Changing the incentives students face is one lever for educators and policymakers to improve student learning in the presence of student disengagement. A statewide postsecondary admission policy which changes minimum college admissions standards for North Carolina high school students wishing to attend college in-state provides a setting to test how student effort responds to incentive structures. Regression discontinuity estimates show that students respond to the admission policy by increasing GPA and decreasing absences and suspensions. These effects suggest an increase in student engagement, however, the boost in GPA is driven by changes in course composition, with students substituting away from more demanding coursework. These unintended consequences of admission policies on student course-taking decisions can lead students to miss important learning opportunities in high school, possibly generating detrimental effects on student postsecondary success.

Emergent literacy skills are a critical base for later academic success. Since gaps in reading skills appear as early as kindergarten, pre-K programs are compelled to increase the quality of whole class literacy instruction and to provide additional personalized support as needed. Given that additional personnel are needed to do both, there is a policy tension: hiring certified specialists that follow an evidence-based approach or utilizing a more affordable option that uses unpaid volunteer instructors where quality may be mixed. In this study, we explore an alternative emergent literacy model called the Minnesota Reading Corps (MRC) Pre-K Program and analyze its associated costs. The MRC Pre-K model places stipend AmeriCorps members into existing pre-K classrooms and integrates coaching and supervisory support from certified instructors, making enhanced whole-class literacy instruction and at-risk support possible. Using the ingredients method (Levin et al., 2018), we estimate that the average incremental cost per student of the MRC Pre-K Program is approximately $1,300 per year. We find that the majority of costs are borne by the MRC program (38%), with a much smaller portion of the costs borne by schools (25%), primarily from a reallocation of school staff time. These results demonstrate the opportunity of MRC with trained AmeriCorps members to increase early literacy support at a low-cost to schools.oes here

It is well understood that adverse economic shocks affect workers nonuniformly. We explore a new channel through which unequal employment outcomes may emerge during a downturn: the extensive margin of establishment deaths. Intuitively, workers who are concentrated in less resilient establishments prior to an economic decline will be disproportionately affected by its onset. Using rich employment and establishment data, we show that black workers bore the brunt of the Great Recession in terms of within-industry employment changes arising from establishment deaths. This finding has important implications for the evolution of worker disparities during future downturns.

Benefit–cost analysis is an important part of regulatory decision-making, yet there are questions as to how often and how well it is performed. Here we examine 28 Regulatory Impact Assessments performed by the federal government on education regulations since 2006. We find many Regulatory Impact Assessments estimated costs, albeit using informal methods, but most failed to adequately report benefits. Also, most studies did not estimate net present value or clearly report methodological assumptions. In reviewing the relatively high quality studies we identified a number of discrepancies from best practice. Most importantly, few Regulatory Impact Assessments attempted a social benefit–cost analysis: Most examined “administrative burdens” from compliance with legislation. This alternative focus on administrative burdens has significant implications for economic evaluation in practice.

While local governments generally offer large tax incentives to corporations to locate in their jurisdictions, firm entry is expected to increase local property value. Public schools in the United States obtain over a third of their funding through local property tax receipts, which are determined by the size of the taxable base and value of local property. Thus, the net impact of attracting a large firm to a county on public school funding is ambiguous. In this paper, we estimate the effect of large firm openings on the public school funding and expenditures. We link Million Dollar Plant (MDP) data on the locations large companies consider in their site search to data on school district revenue, expenditure, and staffing decisions from the U.S. Common Core of Data. This data structure facilitates estimating the impact of corporate location decisions with a dynamic difference-in-differences (DiD) research design. We estimate that the arrival of a MDP increases school district property tax collections by over 7% per enrolled student starting two years after the firm's location decision and persisting through at least 7 years after the announcement. School districts spend the additional revenue on hiring new teachers. Seven years after the arrival of the MDP, school districts employ 6% more teachers per pupil.

While standardized testing requirements for admission to selective universities in the U.S. are ubiquitous and an important determinant of admission decisions, the past years have seen an overwhelming adoption of test-optional admission policies of campuses across the country. Nevertheless, little is known about the implications of test-optional admissions for application behavior and admission decisions. This paper leverages unique and rich administrative admissions data from one the most highly ranked and selective public universities in the U.S. to understand two important dimensions of test-optional admissions: test submission and its effect on the likelihood of admission. I find evidence of strategic test submission, with lower scores decreasing the probability of submission. Furthermore, I find that on average, applicants who submit a test do not receive a boost in their chances of admission.

Over the last decade, graduation rates and grade point averages in U.S. high schools have steadily increased, yet student achievement and college enrollment rates have remained stagnant. While increased grade leniency is one likely driver of these trends, its implications on student learning and success are not well understood. This paper fills this gap in two ways: first, by developing a theoretical model of student responses to changes in grading standards, and second, by investigating the effects on achievement and engagement induced by a statewide policy that relaxed grading standards for all students. Under a fuzzy regression discontinuity research design that leverages variation from kindergarten entry rules, we find that increased grade leniency leads to increases in student GPA by 0.27 points, with no effects on student achievement. At the same time, more lenient grading standards lead to increases in absences. We uncover stark heterogeneity of effects across student ability. Students at the top of the 8th grade performance distribution are the main drivers of the gains in GPA, while students at the bottom end of the distribution drive the increase in absences.