Martin R. West

Class-Size Effects in School Systems Around the World: Evidence from Between-Grade Variation in TIMSS

To be able to accept high-voltage pulses, in the order of 70 kV, required for re-starting a hot high-power high-pressure discharge lamp, having a power rating, for example, of 6 kW and up, including 12 kW, a ceramic base is provided with auxiliary mica strips or plates (13) positioned between part of the terminal posts or pins, and especially in the region of retentions flanges or rims formed thereon, and extending up to about the end portion (4a) of a pinch or press seal, into which connection leads extend, connected to the pins or posts. The additional mica strips or plates (13), for example located on both sides of a central separating strip (10), retained in suitable grooves or slots (14) formed in the base effectively prevent arc-over, creep currents and corona discharge between the terminal pins or posts (8a, 8b), the circumferentially projecting flanges or rims (16a, 16b) and the connected current supply leads (7a, 7b). Typically, the pins or posts are closer together than the current leads (7a, 7b) at their point of entry into the pinch or press-sealed end (4a) of the lamp bulb (4).

*‘Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School’: Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition and Student Achievement Across Countries

Nineteenth-Century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today. We use this historical pattern as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of contemporary private competition on student achievement in cross-country student-level analyses. Our results show that larger shares of privately operated schools lead to better student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading and to lower total education spending, even after controlling for current Catholic shares.

The Efficacy of Choice Threats Within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments

Stigma and school voucher threats under a revised 2002 Florida accountability law have positive impacts on student performance. Stigma and public school choice threats under the U.S. federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, do not have similar effects in Florida. Significant impacts of stigma, when combined with the voucher threat, are observed on the test score performance of African Americans, those eligible for free lunch, and those with the lowest initial test scores. No significant impacts of the voucher threat on the performances of whites and Hispanics are detected. Estimations rely upon individual-level data and are based upon regression analyses that exploit artificial distinctions created by cliffs within the accountability regimes.

Do More Effective Teachers Earn More Outside of the Classroom

We examine earnings records for more than 130,000 classroom teachers employed by Florida public schools between the 2001–2 and 2006–7 school years, roughly 35,000 of whom left the classroom during that time. A majority of those leaving the classroom remained employed by public school districts. Among teachers in grades 4–8 leaving for other industries, a 1 standard deviation increase in estimated value added to student math and reading achievement is associated with 6–8 percent higher earnings outside teaching. The relationship between effectiveness and earnings is stronger in other industries than it is for the same groups of teachers while in the classroom, suggesting that current teacher compensation systems do not fully account for the higher opportunity wages of effective teachers.

Promise and Paradox: Measuring Students' Non-Cognitive Skills and the Impact of Schooling.

We used self-report surveys to gather information on a broad set of non-cognitive skills from 1,368 eighth graders. At the student level, scales measuring conscientiousness, self-control, grit, and growth mindset are positively correlated with attendance, behavior, and test-score gains between fourth grade and eighth grade. Conscientiousness, self-control, and grit are unrelated to test-score gains at the school level, however, and students attending over-subscribed charter schools score lower on these scales than do students attending district schools. Exploiting admissions lotteries, we find positive impacts of charter school attendance on achievement and attendance but negative impacts on these non-cognitive skills. We provide suggestive evidence that these paradoxical results are driven by reference bias or the tendency for survey responses to be influenced by social context.

School Accountability, Autonomy, Choice, and the Level of Student Achievement

Accountability, autonomy, and choice play a leading role in recent school reforms in many countries. This report provides new evidence on whether students perform better in school systems that have such institutional measures in place. We implement an internationally comparative approach within a rigorous micro-econometric framework that accounts for the influences of a large set of student, family, school, and country characteristics. The student-level data used in the analysis comes from the PISA 2003 international student achievement test that encompasses up to 265,000 students from 37 countries. Our results reveal that different facets of accountability, autonomy, and choice are strongly associated with the level of student achievement across countries. With respect to accountability, students perform better where policies are in place that aim at students (external exit exams), teachers (monitoring of lessons), and schools (assessment-based comparisons). The combined achievement differences amount to more than one and a half PISA grade-level equivalents. Students in schools with hiring autonomy perform better on average, while they perform worse in schools with autonomy in formulating their budget. School autonomy over the budget, salaries, and course contents appears to be more beneficial when external exit exams hold schools accountable for their decisions.

Neuroanatomical Correlates of the Income-Achievement Gap

In the United States, the difference in academic achievement between higher- and lower-income students (i.e., the income-achievement gap) is substantial and growing. In the research reported here, we investigated neuroanatomical correlates of this gap in adolescents (N = 58) in whom academic achievement was measured by statewide standardized testing. Cortical gray-matter volume was significantly greater in students from higher-income backgrounds (n = 35) than in students from lower-income backgrounds (n = 23), but cortical white-matter volume and total cortical surface area did not differ significantly between groups. Cortical thickness in all lobes of the brain was greater in students from higher-income than lower-income backgrounds. Greater cortical thickness, particularly in temporal and occipital lobes, was associated with better test performance. These results represent the first evidence that cortical thickness in higher- and lower-income students differs across broad swaths of the brain and that cortical thickness is related to scores on academic-achievement tests.

Does an Urban Teacher Residency Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence From Boston:

Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) is an innovative practice-based preparation program in which candidates work alongside a mentor teacher for a year before becoming a teacher of record in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The authors found that BTR graduates are more racially diverse than other BPS novices, more likely to teach math and science, and more likely to remain teaching in the district through Year 5. Initially, BTR graduates for whom value-added performance data are available are no more effective at raising student test scores than other novice teachers in English language arts and less effective in math. The effectiveness of BTR graduates in math improves rapidly over time, however, such that by their 4th and 5th years they outperform veteran teachers. Simulations of the program’s overall effect through retention and effectiveness suggest that it is likely to improve student achievement in the district only modestly over the long run.

Cognitive Skills, Student Achievement Tests, and Schools:

Cognitive skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic performance might also improve cognitive skills. To investigate the impact schools have on both academic performance and cognitive skills, we related standardized achievement-test scores to measures of cognitive skills in a large sample (N = 1,367) of eighth-grade students attending traditional, exam, and charter public schools. Test scores and gains in test scores over time correlated with measures of cognitive skills. Despite wide variation in test scores across schools, differences in cognitive skills across schools were negligible after we controlled for fourth-grade test scores. Random offers of enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools resulted in positive impacts of such school attendance on math achievement but had no impact on cognitive skills. These findings suggest that schools that improve standardized achievement-test scores do so primarily through channels other than improving cognitive skills.

Beyond the 30-Million-Word Gap: Children’s Conversational Exposure Is Associated With Language-Related Brain Function:

Children’s early language exposure impacts their later linguistic skills, cognitive abilities, and academic achievement, and large disparities in language exposure are associated with family socioeconomic status (SES). However, there is little evidence about the neural mechanisms underlying the relation between language experience and linguistic and cognitive development. Here, language experience was measured from home audio recordings of 36 SES-diverse 4- to 6-year-old children. During a story-listening functional MRI task, children who had experienced more conversational turns with adults—independently of SES, IQ, and adult-child utterances alone—exhibited greater left inferior frontal (Broca’s area) activation, which significantly explained the relation between children’s language exposure and verbal skill. This is the first evidence directly relating children’s language environments with neural language processing, specifying both an environmental and a neural mechanism underlying SES disparities in children’s language skills. Furthermore, results suggest that conversational experience impacts neural language processing over and above SES or the sheer quantity of words heard.