John R. Swinton

Does in‐service professional learning for high school economics teachers improve student achievement?

Education policy analysts and professional educators have called for more and better professional learning opportunities for in‐service teachers, and for at least 30 years economists called for more content training for high school economics teachers. Using new data from all Georgia high school economics students, we assess the impact of in‐service teacher workshops on the performance of students on a high‐stakes end‐of‐course economics exam. Controlling for student characteristics and teacher fixed effects, we find a positive and significant impact of teacher workshop attendance – once teachers have attended three workshops – on student test scores. Furthermore, the results suggest that in‐service workshops for economics teachers offer a cost‐effective way to provide content training.

Do Peers Influence Achievement in High School Economics? Evidence from Georgia's Economics End of Course Test

The authors provide the first estimates of the impact of peers on achievement in high school economics. The estimates are obtained by analyzing three years of data on all high school students who take Georgias required economics course and its accompanying high-stakes End of Course Test (Georgia Department of Education). They use an instrumental variables approach with teacher-level fixed effects to control for selection bias, simultaneity, measurement error in the measure of peer quality, and nonrandom assignment of teachers to students. The authors find that an increase of one standard deviation in the prior academic achievement of peers increases achievement in economics by 0.03 standard deviation.

Does AP Economics Improve Student Achievement

We employ an empirical approach designed to control for selection issues to estimate the effect of taking Advanced Placement (AP) Economics in high school on student performance on a high-stakes, statewide End-of-Course Test (EOCT). Using data on all Georgia students who took economics from 2006 to 2008, we use propensity score matching to control for the selection of students into AP Economics. Our most conservative estimate makes an adjustment for teacher effects and suggests that students who take high school economics in an AP class score 0.283 standard deviations higher on the economics EOCT than “matched†students who are in high schools that do not offer AP Economics. We find large differences in “AP effects†across subpopulations—in particular, students from low income backgrounds, African Americans, and students who performed poorly in prior mathematics courses benefit the most from AP Economics. All estimates of AP effects are substantially below OLS estimates, suggesting positive selection into AP Economics. The results are robust to different matching techniques for the full sample and all large and medium sized subpopulations. After controlling for teacher effects, the choice of schools as to whether or not to offer AP Economics does not appear to impact estimates of AP effects.

Florida sugar policy and the economics of Everglades restoration

When environmental issues are on a ballot, often voters decide based on heartfelt convictions but incomplete information. Interest groups use voter ignorance to their advantage. The 1996 elections in Florida featured a set of referenda to determine who would fund restoration efforts in the Florida Everglades. This paper analyses the central proposal, a one–cent–per–pound fee on sugar, to determine its impact. We focus on three areas, the impact of the fee on the price of sugar, the amount of money the fee would raise and the amount of sensitive land that the fee would force out of production.

Who Takes AP Economics

This paper provides an analysis of who takes Advanced Placement (AP) Economics. Using two years of administrative data on all high school students who take a course to satisfy Georgia’s graduation requirement in economics, we find large differences in enrollment in AP Economics across groups. Specifically, African-American and Hispanic students and students from low-income backgrounds are about half as likely to be enrolled in AP Economics as other students. However, once we control for prior academic achievement in Geometry, African-American and Hispanic students are overrepresented relative to whites and the difference between low income and other students is reduced significantly. Female students are overrepresented relative to males, and Asian students are overrepresented relative to whites — this latter effect is large. African-American, Hispanic, and especially Asian students are more likely to attend high schools that offer AP Economics. Students living outside of metropolitan Atlanta and students in smaller schools have much less access to AP Economics.

Technology in the Aid of Delivering Economic Content to Teachers: Virtual Economics v. 3

We examine the impact on student achievement of a face-to-face teacher workshop that also provides economics instructors with access to an electronic library of instructional and reference material for their economics classroom—Virtual Economics v. 3 (VE3), offered by the Council for Economic Education. Based on evidence using student and teacher-level administrative data from the Georgia Department of Education and controlling for students’ prior achievement in mathematics, we find evidence that the VE3 workshop experience increases student achievement in high school economics. Our difference-in-differences estimates suggest that teacher participation in the VE3 workshop increases student achievement by 0.061 standard deviations on Georgia’s high stakes economics end-of-course test. Future research should seek estimating the effect of treatments in education such as the VE3 workshop using randomized controlled trials (RCT).