Gregory Gilpin

The Quantity and Quality of Teachers: Dynamics of the Trade-off

The paper addresses the two-fold rise in teacher-student ratio in the American K-12 school system in the post-World War II period accompanied by the evidence of a decline in the relative quality of teachers. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium framework for analyzing the teacher quantity-quality trade-off and offer an explanation to the observed trends. Our OLG model features two stages of education: basic and advanced (college), the latter required of teachers. The cost of hiring teachers is influenced by the outside opportunities for college graduates in the production sector. We show that the latter factor strengthens in the process of endogenous growth and that it affects the optimal trade-off between quantity and quality of teachers such that the number of teachers hired will grow over time while their relative, but not the absolute, human capital attainment will fall. This is accompanied by increasing inequality, among the group of college educated workers in particular. We show that this effect, which we call the rising talent premium, applies whether teacher salaries are determined based on merit pay or, alternatively, by collective bargaining. Moreover, the salary compression characterizing the collective bargaining regime has an additional effect exacerbating the loss of the more talented workers by the teaching profession. Further, we analyze a comparative dynamics effect of exogenous skill-biased technological change which raises the college premium. We show that the effect is detrimental to the aggregate quality of teachers and to the quality of basic education. An important insight from this analysis is that in the process of human capital driven economic growth the rise in premium for high ability outpaces that for the average, whereby this effect is accelerated by technological change. This puts a downward pressure on the “real” quality of education inputs and therefore can create a negative feedback effect on human capital development as a factor of economic growth.

Reevaluating the Effect of Non-Teaching Wages on Teacher Attrition

Most researchers find that the non-teaching wage has a significant effect on teacher attrition. Surprisingly no study that estimates this effect actually uses former teachers? wages. The use of aggregate wage data can potentially cause upward bias coefficients due to selection issues. Using wages of former teachers in a simultaneous probit-tobit system of equations, the effect is estimated and found to be insignificant. The results indicate that higher teaching wages and student teaching significantly lower attrition while being attacked or threatened during the previous school year and whether the teacher lives in a household with income above

Why Have For-Profit Colleges Expanded so Rapidly? The Role of Labor Market Changes in Student Enrollment and Degree Completion at Two-Year Colleges

40,000 significantly increase attrition.

Crime and punishment: the role of student body characteristics in schools’ disciplinary behaviours

This paper investigates the six-fold increase in student enrollment and three-fold increase in degree completions at for-profit colleges over the last two decades. In particular, we examine the hypothesis that for-profit colleges have more flexibility to respond to market changes, attracting growing shares of students. Using a panel dataset, we examine the effects of local labor market conditions for broad occupation groups on student enrollment and degree completion in related majors. We find that the share of majors at for-profit colleges is related to employment growth and wages in related occupations, but the effects are negligible at community colleges.

Compulsory Schooling Laws and In-School Crime: Are Delinquents Incapacitated?

ABSTRACT Discretion in schools’ discipline choices can provide an efficient and effective misconduct management structure, but could lead to discipline based on unrelated factors. Consequently, schools’ disciplinary decisions can significantly limit students’ access to education by removing students from familiar learning environments. We investigate schools’ disciplinary decisions for serious misconducts and show that punishments are more severe in schools that do not report misconducts to local law enforcement agencies. Moreover, we show that schools that report fewer misconducts to law enforcement impose more severe punishments when the student body is characterized as having a higher proportion of minority students, lower socioeconomic status students and a higher proportion of students who are below the 15th percentile of standardized test scores. These results suggest that between-school punishment differentials are associated with student body traits.

High-speed Internet Growth and the Demand for Locally Accessible Information Content

Minimum dropout age (MDA) laws have been touted as effective policies to bring dropouts off streets and into classrooms. One question to better understand the costs and benefits of these laws is: to what extent do MDA laws displace crime from streets to schools? This research expands the compulsory schooling literature and extends the sparse research on in-school crime by studying how MDA laws affect crimes committed in U.S. public high schools. The analysis is conducted using a difference-in-difference estimator exploiting variation in state-level MDA laws over time. The results indicate that an increase in the MDA to 18 significantly increases in-school crime by 0.434 incidences per 1,000 students or a 6.2% increase. Analyzing specific crime types, the results find that attacks without a weapon, threats without a weapon, and illegal drug incidences increase by 0.627, 0.588 and 0.437 incidences (or 12.2%, 36.3%, and 43.4% increase), respectively. An increase in the MDA to 17 is found to have no effect on in-school crime. The results are robust across different socioeconomic student bodies and control groups. Lastly, we find that in-school crime prevention resources do not increase with an increase in the MDA, but that utilization rates of suspensions and expulsions change in the direction of fortifying state policymakers efforts to keep juveniles in schools.

On understanding inconsistent disciplinary behaviour in schools

Proximity to information resources has repeatedly been shown to affect urban development. However, individuals’ increased abilities to access information content electronically may have dampened urban areas’ comparative advantage of proximity-driven knowledge flows. We investigate the effects of increased high-speed Internet access on the role of information proximity by modeling changes in the demands for locally-based information resources, exploiting variation in the use of US public libraries—the most common low-cost providers of locally accessible information content. Data describing a nearly comprehensive set of US public libraries during 2000–2008 provide empirical evidence of complementary growth in Internet access and the use of public library resources, suggesting that Internet access increases the value of locally accessible information content and overall information demand. Moreover, the complementarity is found to be largest in metropolitan areas, indicating that improved Internet access in locations with greatest proximity and information spillover effects are likely to experience more substantial economic impacts.

Compulsory schooling laws and school crime

Inconsistent disciplinary administration across schools can inequitably impact students’ education access opportunities by separating certain students from familiar learning environments, especially in misconduct cases that result in longer-term removal. We empirically estimate whether such inconsistencies are attributable to heterogeneity in student body demographic characteristics. The results indicate that a greater number of disciplines that remove students from school for an extended period of time are observed in schools with a higher proportion of black students, but no significant differential punishment effects are observed in schools with a higher Hispanic student population. Furthermore, results of decomposing the marginal effects into conditional and unconditional elasticities indicate that it is not the case that schools with predominantly white student bodies have the least severe punishments and schools with more minority students have the most severe punishments. Rather, schools with inconsistent disciplinary behaviour have a proportion of the inconsistency attributable to the race of the student body.

Cost-effective hiring in US high schools: estimating optimal teacher quantity and quality decisions

Extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment, well-being, civic involvement, and labour market outcomes. However, at-risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety. The purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age (MDA) requirement above 16 increases crime committed within US public high schools. A difference-in-difference estimation exploits changes in state-level MDA laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not, while no effect on overall crime is identified when the MDA requirement is raised to 17. Furthermore, these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas. Coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the MDA requirement is raised to 18, only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is displaced to schools. Analysis by category of crime reveals schools incur more physical attacks, no change in illegal drug and property crimes, and fewer violent crimes in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18, while illegal drug crimes increase in states that raise their MDA requirement to 17.

Employer-Sponsored Education Assistance and MBA Quality: An Application of the Alchian-Allen Substitution Hypothesis

Extensive literature has shown that student attainment outcomes are affected by student-to-teacher ratios and overall teacher aptitude levels, but offers little information about which method offers the greatest student attainment return relative to associated costs. This study provides empirical evidence that staffing policies should consider the cost-effectiveness of teacher-hiring decisions when multiple education policies are effective.