent incidents affecting schools in the UK. This article considers the influence of these events and suggests such traumas have a wide impact on school pupils generally. The results of a survey of Year 9 comprehensive school pupils is reported. This focused on fear of crime while travelling to, and when in, school, levels of bullying and measures taken to avoid potential victimisation. Implications for pupil behaviour are considered with respect to school attendance, adjustment and measures taken to protect themselves, including the carrying of weapons.     

Religious background and educational attainment: The effects of Buddhism,Islam, and Judaism

The effects of Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism on educational attainment in the United States are examined. OLS estimates of educational attainment and Probit estimates of college attainment are undertaken. It is shown that Islam and Judaism have similar positive effects on attainment relative to Protestants and Catholics. The effect of Buddhism is specific to respondents who were living in the United States at age sixteen and/or were born in the United States. Data from the National Opinion Research Center's “General Social Survey: 1998–2008” are used.