Author: Vasudha RangaprasadPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic achievement
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
My dissertation examines the determinants of school quality and its impact on student achievement. The first essay studies the impact of class size on student achievement. The impact of class size on student achievement remains an open question despite hundreds of empirical studies and the perception amongst parents, teachers, and policymakers that larger classes are a significant detriment to student development. This essay attempts to shed new light on this ambiguity by explicitly recognizing the distributed nature of educational outcomes. This paper utilizes recently developed nonparametric tests for stochastic dominance to uniformly rank entire distributions of test scores. Moreover, by using bootstrap techniques, we are able to report the results of the dominance tests to a degree of statistical certainty. This type of analysis is very useful for policy decisions as it lends itself to broad-based, consensus ranking of outcomes. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we estimate the effects of eighth and tenth grade class size on the unconditional and conditional distributions of contemporaneous test scores, subsequent test scores, and test score gains. The results are quite surprising. First, after controlling for a host of determinants of student achievement, we find compelling evidence suggesting that students benefit from relatively large classes. Second, we document several instances where the relationship between student achievement and class size is non-monotonic. Finally, these conclusions are unaltered when we allow for heterogeneous effects of class size by student race or subject matter. In my second essay, I address questions regarding school competition using a spatial autoregressive model. Education reforms involving expanded school choice are receiving increased attention. Many view the heightened competition that would presumably result from such reforms as a panacea for the ills currently plaguing the US public education system. However, the present system is not devoid of competition even absent such reforms; public schools compete for students through the Tiebout (1956) process. Thus, this essay seeks to answer two questions: (i) Does competition alter the behavior of public school districts? and (ii) Do public school districts compete with neighboring public school districts? To answer such questions, we utilize panel data from Illinois over the period 1990-2000 and estimate a multi-dimensional mixed regressive, spatial autoregressive model via instrumental variables, thereby eliminating the possibility of confounding strategic competition with spatial error correlation. The data come from two sources: the Common Core of Data and the Census of Population and Housing. We find robust evidence that public school districts incorporate the educational input decisions of other public school districts in the same county into their decision calculus, thereby acting strategically when setting own input levels. Thus, reforms leading to expansion of school choice would not introduce competition into the US school system, but rather would at best accentuate the level of competition. The third essay examines the impact of peer group effects on student achievement. The current empirical evidence on the magnitude of these effects is, however, inconclusive. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, I assess the impact of peer group influences on the test scores of tenth grade students using school-by-subject specific fixed effects models, as well as a Generalized Methods of Moments approach (via instrumental variables) to account for potential endogeneity of the peer group formation. The results are striking. In particular, I fail to uncover widespread evidence in favor of positive peer group effects. The OLS estimations yield strong and positive effects of peer group achievement on test score gains. When I account for potential endogeneity of peer group formation via instrumental variables and fixed effects these effects disappear. In addition, the dispersion of peer group achievement has no systematic influence on achievement growth. Moreover, I find no evidence supporting the hypothesis that peer effects have differential impacts in schools in which tracking is present. The only exception to the above findings is in models that control for both peer effects and tracking, and allow the effect of each to differ according to student ability. In this case, while the impact of tracking is not found to be substantially different in tracked versus nontracked schools, the results are consistent with a nonuniform effect of tracking on achievement across students of different abilities. Finally, these fundamental conclusions are not substantially altered when I allow for changes in the definitions of peer group effect and tracking.