BOOK REVIEWS

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An illustration to assist in comparing and remembering several multiplicity adjustment methods

There are many well‐known or new methods to adjust statistical tests for multiplicity. This article provides an illustration helping lecturers or consultants to remember the differences of three important multiplicity adjustment methods and to explain them to non‐statisticians.     

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.     

Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework?

Following an identification strategy that allows us to largely eliminate unobserved student and teacher traits, we examine the effect of homework on math, science, English and history test scores for eighth grade students in the United States. Noting that failure to control for these effects yields selection biases on the estimated effect of homework, we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.     

Forward-Thinking Teens: The Effects of College Costs on Adolescent Risky Behavior

This paper analyzes the effect of college costs on teenagers’ engagement in risky behaviors before they are old enough to attend college. Individuals with brighter prospects for future schooling attainment may engage in less drug and alcohol use and risky sexual activity because they have more to lose if such behaviors have harmful effects in their lives. If teens correctly predict that higher college costs make future college enrollment less likely, then adolescents facing different expected costs may choose different levels of risky behavior. I find that lower college costs in teenagers’ states of residence raise their subjective expectations regarding college attendance and deter teenage substance use and sexual partnership. Specifically, a $1,000 reduction in tuition and fees at 2-year colleges in a youth's state of residence (roughly a 50% difference at the mean) is associated with a decline in the number of sexual partners the youth had in the past year (by 26%), the number of days in the past month the youth smoked (by 14%), and the number of days in the past month the youth used marijuana (by 23%). These findings suggest that the often-studied correlation between schooling and health habits emerges in adolescence because teenagers with brighter college prospects curb their risky behavior in accordance with their expectations. The results also imply that policies that improve teenagers’ educational prospects may be effective tools for reducing youthful involvement in such behaviors.     

Back to school blues: Seasonality of youth suicide and the academic calendar

Previous research has found evidence of academic benefits to longer school years. This paper investigates one of the many potential costs of increased school year length, documenting a dramatic decrease in youth suicide in months when school is not in session. A detailed analysis does not find that other potential explanations such as economic conditions, weather or seasonal affective disorder patterns can explain the decrease. This evidence suggests that youth may face increased stress and decreased mental health when school is in session.     

Why preferences in college admissions may yield a more-able student body

Critics of affirmative action policies contend that the elimination of racial preferences in college admissions would lead to a “more-able” student body. We develop a simple model comprised of three classes of college admissions—merit, race and legacy—to show that it is possible that a change in admissions policy that reduces racial preferences leads to a “less-able” student body. The change in admissions policy may serve only to ensure that more admissions are available for “sale” to wealthy alumni through legacy preferences. In other words, when there are multi-dimensional preferences, reducing or eliminating one dimension of preferences may lead to the unforeseen consequence of producing a “less able” student body.     

Promotion and reassignment in public school districts: How do schools respond to differences in teacher effectiveness?

We use a unique administrative database from the state of Florida to provide the first evidence that promotion and other job reassignments within school districts are systematically related to differences in teacher effectiveness in raising student achievement. We follow the career paths of a cohort of almost 25,000 classroom teachers during the 2001-2002 school year for seven subsequent years. Our results confirm that effective teachers are more likely to become assistant principals or principals and less likely to be reassigned to a low-stakes teaching position. The tendency of highly effective teachers to continue teaching in high-stakes grades and subjects is strongest in schools receiving low ratings from the state's school accountability system. Teachers entering the principal track experience a large increase in annual earnings, but the share of teachers promoted in this way is small enough that future compensation remains largely unrelated to effectiveness for teachers as a whole.