C. Kirabo Jackson

Do College-Prep Programs Improve Long-Term Outcomes?

C. Kirabo Jackson — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:19:31 PST

I analyze the longer-run effects of a college-preparatory program implemented in inner-city schools that included payments to eleventh- and twelfth- grade students and their teachers for passing scores on Advanced Placement exams. Affected students attended college in greater numbers, were more likely to remain in college beyond their first year, more likely to earn a college degree, more likely to be employed, and earned higher wages. This is the first credible evidence that implementing college-preparatory programs in existing urban schools can improve both the long-run educational and labor market outcomes of disadvantaged students.

Do High-School Teachers Really Matter?

C. Kirabo Jackson — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:55:04 PST

Unlike in elementary schools, high-school teacher effects may be confounded with unobserved track-level treatments (such as the AVID program) that are correlated with individual teachers. I present a strategy that exploits detailed course-taking information to credibly estimate the effects of 9th grade Algebra and English teachers on test scores. I document substantial bias due to track-specific treatments and I show that traditional tests for the existence of teacher effects are flawed. After accounting for bias, I find sizable algebra teacher effects and little evidence of English teacher effects. I find little evidence of teacher spillovers across subjects.

Recruiting, Retaining, and Creating Quality Teachers

C. Kirabo Jackson — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:57:43 PST

This article synthesizes the research literature on how to ensure that the teaching workforce is effective. It offers three approaches to improving effectiveness: attract talented individuals into the profession, create incentives for exerting optimal effort, and provide professional development so that teachers have the skills to be effective. The research literature reveals that each approach can yield meaningfully improved student outcomes and that no one strategy is clearly more effective. The policy implication of these findings is that a multifaceted approach would improve teacher effectiveness and student outcomes. However, although there are examples of successful policies, there is no consensus on the most effective practices. The paper concludes that schools need to be data driven, flexible in their employment practices, and open to experimentation.

Do Social Connections Reduce Moral Hazard? Evidence from the New York City Taxi Industry

C. Kirabo Jackson et al. — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:58:44 PST

We investigate the role of social networks in aligning the incentives of agents in settings with incomplete contracts. We study the New York City taxi industry where taxis are often leased and lessee-drivers have worse driving outcomes than owner-drivers due to a moral hazard associated with incomplete contracts. We find that: (1) drivers leasing from members of their country-of-birth community exhibit significantly reduced effects of moral hazard; (2) network effects appear to operate via social sanctions; and (3) network benefits can help to explain the industry organization in terms of which drivers and owners form business relationships.

Single-Sex Schools, Student Achievement, and Course Selection: Evidence from Rule-Based Student Assignments in Trinidad and Tobago

C. Kirabo Jackson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:06:32 PST

Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases because students who attend single-sex schools differ in unmeasured ways from those who do not. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and estimate the causal effect of attending a single-sex school versus a similar coeducational school. While students (particularly females) with strong expressed preferences for single-sex schools benefit, most students perform no better at single-sex schools. Girls at single-sex-schools take fewer sciences courses and more traditionally female subjects.

Match Quality, Worker Productivity, and Worker Mobility: Direct Evidence From Teachers

C. Kirabo Jackson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:19:32 PST

I investigate the importance of the match between teachers and schools for student achievement. I show that teacher effectiveness increases after a move to a different school, and I estimate teacher-school match effects using a mixed-effects estimator. Match quality "explains away" a quarter of, and has two-thirds the explanatory power of teacher quality. Match quality is negatively correlated with turnover, unrelated with exit, and increases with experience. This paper provides the first estimates of worker-firm match quality using output data as opposed to inferring productivity from wages or employment durations. Because teacher wages are essentially unrelated to productivity, this is compelling evidence that workers may seek high-quality matches for reasons other than higher pay.

School Competition and Teacher Labor Markets: Evidence from Charter School Entry in North Carolina

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:39:39 PST

We analyze changes in teacher turnover, hiring, effectiveness, and salaries at traditional public schools after the opening of a nearby charter school. While we find small effects on turnover overall, difficult to staff schools (low-income, high-minority share) hired fewer new teachers and experienced small declines in teacher quality. We also find evidence of a demand side response where schools increased teacher salaries to better retain quality teachers. Our results are robust across a variety of alternate specifications to account for non-random charter entry.

Do Students Benefit From Attending Better Schools?: Evidence From Rule-based Student Assignments in Trinidad and Tobago

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:58:03 PDT

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, leading to large differences in the school environments to which students of differing initial levels of achievement are exposed. This paper uses instrumental variables based on the discontinuities created by the assignment mechanism, and exploits rich data which include the students’ test scores at entry and secondary school preferences to address self-selection bias. I find that attending a better school has large positive effects on examination performance at the end of secondary school. The effects are about twice as large for girls than for boys.

Peer Quality or Input Quality?: Evidence from Trinidad and Tobago

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:18:34 PDT

Using exogenous secondary school assignments to remove self-selection bias to schools and peers, I obtain credible estimates of (1) the effect of attending schools with higher-achieving peers, and (2) the direct effect of peer quality improvements within schools, on the same population. While students at schools with higher-achieving peers have better academic achievement, within-school increases in peer achievement improve outcomes only at high-achievement schools. Estimates suggest that peer quality can account for over half of school value-added among the top quartile of schools, but little value-added for other schools. The results reveal some large and important differences by gender.

Ability-Grouping and Academic Inequality: Evidence From Rule-Based Student Assignments

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:41 PDT

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, leading to large differences in the school environments to which students of differing initial levels of achievement are exposed. Using both a regression discontinuity design and rule-based instrumental variables to address self-selection bias, I find that being assigned to a school with higher-achieving peers has large positive effects on examination performance. These effects are about twice as large for girls than for boys. This suggests that ability-grouping reinforces achievement differences by assigning the weakest students to schools that provide the least value-added.

Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson et al. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:37 PDT

Using student examination data linked to longitudinal teacher personnel data, we document that a teacher’s students have larger test score gains when she experiences an improvement in the observable characteristics of her colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a teacher’s students have larger test score gains when she has more effective colleagues (based on their own students’ achievement gains from an out-of-sample pre-period). A one standard deviation increase in average teacher peer quality is associated with an increase of 0.02 and 0.04 standard deviations in student test score growth in reading and math respectively (about one third of the own-teacher effect). These spillovers are strongest for less experienced teachers, persist over time and teachers perform best when they are the weakest of their peer group– suggesting a peer learning interpretation. Consistent with this interpretation, conditioning on historical peer quality reduces the explanatory power of individual teacher effects by twenty percent.

Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence From the End of School Desegregation

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:29 PDT

The reshuffling of students due to the end of student busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg provides a unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between changes in student attributes and changes in teacher quality that are not confounded with changes in school or neighborhood characteristics. Comparisons of OLS and IV results suggest that the spatial correlation between teachers’ residences, students’ residences and schools could lead to spurious correlation between student attributes and teacher characteristics. The re-shuffling of students led to teacher resorting so that schools that experienced a repatriation of black students experienced a decrease in various measures of teacher quality (including estimated value-added). I provide evidence that this was primarily due to a labor supply response.

Cost Should Be No Barrier: An Evaluation of the First Year of Harvard's Financial Aid Initiative

Christopher Avery et al. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:38:49 PDT

This paper evaluates the first year of Harvard’s Financial Aid Initiative, which increased aid and recruiting for students from low income backgrounds. Using rich data from the Census and administrative sources, we estimate family incomes for the vast majority of plausible applicants from the U.S. We find that the Initiative had a significant effect almost entirely because it attracted a pool of applicants that was larger and slightly poorer. It appears that very similar standards of admission were used for this group as had been used in previous years. This group, once admitted, enrolled at a rate very similar to that of previous years. Thus, there are a greater number of low income students in the Class of 2009 than in the Class of 2008 simply because more well-qualified, low income students applied. Put another way, the initiative did not create a new form of affirmative action–rather, there was an untapped supply of able, low income students. Many apparently qualified students still do not apply, and a disproportionate share of these “missing applicants” come from high schools that have little or no tradition of sending applications to selective private colleges. Targeted outreach to such “one offs” – that is, students who are one of only a few qualified students from their school in recent years – may be a way for selective private colleges to increase their income diversity.

Cash for Test Scores: The impact of the Texas Advanced Placement Incentive Program

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:02:16 PDT

One for the Road: Public Transportation, Alcohol Consumption, and Intoxicated Driving

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson et al. — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:37:11 PST

We exploit arguably exogenous train schedule changes in Washington DC to investigate the relationship between public transportation provision, the risky decision to consume alcohol, and the criminal decision to engage in alcohol–impaired driving. Using a triple differences strategy, we provide evidence that both DUI arrests and alcohol related fatal traffic accidents fell, while alcohol related arrests increased, as a result of the expanded hours of Metro operation. However, we find that these effects may be due, in part, to individuals shifting their drinking to evenings when the Metro offered late night service from other evenings. Furthermore, we provide strong evidence that these effects were localized to areas close to Metro Stations and may reflect spatial shifting. Given evidence of both temporal and geographic shifting, the overall effects of public transportation provision on drinking and DUI behaviors on the entire DC area may be small.

The Effects of a Novel Incentive-Based High-School Intervention on College Outcomes

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:35:06 PST

I analyze the longer-run effects of a program that pays both 11th and 12th grade students and teachers for passing scores on Advanced Placement exams. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that affected students attend college in greater numbers, are more likely to remain in college beyond their freshman year, and have improved college GPAs. Moreover, the program improves college outcomes even for those students who would have enrolled in college without the program. I also find evidence of increased college graduation for black and Hispanic students ─ groups that tend to underperform in college. This evidence suggests that relatively late high-school interventions may confer lasting positive and large effects on student achievement in college, and may be effective at improving the educational outcomes of minority students. The finding of enduring benefits when extrinsic motivators are no longer provided is important in light of concerns that incentive-based-interventions may lead to undesirable practices such as “teaching-to-the-test” and cheating.

A Little Now for a Lot Later: A Look at a Texas Advanced Placement Incentive Program

Clement (Kirabo) Jackson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:40:18 PST

The Texas Advanced Placement Incentive Program pays both students and teachers for passing grades on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. The program was implemented in schools serving primarily low-income, minority populations. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that program adoption is associated with increased AP course enrollment and AP exam taking. Moreover, the program is associated with an increase in students scoring above 1100/24 on the SAT/ACT, and an increase in students matriculating in college. I find no evidence that the rewards distorted behaviors in undesirable ways. I present empirical evidence that teachers and students were not simply aiming to maximize their rewards. This is corroborated by anecdotal evidence that the increases in AP participation were due to better access to AP courses, changes in teacher and peer norms towards AP courses, and better student information. The per-student program costs are small relative to reasonable estimates of the lifetime benefits that may accrue to affected students such that the program may ameliorate sub-optimal educational investments.