Cecilia Elena Rouse

Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

In 1990, Wisconsin became the first state in the country to provide vouchers to low income students to attend non-sectarian private schools. In this paper, I use a variety of estimation strategies and samples to estimate the effect of the program on math and reading scores. First, since schools selected students randomly from among their applicants if the school was oversubscribed, I compare the academic achievement of students who were selected to those who were not selected. Second, I present instrumental variables estimates of the effectiveness of private schools (relative to public schools) using the initial selection as an instrumental variable for attendance at a private school. Finally, I used a fixed-effects strategy to compare students enrolled in the private schools to a sample of students from the Milwaukee public schools. I find that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program appears to have had a positive effect on the math achievement of those who attended a private school; but had no benefits for reading scores. I have found the results to be fairly robust to data imputations and sample attrition, however these limitations should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.

Democratization or Diversion? The Effect of Community Colleges on Educational Attainment

Throughout the late 1970s and the early 1980s, over 50% of all first-time first-year college students started in a junior college. Despite such a large role in higher education, we know relatively little about how well they serve their role of providing an education for all who want to attend college. Junior colleges affect educational attainment in two ways. First, the schools provide a place in higher education for those who might not have otherwise attended college, the democratization effect; however, they also draw away some students who might otherwise have attended a four-year college, the diversion effect. The democratization effect is nonnegative; however the effect of diversion on educational attainment is unclear, a priori, as some students might be better off starting in a four-year school. This paper attempts to sort out the overall impact of junior colleges on educational attainment. I use the natural experiment arising from variation in access to junior colleges across cities and states to address the problem of self-selection into types of colleges. This approach is implemented by an instrumental variables strategy in which distance to junior college and average state two-year college tuition are used to instrument for junior college attendance in an educational attainment equation. The results suggest that on net junior colleges increase total years of schooling, but do not change the likelihood of attaining a BA.

Introducing the Issue

Nonmarital childbearing increased dramati- cally in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, changing the context in which American children are raised. The proportion of all children born to unmarried parents grew tenfold over a seventy-year period—from about 4 percent in 1940 to nearly 40 percent in 2007. The overall impact of these changes has been greatest for African Americans and Hispan- ics, with seven out of ten black babies and half of Hispanic babies now being born to unmarried parents. 1

The Effect of Workplace Education on Earnings, Turnover, and Job Performance

This article examines the impact of a workplace education program at two companies (one in the manufacturing sector, the other in the service sector). We examine a broad range of outcome variables, including earnings, turnover, performance awards, job attendance, and subjective performance measures. We estimate a small, positive impact of the program on earnings at the manufacturing company but an insignificant impact at the service company. Trainees were equally likely to exit the company as nontrainees. We also find that the training had a positive association with the incidence of job bids, upgrades, performance awards, and job attendance.

Do accountability and voucher threats improve low-performing schools?

Abstract We study the effects of the threat of vouchers and stigma in Florida on the performance of “low-performing” schools. Estimates of the change in raw test scores from the first year of the reform are consistent with the early results which claimed large improvements associated with the threat of vouchers. However, we also find that much of this estimated effect may be due to other factors. The relative gains in reading are largely explained by changing student characteristics and the gains in math—though larger—appear limited to the high-stakes grade. We also find some evidence that these improvements were due more to the stigma of receiving the low grade rather than the threat of vouchers.

Further estimates of the economic return to schooling from a new sample of twins

In a recent, and widely cited, paper, Ashenfelter and Krueger (1994) use a new sample of identical twins to investigate the contribution of genetic ability to the observed cross-sectional return to schooling. This paper re-examines Ashenfelter and Kruegers estimates using three additional years of the same twins survey. I find that the return to schooling among identical twins is about 10 percent per year of schooling completed. Most importantly, unlike the results reported in Ashenfelter and Krueger, I find that the within- twin regression estimate of the effect of schooling on the log wage is smaller than the cross-sectional estimate, implying a small upward bias in the cross-sectional estimate. Ashenfelter and Kruegers measurement error corrected estimates are insignificantly different from those presented here, however. Finally, there is evidence of an important individual-specific component to the measurement error in schooling reports.

Do two‐year colleges increase overall educational attainment? Evidence from the states

Are two- or four-year colleges more efficient at increasing the educational attainment of young adults? I use state variation in two- and four-year college systems to address this question at the state level. I find that the composition and cost of higher education in a state affect the enrollment decisions of individuals in that state. Further, attending a two-year rather than a four-year college may lower the educational attainment of some students, but more students will benefit from the community college alternative. It also most likely costs the state more to educate a student in a four-year rather than a two-year college. As a result, community colleges provide a potentially efficient way to increase access to higher education as well as increase the overall educational attainment of a states residents.

U.S. Elementary and Secondary Schools: Equalizing Opportunity or Replicating the Status Quo?

Although education pays off handsomely in the United States, children from low-income families attain less education than children from more advantaged families. In this article, Cecilia Elena Rouse and Lisa Barrow investigate why family background is so strongly linked to education. The authors show that family socioeconomic status affects such educational outcomes as test scores, grade retention, and high school graduation, and that educational attainment strongly affects adult earnings. They then go on to ask why children from more advantaged families get more or better schooling than those from less advantaged families. For low-income students, greater psychological costs, the cost of forgone income (continuing in school instead of getting a job), and borrowing costs all help to explain why these students attain less education than more privileged children. And these income-related differences in costs may themselves be driven by differences in access to quality schools. As a result, U.S. public schools tend to reinforce the transmission of low socioeconomic status from parents to children. Policy interventions aimed at improving school quality for children from disadvantaged families thus have the potential to increase social mobility. Despite the considerable political attention paid to increasing school accountability, as in the No Child Left Behind Act, along with charter schools and vouchers to help the children of poor families attend private school, to date the best evidence suggests that such programs will improve student achievement only modestly. Based on the best research evidence, smaller class sizes seem to be one promising avenue for improving school quality for disadvantaged students. High teacher quality is also likely to be important. However, advantaged families, by spending more money on education outside school, can and will partly undo policy attempts to equalize school quality for poor and nonpoor children.

Wage Effects of Unions and Industrial Councils in South Africa

Using data for 1995, the authors estimate union wage premia of about 20% for African workers and 10% for white workers in South Africa—roughly similar to estimates reported for other countries, including the United States. African nonunion workers who were covered by industrial council agreements received a premium of 6–10%; the premium was positive but not statistically significant for whites. Although the union/nonunion wage gap was smaller inside the industrial council system than outside it for Africans, the total union premium for union members covered by an industrial council agreement was similar to the union premium outside the industrial council system. Among Africans, the industrial council and union wage gaps were largest among low-wage workers. These findings, the authors conclude, do not support the common claim that a high union wage premium and the industrial council system are the primary causes of high unemployment in the South African labor market.

The impact of hurricane Katrina on the mental and physical health of low-income parents in New Orleans.

The purpose of this study was to document changes in mental and physical health among 392 low-income parents exposed to Hurricane Katrina and to explore how hurricane-related stressors and loss relate to post-Katrina well-being. The prevalence of probable serious mental illness doubled, and nearly half of the respondents exhibited probable posttraumatic stress disorder. Higher levels of hurricane-related loss and stressors were generally associated with worse health outcomes, controlling for baseline sociodemographic and health measures. Higher baseline resources predicted fewer hurricane-associated stressors, but the consequences of stressors and loss were similar regardless of baseline resources. Adverse health consequences of Hurricane Katrina persisted for a year or more and were most severe for those experiencing the most stressors and loss. Long-term health and mental health services are needed for low-income disaster survivors, especially those who experience disaster-related stressors and loss.