We theorized that student test score performance will be positively related to the percentage of school district revenues raised from local taxes and with salary levels of school district administrators. Using both fixed and random effects panel analyses, we examine data for 217 Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 school districts in New Jersey for the years…

In this paper we analyze teacher attrition from Appalachian school districts over nearly twenty years of data. We employ a unique panel of public K-12 teachers active in Kentucky between 1986 and 2005, and discern several patterns of interest to scholars and policymakers. Inter-district mobility is rare in Kentucky, and rarer still among…

The results reported in this paper contribute to the debate about gender skill gaps in at least three ways. First, we document the large differences in early gender gaps across developed countries using a large scale, modern, representative data source. Second, we show that countries with pro-female sorting, countries that place girls in classes…

We decompose annual average years of schooling series for Portugal into different schooling levels series. By estimating a number of vector autoregressions, we provide measures of aggregate and disaggregate economic growth impacts of different education levels. Increasing education at all levels except tertiary has a positive and significant…

In this paper, we study the connection between growth and human capital in a convergence regression for the panel of Italian regions. We include measures of average primary, secondary and tertiary education. We find that increased education seems to contribute to growth only in the South. Decomposing total schooling into its three constituent…

This study uses rich empirical data from Brazil to assess how a government program (PDE) that decentralizes school management decisions changes what goes on in schools and how these changes affect student outcomes. It appears that the PDE resulted in some improvements in management and learning materials, but little change in other areas including…

Because entrepreneurial activity is a key source of economic growth, promoting youth entrepreneurship has become a priority for policymakers. School choice programs force administrators and teachers to be more entrepreneurial in their jobs by encouraging innovation and by creating competition and a more business-like environment in K-12 education.…

We discuss the evidence on the effectiveness of preschool programs using results from three well-known intervention studies: the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, and the Carolina Abecedarian Project. Results from cost-benefit analyses of other programs for younger and older children also are reported. Given that…

Child care and education are to some extent joint products of preschool programs, but public policy and research frequently approach these two goals independently. We present a benefit-cost analysis of a preschool program that provided intensive education during full-day child care. Data were obtained from a randomized trial with longitudinal…

We develop a simple model of teacher behavior that offers a solution to the ''class size puzzle'' and is useful for analyzing the potential effects of the No Child Left Behind Act. When teachers must allocate limited classroom time between multiple instructional methods, rational teachers may respond to reductions in class size by reallocating…

In this paper, we use a unique data set that includes a panel of all teachers in North Carolina over a 4-year period (1996-1997 through 1999-2000) to describe the distribution of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) across classrooms, schools, and districts. The sorting of National Board Certified…

Faced with the evident impossibility of providing free or significantly subsidized secondary and higher education to all, many poor and middle income countries choose to educate only those students who are most promising, using public examinations as means of distributing scarce resources. This paper investigates the inequality implications of…

This paper seeks to examine the impact of education on income growth in India for the time period 1966-1996. Education is broken down into the categories of primary, secondary, and tertiary. Time series techniques are used to determine whether education, for each category, has a causal impact on growth. Furthermore, the education variables are…

The federal role in education finance is commonly seen as compensatory. The federal government gives large sums of money to low-income schools and school districts through programs such as Title 1. Yet, this view of federal aid is based solely on direct educational expenditures. The federal government and state governments also support schools…

Examines the effects of minimum wage on schooling, seeking to reconcile some of the contradictory results in recent research using Current Population Survey data from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Findings point to negative effects of minimum wages on school enrollment, bolstering the findings of negative effects of minimum wages on enrollment…