Center for Education Policy Analysis - Other

The Gift of Time? School Starting Age and Mental Health

Hiep Ho — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 17:48:14 +0000

Author/s:

Thomas Dee

Hans Henrik Sievertsen

Year of Publication:

2015

URL:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

In many developed countries, children now begin their formal schooling at an older age. However, a growing body of empirical studies provides little evidence that such schooling delays improve educational and economic outcomes. This study presents new evidence on whether school starting age influences student outcomes by relying on linked Danish survey and register data that include several distinct, widely used, and validated measures of mental health that are reported out-of-school among similarly aged children. We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size = -0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement. We also find that this large and targeted effect persists at age 11. However, the estimated effects of school starting age on other mental-health constructs, which have weaker links to subsequent student achievement, are smaller and less persistent.

Download 10/2015

Primary Research Area:

Federal and State Education Policy

Topic Areas:

Child Development, Parenting, Student Success

Education Level:

Early Childhood

Practical Issues in Estimating Achievement Gaps from Coarsened Data

Hiep Ho — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:44:19 +0000

Author/s:

Sean F. Reardon

Andrew D. Ho

Year of Publication:

2015

Publication:

Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics

Volume/Issue:

40(2)

Pages:

158-189

URL:

DOI: 10.3102/1076998615570944

Ho and Reardon (2012) present methods for estimating achievement gaps when test scores are coarsened into a small number of ordered categories, preventing fine-grained distinctions between individual scores. They demonstrate that gaps can nonetheless be estimated with minimal bias across a broad range of simulated and real coarsened data scenarios. In this paper, we extend this previous work to obtain practical estimates of the imprecision imparted by the coarsening process and of the bias imparted by measurement error. In the first part of the paper, we derive standard error estimates and demonstrate that coarsening leads to only very modest increases in standard errors under a wide range of conditions. In the second part of the paper, we describe and evaluate a practical method for disattenuating gap estimates to account for bias due to measurement error.

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Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Secondary Research Area:

Other

Topic Areas:

Methodology and Measurement

Education Level:

K-12

Project/s:

Stanford Education Data Archive

The Geography of Rural Educational Opportunity

Hiep Ho — Wed, 18 May 2022 14:22:32 +0000

Author/s:

Jessica Drescher

Anne Podolsky

Sean F. Reardon

Gabrielle Torrance

Year of Publication:

2022

URL:

https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.3.05

We use nearly 430 million standardized test scores, including test scores from more than 6,500 rural school districts, to describe educational opportunity in rural America. Although we find modest differences in outcomes between rural and nonrural students overall, these disparities are larger for specific socioeconomic, racial-ethnic, and geographic groups. We also find that the relationship between socioeconomic status and achievement is somewhat weaker in rural areas compared to nonrural areas. Variation in third-grade achievement and learning rates is considerable among rural districts, indicating that rates of early and middle childhood educational opportunity are not evenly distributed throughout rural America.

Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Secondary Research Area:

Other

Topic Areas:

Educational Equity, School Effectiveness, Societal Context, Student Success

Out of the Education Desert: How Limited Local College Options are Associated with Inequity in Postsecondary Opportunities

Daniel Klasik — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:22:04 +0000

Author/s:

Daniel Klasik

Kristin Blagg

Zachary Pekor

Year of Publication:

2018

The U.S. has a stratified hierarchy of college and universities. Consequences of this stratification include large disparities in the returns to higher education between levels of postsecondary institutions, and gaps by race and income in terms of where students enroll that, together, have the potential to reproduce longstanding social inequality. We study one potential cause associated with enrollment disparities: the uneven geographic distribution of colleges around the U.S. Specifically, we examine the college application and enrollment decisions of students who live in education deserts—geographic areas where students either do not have local access to a broad-access, public college option (access deserts), or where they do not have access to a college that is academically-matched to their academic credentials (match deserts). We find that students in access deserts are more likely to apply to and enroll in colleges farther away from home than students who have more readily available college options. In contrast, students in match deserts are less likely to apply to and enroll in academically-matched institutions. We discuss the equity implications of these findings and make recommendations for policy and future research.

Download 08/2018

Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Topic Areas:

Educational Equity, Societal Context

Education Level:

Higher Education

Minimum Spending in Education and the Flypaper Effect

Tassia Cruz — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 14:11:35 +0000

Author/s:

Tassia Cruz

Talita Mereb

Year of Publication:

2018

This study estimates the flypaper effect of intergovernmental transfers in the Brazilian education sector. Education funds in Brazil are comprised by local revenue and intergovernmental transfers, both tied to education, and other non-tied local revenue and intergovernmental transfers. By using the previous year’s municipal enrollments relative to the state’s enrollment in basic education as an instrument for the amount of funds received from intergovernmental grants, represented by FUNDEB, we estimate the responses of the Brazilian municipal governments to three different types of revenues (locally collected versus state and federal transfers tied to education). We find that the elasticity of educational expenses for funds from state redistribution transfers is significantly greater than the elasticity of such government responses to funds collected locally, indicating a flypaper effect equal to 0.616. Interestingly, we do not find a flypaper effect for other intergovernmental transfers from the federal government that are done through individual agreements. We rely on the information hypothesis to explain our findings.

Download 06/2018

Primary Research Area:

Federal and State Education Policy

Topic Areas:

Education Governance, Finance

Education Level:

K-12

Identifying Preferences for Equal College Access, Income, and Income Equality

Kenneth Shores — Fri, 04 May 2018 14:24:16 +0000

Author/s:

Bernardo Lara

Kenneth Shores

Year of Publication:

forthcoming

Revealed preferences for equal college access may be due to beliefs that equal access increases societal income or income equality. To isolate preferences for those goods, we implement an online discrete choice experiment using social statistics generated from true variation among commuting zones. We find that, ceteris paribus, the average income that individuals are willing to sacrifice is (i) \$4,984 dollars to increase higher education (HE) enrollment by 1 standard deviation (14\%); (ii) \$1,168 dollars to decrease rich/poor gaps in HE enrollment by 1 standard deviation (8\%); (iii) \$2,900 to decrease the 90/10 income inequality ratio by 1 standard deviation (1.66). In addition, we find that political affiliation is an important moderator of preferences for equality. While both Democrats and Republicans are willing to trade over \$4,000 dollars to increase HE enrollment by 1 standard deviation, Democrats are willing to sacrifice nearly three times more income to decrease either rich/poor gaps in HE enrollment or the 90/10 income inequality ratio by 1 standard deviation.

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Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Topic Areas:

Educational Equity

Education Level:

Higher Education

A Continuous Measure of the Joint Distribution of Race and Income Among Neighborhoods

Hiep Ho — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 22:50:03 +0000

Author/s:

Sean F. Reardon

Joseph Townsend

Lindsay Fox

Year of Publication:

2017

Publication:

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

URL:

https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/3/2/34/tab-article-info

We develop and illustrate a general method for describing in detail the joint distribution of race and income among neighborhoods. The approach we describe provides estimates of the average income distribution and racial composition of the neighborhoods of households of a given racial category and specific income level. We illustrate the method using 2007-2011 tract-level data from the American Community Survey. We show, for example, that blacks and Hispanics of any given income level typically live in neighborhoods that are substantially poorer than do whites and Asians of the same income level. Our approach provides a very general method for fully characterizing the joint patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation, and so may prove useful for understanding the spatial foundations and correlates of racial and socioeconomic inequality.

Download 06/2015

Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Topic Areas:

Methodology and Measurement, Societal Context

Education Level:

K-12

An Integrative View of School Functioning: Transactions Between Self-Regulation, School Engagement, and Teacher–Child Relationship Quality

Hiep Ho — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:21:30 +0000

Author/s:

Ximena A. Portilla

Parissa J. Ballard

Nancy E. Adler

W. Thomas Boyce

Jelena Obradović

Year of Publication:

2014

Publication:

Child Development

Volume/Issue:

85(5)

Pages:

pp. 1915-1931

URL:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12259/full

This study investigates the dynamic interplay between teacher–child relationship quality and children's behaviors across kindergarten and first grade to predict academic competence in first grade. Using a sample of 338 ethnically diverse 5-year-old children, nested path analytic models were conducted to examine bidirectional pathways between children's behaviors and teacher–child relationship quality. Low self-regulation in kindergarten fall, as indexed by inattention and impulsive behaviors, predicted more conflict with teachers in kindergarten spring and this effect persisted into first grade. Conflict and low self-regulation jointly predicted decreases in school engagement which in turn predicted first-grade academic competence. Findings illustrate the importance of considering transactions between self-regulation, teacher–child relationship quality, and school engagement in predicting academic competence.

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Primary Research Area:

Teaching and Leadership Effectiveness

Secondary Research Area:

Other

Topic Areas:

Other, Student Success, Teacher Quality

Education Level:

K-12

Early Childhood Memory and Attention as Predictors of Academic Growth Trajectories

Hiep Ho — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:14:58 +0000

Author/s:

Deborah Stipek

Rachel A. Valentino

Year of Publication:

2014

Publication:

Journal of Educational Psychology

Longitudinal data from the children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to assess how well measures of short-term and working memory and attention in early childhood predicted longitudinal growth trajectories in mathematics and reading comprehension. Analyses also examined whether changes in memory and attention were more strongly predictive of changes in academic skills in early childhood than in later childhood. All predictors were significantly associated with academic achievement and years of schooling attained, although the latter was at least partially mediated by predictors’ effect on academic achievement in adolescence. The relationship of working memory and attention with academic outcomes was also found to be strong and positive in early childhood, but non-significant or small and negative in later years. The study results provide support for a “fade-out” hypothesis, which suggests that underlying cognitive capacities predict learning in the early elementary grades, but the relationship fades by late elementary school. These findings suggest that whereas efforts to develop attention and memory may improve academic achievement in the early grades, in the later grades interventions that focus directly on subject matter learning are more likely to improve achievement.

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Primary Research Area:

Teaching and Leadership Effectiveness

Secondary Research Area:

Other

Topic Areas:

Curriculum and Instruction, Student Success

Education Level:

Early Childhood

The role of social science in action-guiding philosophy: The case of educational equity

Hiep Ho — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 18:20:08 +0000

Author/s:

Kendra Bischoff

Kenneth Shores

Year of Publication:

2014

Publication:

Theory and Research in Education

URL:

doi: 10.1177/1477878514530243

Education policy decisions are both normatively and empirically challenging. These decisions require the consideration of both relevant values and empirical facts. Values tell us what we have reason to care about, and facts can be used to describe what is possible. Following Hamlin and Stemplowska, we distinguish between a theory of ideals and descriptions of feasibility. We argue that when feasibility constraints are used to rank competing states of affairs, two things must be articulated. First, one must explain why one feasibility constraint is preferred over another. Second, because of empirical uncertainty, one must describe the upper and lower bounds of a specified feasibility constraint. The first case implies that different optima are possible depending on, for example, what one takes to be fixed about the world. The second case implies that different optima are always possible, and the upper and lower bounds of these optima will depend on the empirical uncertainty of an estimated feasibility constraint. We then describe three distinct forms of empirical uncertainty. Careful consideration of these sources of uncertainty can help to mitigate the risks of imprecision. The article closes by considering a case study whereby a meritocratic conception of fair equality of opportunity is considered alongside competing values of priority and parental partiality.

Primary Research Area:

Poverty and Inequality

Secondary Research Area:

Other

Topic Areas:

Educational Equity, Other