School choice,racial segregation,and test‐score gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's charter school program*

Using panel data that track individual students from year to year, we examine the effects of charter schools in North Carolina on racial segregation and black‐white test score gaps. We find that North Carolina's system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both black and white students, and has widened the achievement gap. Moreover, the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of black students is driven by students who transfer into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the schools they have left. Our analysis of charter school choices suggests that asymmetric preferences of black and white charter school students (and their families) for schools of different racial compositions help to explain why there are so few racially balanced charter schools. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Disentangling the racial test score gap: Probing the evidence in a large urban school district

We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within‐school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within‐school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size—implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade‐off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within‐school race gaps. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The impact of the Texas top ten percent law on college enrollment: A regression discontinuity approach

We use regression discontinuity methods on a representative survey of Texas high school seniors to discern the impact on flagship‐enrollment behavior of the Texas top 10 percent law, which guarantees admission to any Texas public university to students who graduate in the top decile of their class. By comparing students at and immediately below the cut‐point for automatic admission, we find that the top 10 percent law affects flagship enrollment of Hispanic students eligible for the admission guarantee, as well as rank‐eligible graduates from high schools where minority students predominate and from high schools with the state average share of economically disadvantaged students. Our findings are robust to various model specifications and different bandwidth choices using local linear estimation. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Keeping College Options Open: A Field Experiment to Help all High School Seniors Through the College Application Process

Recent research suggests that the college application process itself prevents access. This paper reports results from a school‐based experiment in which application assistance is incorporated into the high school curriculum for all graduating seniors at low‐transition schools. Over three workshops, students were guided to pick programs of interest that they were eligible for, apply for real, and complete the financial aid application. The goal was to create a real college option for exiting students to make the transition easier and more salient. Among all graduating seniors, the program increased application rates by 15 percentage points, and college going rates by 5 percentage points. Among those not taking advanced‐level courses, college enrollment increased by 9 percentage points. The program generated significant effects for a wide range of heterogeneous groups, including both males and females, those from urban and rural schools, and those with above and below average grades. While more intensive than other tested approaches, in‐class application assistance may provide a more effective approach for bridging the gap towards higher education.     

Understanding the changing fortunes of metropolitan neighborhoods, 1980 to 1990

Abstract

This article develops a model that relates decadal changes in neighborhood poverty rates to metropolitan‐wide economic changes and the neighborhood's demographic profile, predetermined poverty rate, and locational characteristics. The model is estimated for the 1980–1990 period using metropolitan census tracts as proxies for neighborhoods. This national sample of tracts is stratified into predominantly white, African‐American, Hispanic, and mixed subsamples.

Results indicate that only a few variables consistently predict growth in neighborhood poverty: overall job availability; the age composition of neighborhood residents; the proportion of nonmarried households; and the neighborhood's 1979 poverty rate. Other variables have distinctly different coefficients depending on the racial‐ethnic subsample. These coefficients include segregation, welfare benefits, the location of manufacturing employment, and availability of automobiles. We conclude that studies that focus solely on African‐American poverty neighborhoods fail to recognize common patterns across all neighborhoods and to discern unique features of neighborhoods inhabited predominantly by non‐African Americans.     

Hispanic College Attendance and the State of Texas GEAR UP Program

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the state of Texas GEAR UP project implemented in six school districts from 1998 to 2005. The intent of the program was to enhance preparation for post‐secondary education among low‐income, Hispanic students. The program was comprised of practical interventions including vertical curriculum alignment, training teachers in advanced placement techniques, encouraging students to take rigorous courses, and increasing outreach about college attendance to students and parents. The central dependent variable is reports by parents of graduating seniors about whether their children would be attending college. A multivariate analysis, controlling for household SES, student grades and attendance, household composition, and language spoken in the home indicates that increased student exposure to the GEAR UP program markedly increases the probability that parents will report that their children are going to attend college.     

Paying for grades: Impact of merit‐based financial aid on educational quality

In contrast to education reform efforts that target teachers and schools, merit‐based financial aid for college increases the incentives for high school students and their families to directly affect the quality of education by investing more time and effort in schoolwork. Large‐scale merit‐based aid programs, such as Georgia's HOPE Scholarship, seek to improve education by encouraging students to meet higher standards, in this case by obtaining a 3.0 grade point average in high school and college. Since the HOPE program began in 1993, the number of high school graduates qualifying for the aid has steadily increased to more than 38,000 graduates in the class of 1998, or 59.5 percent of the graduating class. At the same time, the relationship between grades and achievement has remained consistent or, in some cases, improved since HOPE began. In fact, African–American males and females with a 3.1 high school core course grade point average have increased their average Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores by more than 20 points. This indicates that merit‐based aid has improved the quality of K–12 education in Georgia and reduced racial performance disparities by motivating students and their families to commit greater effort to schooling. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Impacts of housing and mortgage market discrimination racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership

Abstract

There are persistent differences in homeownership rates across racial and ethnic groups. Homeownership rates for whites are over 20 percentage points higher than for blacks or Hispanics. This paper uses a model of the housing tenure decision to gain a better understanding of these racial and ethnic differentials in homeownership and employs a decomposition technique that has been applied to labor market discrimination to report the results of the empirical testing of two hypotheses: (1) race (ethnicity) influences the probability of ownership through differences in household endowments (income, education, age, gender, and family type) and market endowments (price and location); and (2) race (ethnicity) directly influences the probability of ownership through racial or ethnic discrimination and other factors that may be correlated with race or ethnicity.

We find endowment effects important in explaining the persistent racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership. In brief, logit analysis of 1989 American Housing Survey (AHS) national sample data reveals that 81 percent (78 percent) of the differences between the predicted probability of ownership between black and white households (Hispanic/non‐Hispanic) are due to differences in group endowments. Direct effects explain 19 percent of the black‐white differentials and 22 percent of the Hispanic/non‐Hispanic differentials. Because the direct effects are modeled as residual differences, it must be realized that the residual components could also be capturing the influence of important omitted or harder to measure variables internal to the market process and correlated with race or ethnicity. These include wealth, household location, employment history, credit history, and cultural predisposition toward homeownership.     

The Effects of Tulsa's Pre‐K Program on Middle School Student Performance

As states have upgraded their commitment to pre‐K education over the past two decades, questions have arisen. Critics argue that program effects are likely to fade out or disappear over time, while supporters contend that program effects are likely to persist under certain conditions. Using data from Tulsa Public Schools, three neighboring school districts, and the state of Oklahoma, and propensity score weighting, we estimate the effects of Tulsa's universal, school‐based pre‐K program on multiple measures of academic progress for middle school students. We find enduring effects on math achievement test scores, enrollment in honors courses, and grade retention for students as a whole, and similar effects for certain subgroups. We conclude that some positive effects of a high‐quality pre‐K program are discernible as late as middle school.     

College Enrollment and Completion Among Nationally Recognized High‐Achieving Hispanic Students

Hispanic high school graduates have lower college completion rates than academically similar white students. As Hispanic students have been theorized to be more constrained in the college search and selection process, one potential policy lever is to increase the set of colleges to which these students apply and attend. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of the College Board's National Hispanic Recognition Program (NHRP), which recognizes the highest‐scoring 11th‐grade Hispanic students on the PSAT/NMSQT, as a mechanism of improving college choice and completion. The program not only informs students about their relative ability, but it also enables colleges to identify, recruit, and offer enrollment incentives. Overall, we find that the program has strong effects on college attendance patterns, shifting students from two‐year to four‐year institutions, as well as to colleges that are out‐of‐state and public flagships, all areas where Hispanic attendance has lagged. NHRP shifts the geographic distribution of where students earn their degree, and increases overall bachelor's completion among Hispanic students who traditionally have had lower rates of success. These results demonstrate that college outreach can have significant impacts on the enrollment choices of Hispanic students and can serve as a policy lever for colleges looking to draw academically talented students.     

Supplying Disadvantaged Schools with Effective Teachers: Experimental Evidence on Secondary Math Teachers from Teach For America

Teach For America (TFA) is an important but controversial source of teachers for hard‐to‐staff subjects in high‐poverty U.S. schools. We present findings from the first large‐scale experimental study of secondary math teachers from TFA. We find that TFA teachers are more effective than other math teachers in the same schools, increasing student math achievement by 0.07 standard deviations over one school year. Addressing concerns about the fact that TFA requires only a two‐year commitment, we find that TFA teachers in their first two years of teaching are more effective than more experienced non‐TFA teachers in the same schools.     

Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City

The Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable incomes. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, we examine whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. We match over 88,000 school-age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records and estimate the impact of vouchers on academic performance through a comparison of students’ performance on standardized tests after voucher receipt to their pre-voucher performance. We exploit the conditionally random timing of voucher receipt to estimate a causal model. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform 0.05 standard deviations better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher. We see significant racial differences in impacts, with small or no gains for black students but significant gains for Hispanic, Asian, and white students. Impacts appear to be driven largely by reduced rent burdens, increased disposable income, or a greater sense of residential security.     

The effect of attending full‐day kindergarten on English learner students

A significant and growing English learner (EL) population attends public schools in the United States. Evidence suggests they are at a disadvantage when entering school and their achievement lags behind non‐EL students. Some educators have promoted full‐day kindergarten programs as especially helpful for EL students. We take advantage of the large EL population and variation in full‐day kindergarten implementation in the Los Angeles Unified School District to examine the impact of full‐day kindergarten on academic achievement, retention, and English language fluency using difference‐in‐differences models. We do not find signficant effects of full‐day kindergarten on most academic outcomes and English fluency through second grade. However, we find that EL students attending full‐day kindergarten were 5 percentage points less likely to be retained before second grade and there are differential effects for several outcomes by student and school characteristics. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

College Guidance for All: A Randomized Experiment in Pre‐College Advising

Pre‐college advising programs exist in most disadvantaged high schools throughout the United States. These programs supplement traditional advising by high school guidance counselors and attempt to help underrepresented and disadvantaged students overcome the complexities of the postsecondary admission and financial aid processes. Existing evidence on these programs often uses within‐school randomization where spillovers and alternative supports may confound estimates. We provide the first evidence on a whole school intervention resulting from a school‐level randomized controlled trial in the United States. The college access program we study uses a near‐peer model where a recent college graduate works at the school assisting students in the application and enrollment process. Pooled results across the first three years of program implementation find no significant impacts on overall college enrollment. However, subgroup analyses reveal positive, significant effects among the groups most targeted by the intervention: Hispanic and low‐income students. Most of the impact comes through increasing two‐year college enrollment, but this appears to be new entrants rather than inducing students to move from four‐year to two‐year colleges. The observed positive effects for these subgroups attenuate over time. We attribute this drop in the estimated impact to departures in fidelity of the experiment. Even among the cohorts for which we find positive enrollment impacts, we find no significant impacts on college persistence.     

The Impact of Providing Vision Screening and Free Eyeglasses on Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Title I Elementary Schools in Florida

More than 20 percent of all school‐aged children in the United States have vision problems, and low‐income and minority children are disproportionately likely to have unmet vision care needs. Vision screening is common in U.S. schools, but it remains an open question whether screening alone is sufficient to improve student outcomes. We implemented a multi‐armed randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of vision screening, and of vision screening accompanied by eye exams and eyeglasses, provided by a non‐profit organization to Title I elementary schools in three large central Florida school districts. We find that providing additional/enhanced screening alone is generally insufficient to improve student achievement in math and reading. In contrast, providing screening along with free eye exams and free eyeglasses to students with vision problems improved student achievement as measured by standardized test scores. We find, averaging over all students (including those without vision problems), that this more comprehensive intervention increased the probability of passing the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Tests (FCATs) in reading and math by approximately 2.0 percentage points. We also present evidence that indicates that this impact fades out over time, indicating that follow‐up actions after the intervention may be necessary to sustain these estimated achievement gains.     

Dual-Credit Courses and the Road to College: Experimental Evidence from Tennessee

Dual-credit courses expose high school students to college-level content and provide the opportunity to earn college credits, in part to smooth the transition to college. With the Tennessee Department of Education, we conduct the first randomized controlled trial of the effects of dual-credit math coursework on a range of high school and college outcomes. We find that the dual-credit advanced algebra course alters students’ subsequent high school math course-taking, reducing enrollment in remedial math and boosting enrollment in precalculus and Advanced Placement math courses. We fail to detect an effect of the dual-credit math course on overall rates of college enrollment. However, the course induces some students to choose four-year universities instead of two-year colleges, particularly for those in the middle of the math achievement distribution and those first exposed to the opportunity to take the course in eleventh rather than twelfth grade. We see limited evidence of improvements in early math performance during college.     

Student Age and the Collegiate Pathway

Using a rich data set of all SAT test takers from the 2004 through 2008 high school graduation cohorts, we investigate the impact of state‐specific school age‐of‐entry laws on students’ pathways into and through college. We document that these laws do not impact the probability that a student takes the SAT; however, we find strong evidence that students who are expected to be the oldest in their school cohorts based on their state residency and birthdays have a greater probability of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam and tend to take more AP exams. We also find that relatively younger students are more likely to attend two‐year colleges before attending four‐year colleges and are less likely to have earned bachelor's degrees four years beyond high school graduation, but eventually catch up to their older peers six years beyond high school graduation.     

Child Poverty,the Great Recession,and the Social Safety Net in the United States

In this paper, we comprehensively examine the effects of the Great Recession on child poverty, with particular attention to the role of the social safety net in mitigating the adverse effects of shocks to earnings and income. Using a state panel data model and data for 2000 to 2014, we estimate the relationship between the business cycle and child poverty, and we examine how and to what extent the safety net is providing protection to at‐risk children. We find compelling evidence that the safety net provides protection; that is, the cyclicality of after‐tax‐and‐transfer child poverty is significantly attenuated relative to the cyclicality of private income poverty. We also find that the protective effect of the safety net is not similar across demographic groups, and that children from more disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those living with Hispanic or single heads, or particularly those living with immigrant household heads—or immigrant spouses—experience larger poverty cyclicality than those living with non‐Hispanic white or married heads, or those living with native household heads with native spouses. Our findings hold across a host of choices for how to define poverty. These include measures based on absolute thresholds or more relative thresholds. They also hold for measures of resources that include not only cash and near‐cash transfers net of taxes but also several measures of the value of public medical benefits.     

Spillover effects of inclusion of classmates with emotional problems on test scores in early elementary school

Over the last decade, the federal government has directed schools to provide educational instruction for students with special needs in general education settings to the extent possible. While there is mixed evidence on the effects of these inclusion policies on the students with special needs, research examining potential spillovers of inclusion on non‐disabled classmates has been scarce. There is particularly little research on the effects of inclusion policies on classmates during early elementary grades. This paper begins to fill in this gap by using a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of kindergartners. Cross‐sectional results suggest that having a classmate with an emotional problem decreases reading and math scores at the end of kindergarten and first grade by over 10 percent of a standard deviation, which is one‐third to one‐half of the minority test score gap. To control for nonrandom sorting of students to schools, as well as students to classrooms, this paper uses school‐level and then student‐level fixed effects. Results from the preferred empirical models suggest a decrease of approximately 5 percent of a standard deviation in math and reading scores, though the reading results are less robust. The results also indicate moderate racial and gender differences in the effects. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.