John H. Tyler

Finishing High School: Alternative Pathways and Dropout Recovery.

John Tyler and Magnus Lofstrom take a close look at the problems posed when students do not complete high school. The authors begin by discussing the ongoing, sometimes heated, debate over how prevalent the dropout problem is. They note that one important reason for discrepancies in reported dropout rates is whether holders of the General Educational Development (GED) credential are counted as high school graduates. The authors also consider the availability of appropriate student data. The overall national dropout rate appears to be between 22 and 25 percent, but the rate is higher among black and Hispanic students, and it has not changed much in recent decades. Tyler and Lofstrom conclude that schools are apparently doing about as well now as they were forty years ago in terms of graduating students. But the increasingly competitive pressures associated with a global economy make education ever more important in determining personal and national well-being. A student’s decision to drop out of school, say the authors, is affected by a number of complex factors and is often the culmination of a long process of disengagement from school. That decision, not surprisingly, carries great cost to both the student and society. Individual costs include lower earnings, higher likelihood of unemployment, and greater likelihood of health problems. Because minority and low-income students are significantly more likely than well-to-do white students to drop out of school, the individual costs fall unevenly across groups. Societal costs include loss of tax revenue, higher spending on public assistance, and higher crime rates. Tyler and Lofstrom go on to survey research on programs designed to reduce the chances of students’ dropping out. Although the research base on this question is not strong, they say, close mentoring and monitoring of students appear to be critical components of successful programs. Other dropout-prevention approaches associated with success are family outreach and attention to students’ out-of-school problems, as well as curricular reforms. The authors close with a discussion of second-chance programs, including the largest such program, the GED credential.

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Effect of School‐Year Work on High School Achievement

This article uses variation in the labor supply of twelfth‐grade students created by interstate variations in child labor laws to estimate the effect of school‐year work on twelfth‐grade math achievement. The instrumental variable estimates in this article indicate that an exogenous decrease in school‐year hours worked of 10 hours per week would result in a 0.2 standard deviation increase in math scores. Comparisons to ordinary least squares estimates suggest that failure to account for the endogeneity of the labor supply decisions of high school students will result in underestimates of the negative impact of school‐year work on academic achievement.

Basic Skills and the Earnings of Dropouts

This paper quantifies the extent to which basic skills matter for young dropouts entering todays labor market. Estimates indicate that for dropouts who were age 16-18 when they took a high stakes test in the late 1990s, a standard deviation increase in scores is associated with earnings that are 9 percent higher in the first three years in the labor market. These results are the first direct evidence that young dropouts in todays economy are not relegated to jobs where cognitive skills are not rewarded, and they stress the importance of skill acquisition for students who may eventually drop out.

Does the G.E.D. improve earnings? Estimates from a sample of both successful and unsuccessful G.E.D. candidates

The author uses a unique data set constructed from Florida General Education Development certificate (GED) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) administrative records to estimate the relative earnings of two groups of male high school dropouts who took the GED exams in 1995: those who passed the exams, obtaining the credential, and those who failed the exams. Estimates from several different specifications all show greater mean quarterly earnings growth among those who obtained a GED than among unsuccessful candidates. The advantage was small in dollar terms—only about

Does Prison-Based Adult Basic Education Improve Postrelease Outcomes for Male Prisoners in Florida?

1,400 annually, six years after the exams—but, given the very low initial earnings of these school dropouts, it was large in relative terms, growing from zero immediately after the 1995 exams to 13–20% six years later. Most of these gains appear to reflect not differential wage growth between the two groups, but a differential rate of movement from non-employment to employment.

IF YOU BUILD IT WILL THEY COME? TEACHERS' ONLINE USE OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE DATA

The authors use administrative data from Florida to determine the extent to which prison-based adult basic education (ABE) improves inmate’s postrelease labor market outcomes, such as earnings and employment. Using two nonexperimental comparison groups, the authors find evidence that ABE participation is associated with higher postrelease earnings and employment rates, especially for minorities. The authors find that the relationship is the largest for ABE participants who had uninterrupted ABE instruction and for those who received other education services. However, the results do not find any positive effects of ABE participation on reducing recidivism.

Does MSP Participation Increase the Supply of Math Teachers? Developing and Testing an Analytic Model.

Testing of students and computer systems to store, manage, analyze, and report the resulting test data have grown hand-in-hand. Extant research on teacher use of electronically stored data are largely qualitative and focused on the conditions necessary (but not sufficient) for effective teacher data use. Absent from the research is objective information on how much and in what ways teachers use computer-based student test data, even when supposed precursors of usage are in place. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by analyzing the online activities of teachers in one mid-size urban district. Utilizing Web logs collected between 2008 and 2010, I find low teacher interaction with Web-based pages that contain student test information that could potentially inform practice. I also find no evidence that teacher usage of Web-based student data are related to student achievement gains, but there is reason to believe these estimates are downwardly biased.

Modeling the Signaling Value of the GED With an Application to an Exogenous Passing Standard Increase in Texas

An important feature of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program of the National Science Foundation is to increase K-12 student achievement in math and science by increasing the quality, quantity, and diversity of the nations K-12 math and science teachers. Because the underlying supply of math and science teachers is never directly observed, the central premise of this article is that an examination of the extent to which the MSP Program might impact the quantity and quality of math and science teachers requires careful thought and modeling. With that starting point, this study first develops a model that supports a premise that shifts in underlying supply can be inferred from shifts in the percentage of certified math teachers employed when (a) salaries are constrained to be below market clearing salaries and (b) uncertified or “out-of-field” certified teachers can compete as substitutes for certified math teachers. The study then tests the plausibility of the model using data from Texas and in so doing provides preliminary estimates of the extent to which a school or school districts MSP participation affected the supply of certified math teaches available to that school or district. The results, although inconclusive on the question of the labor supply effects of MSP participation by a school or school district, do suggest the reasonableness of the model for future work when more appropriate data will be available.

How important are the cognitive skills of teenagers in predicting subsequent earnings

In this paper we develop a simple model of the signaling value of the GED credential. The model illustrates necessary assumptions for a difference-in-difference estimator, which uses a change in the GED passing standard, to yield unbiased estimates of the signaling value of the GED for marginal passers. We apply the model to the national 1997 passing standard increase which affected GED test takers in Texas. We utilize unique data from the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP) which contain demographic and GED test score information from the Texas Education Agency linked to pre- and post-test taking Unemployment Insurance quarterly wage records from the Texas Workforce Commission. Comparing Texas dropouts who acquired a GED before the passing standard was raised in 1997 to dropouts with the same test scores who failed the GED exams after the passing standard hike, we find no evidence of a positive GED signaling effect on earnings. However, we find some evidence which suggest that our finding may be due to the low GED passing threshold that existed in Texas for an extended period.