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.     

What determines the return to education: An extra year or a hurdle cleared?

The 1973 Raising of the School Leaving Age from 15 to 16 has been used to identify returns to years’ schooling. However, because the first set of “high stakes” exams are taken in the UK at age 16, the reform affected the proportion with qualifications, as well as schooling length. In order to shed light on whether the returns reflect the extra length of schooling or the increase in qualifications, we exploit another institutional rule – the Easter Leaving Rule – which we argue only affected the probability of obtaining qualifications (and not the length of schooling). We find sizeable returns to academic qualifications – increasing the probability of employment by 40% points – and our results suggest that qualifications drive most of the returns to education.     

The changing structure of teacher compensation, 1970–1994

This paper considers how the structures of teacher salaries in public school districts have changed over the last quarter century and whether salary increases have been allocated so as to achieve the greatest gain in educational quality. Using New York state data for the 1970–1994 period, we find that even though some districts appear to behave in ways consistent with the often expressed goal of recruiting and retaining the most able college graduates, most districts do not. The vast majority of districts have inefficiently allocated a disproportionately large share of resources to veteran teachers for whom job tenure is only marginally affected. This finding has important implications for the policy debate regarding whether increased spending on education will, or could, improve educational performance as well as the design of alternative compensation schemes.     

Differences by degree: Evidence of the net financial rates of return to undergraduate study for England and Wales

This paper provides estimates of the impact of higher education qualifications on the earnings of graduates in the U.K. by subject studied. We use data from the recent U.K. Labour Force Surveys which provide a sufficiently large sample to consider the effects of the subject studied, class of first degree, and postgraduate qualifications. Ordinary Least Squares estimates show high average returns for women that does not differ by subject. For men, we find very large returns for Law, Economics and Management but not for other subjects. Degree class has large effects in all subjects suggesting the possibility of large returns to effort. Postgraduate study has large effects, independently of first degree class.A large rise in tuition fees across all subjects has only a modest impact on relative rates of return suggesting that little substitution across subjects would occur. The strong message that comes out of this research is that even a large rise in tuition fees makes little difference to the quality of the investment – those subjects that offer high returns (LEM for men, and all subjects for women) continue to do so. And those subjects that do not (especially OSSAH for men) will continue to offer poor returns. The effect of fee rises is dwarfed by existing cross subject differences in returns.     

Private education in a poor country: The case of urban Bolivia

Investment in education is critical for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Such investment is typically being financed by the state. Yet in many countries families contribute privately to the education of their children. In an era of stagnating public budgets for education (and practically anything else), the private financing of education gains importance for a country's investment in human resources to be maintained. It is often claimed that private education is highly selective and afforded only by the rich. In this paper we examine the extent of private expenditure on education in a country that is among the poorest—Bolivia. In the empirical analysis we use data from both the 1990 and 1992 household surveys (Encuesta Intergrada de Hogares). The results show that there is a remarkable willingness of households in Bolivia to pay for private education for their children.     

The effect of immigrant concentration in schools on native and immigrant children's reading and math skills

Using a unique and very rich PISA dataset from Denmark, we show that the immigrant concentration in the school influences reading and math skills for both immigrant children and native children. Overall, children in schools with a high immigrant concentration score lower on reading and math test scores. The negative effects associated with attending a school with a high immigrant concentration are fairly robust across estimation methods. IV estimates, taking into consideration that parental sorting across neighborhoods might bias the OLS estimates, indicate that immigrant concentration in schools is still important in determining children's math test scores. The estimates are less precise regarding the effect of immigrant concentration on reading test scores. The immigrant concentration in the school has a stronger effect for native children than for immigrant children, but the differences are more pronounced for the math test.     

Does school time matter?—On the impact of compulsory education age on school dropout

A straightforward way to prevent students from leaving education without a higher secondary diploma is increasing the compulsory education age. The idea is that, by staying longer in school, more students eventually obtain a higher secondary diploma. This paper examines the impact of a one-year increase in compulsory school-age on dropping out of secondary education by a difference-in-differences analysis. For this, we exploit a recent compulsory education policy reform in the Netherlands. After controlling for confounding factors and observable covariates, we find that the one year increase in compulsory school-age reduces dropout by 2.5 percentage points. The effect, however, is entirely situated in the group non-liable to the policy reform. We observe that native Dutch vocational students, mostly without retention in grade, but also without a higher secondary diploma at hand, more often left school in the immediate period before the policy reform. Given the economic revival at that time, this may reflect anticipation of labor market opportunities.     

Economics of education: A research agenda

The paper presents a systematic taxonomy of research areas in the economics of education and gives a number of key topics that deserve more research attention in the future. Emphasis is put on documenting the unit cost of education at different schooling levels and curriculum types, along with the learning and earning outcomes of education. Evidence on the costs and benefits, from both the private and the social point of view, can lead to efficiency and equity assessments of an educational system. Among topics where the research effort should be intensified are the screening hypothesis, measuring education externalities and the quality of schooling.     

Public spending on higher education in developing countries: Too much or too little?

This paper discusses problems with the prevalent view that public resources for education in developing countries should be reallocated from higher to lower levels of education. There may be a case for maintaining and even increasing spending on higher education, as long as public funds can be directed to research and other “public good” functions of institutions of higher education. Current measures of social returns to primary, secondary and higher education do not reflect unmeasured social benefits at each level; since we do not know the relative size of these benefits across levels, we do not know the true ranking of social returns across primary, secondary and higher education. The true social rate of return to certain components of higher education, such as research and postgraduate training in science and technology, and creation of other skills where social returns probably exceed private returns (such as public administration) is probably high, and in some settings, may now be as high or higher than the social rate of return to primary and secondary education. Moreover, achieving and sustaining adequate levels of quality to capture these social returns requires minimal stability in public financing, arguing against major reallocations away from higher education. But this does not argue for more public spending on all higher education programs. On the contrary; within the envelope of total public spending on higher education, reallocation away from public spending on undergraduate training makes sense, since such training probably has low social compared to private returns, and can be accomplished by greater reliance on private universities and by increasing tuition and other fees in public universities, while ensuring equitable access through loan and scholarship programs.     

The effectiveness and retention of teachers with prior career experience

As schools and districts seek to recruit teachers, individuals in non-teaching professions are an appealing possible pool. These potential teachers come with work experience and may have expertise that would serve them well in the classroom. While there has been substantial rhetoric assailing the virtues of teachers with prior professional experience, no research that we know of has assessed the effectiveness of these teachers in terms of student learning. This study uses data from New York City to assess the relative effectiveness and retention of career-switchers. It provides some evidence that these teachers are no more effective than other new teachers, and, in fact, they appear to be less effective at raising math scores of elementary and middle school students. There is little difference in overall transfer or leave rates between teachers with prior experience and other teachers, although career-switchers from college recommended programs do appear more likely to transfer schools.     

Norms as a tool of analysis in the economics of education: A contribution of Massy and Zemsky

This paper suggests how Massy and Zemsky's concept of decision-making norms has promise as a tool to support the modeling of economic choices within educational organizations. This concept's practical value would be supported by: analysis of how informational economies are achieved through the delegation of certain relatively routine decisions reflected in norms to administrative personnel; developing criteria for inferring whether observed deviations from decision-making norms are permanent or transitory; and, most important, the development of informationally efficient mechanisms for making norms forward looking in terms of changes in the environment affecting the organization's productivity and financing.     

Teacher salaries in Latin America: A review

In this paper we use data from household surveys of 12 Latin American countries to assess how teacher salaries compare to workers in other occupations. The results show great variability from one country to another, ranging from an apparent underpayment of teachers in Bolivia by 35% relative to the control group, and a respective overpayment of 65% in Colombia. However, when statistical controls are introduced for the differential education, hours worked and gender composition between teachers and the comparison group, much of the earnings differential between the two groups disappears. On the basis of this finding, we cannot support the position that teachers are either overpaid or underpaid.     

The effects of school quality on long-term health

In this paper I estimate the relationship between school quality and mortality. Although many studies have linked the quantity of education to health outcomes, the effect of school quality on health has yet to be examined. I construct synthetic birth cohorts and relate the quality of education they attained to their mortality rates. I find that there is a statistically significant relationship between the mortality–schooling gradients, which depict the return to a year of schooling, and the length of school term and relative teacher wage. For instance, increasing the relative teacher wage by one standard deviation results in about 1.9 less deaths per 1000 people per extra year of education. My results suggest that one way to improve the health of the population is to improve school quality.     

School quality signals and attendance in rural Guatemala

This study analyzes school dropout in rural Guatemala using event history data and unusually detailed data on schools and teachers. Significant results for language of instruction, teacher education and fighting between students demonstrate the importance of accounting for school context influences on an outcome that has, historically, been analyzed mainly as a function of family background. Less support is found for the contention that dropout is lower in schools that are better at maximizing student achievement. Finally, using interaction analysis some of the school effects vary significantly by student gender and ethnicity. The various linkages between school features and dropout highlight the complicated reality of identifying the kinds of features of schools that are valued by poor families.     

Which children benefit from non-parental care?

This paper investigates the relationship between non-parental care and toddlers’ behavioral outcomes using data from Australia. In particular, we explore heterogeneity in the relationship using the unique data on quality attributes: carer/child ratio, share of qualified staff, and expert ratings. The results suggest that full-time non-parental care, particularly center care, is negatively associated with toddlers’ behavioral outcomes. The negative association is however mitigated when centers have a larger number of carers per child. The negative association between non-parental care and behavioral outcomes also appears to be larger for children with better-educated parents.     

Overeducation in developing economies: How can we test for it, and what does it mean?

A worker is said to be overeducated if he/she has acquired more education than is required to perform his/her job. In the absence of data measuring the number of years of schooling required to perform particular jobs, we propose a new approach to testing for overeducation. Overeducation is confirmed if we observe that education levels rose in jobs that offer very low returns to education and that underwent little technological change. Using labor force surveys from four developing countries, we find evidence of overeducation in unskilled jobs in the Philippines, mild evidence in Mexico, and little evidence in India and Thailand. We show that a job's mean and modal years of schooling are poor proxies for required education. We also show that overeducation sometimes increases within unskilled jobs, even while a growing share of educated workers enter skilled jobs. This may be because the quality of education segments the labor market.     

Finance, management, and costs of public and private schools in Indonesia

This paper investigates the impact of public vs private finance of education and public vs private management of schools on school cost and efficiency, using school-level data on revenues, expenditures, enrollments, examination scores and student characteristics from Indonesian primary schools. We find that in Indonesia, where schools generally operate at very low funding levels, more money is likely to bring better school quality. Private management is more efficient than public management in achieving academic quality. Private funding also improves efficiency whether the schools are publicly or privately managed, but the incremental effect declines as the local funding share increases.     

Do colleges cultivate critical thinking, problem solving, writing and interpersonal skills?

We investigate how much value college enrollment adds to students’ critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills, and the role college inputs play in developing these competencies, using data from a 2009 collegiate assessment pilot study in Colombia. Relative to observationally similar first year students, students in their final year of college score about half of a standard deviation higher, with statistically significant higher scores on every individual component of the test. Sensitivity analyses indicate that results are robust to validity threats posed by selection bias. Students in private colleges exhibit significantly higher overall test score differences. Measures of college quality such as selectivity, rankings based on reputation, share of faculty with PhD, share of full-time faculty and expenditures per student, however, are not meaningfully associated with higher test score differences between last and first year students.