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This paper assesses the reliability and validity of cognitive and socioemotional skills measures and investigates the correlation between schooling, skills acquisition, and labor earnings. The primary data from Pakistan incorporates two innovations related to measurement and sampling. On measurement, the paper develops and implements a battery of instruments intended to capture cognitive and socioemotional skills among young adults. On sampling, the paper uses a panel that follows respondents from their original rural locations in 2003 to their residences in 2018, a period over which 38 percent of the respondents left their native villages. In terms of their validity and reliability, our skills measures compare favorably to previous measurement attempts in low- and middle-income countries. The following are documented in the data: (a) more years of schooling are correlated with higher cognitive and socioemotional skills; (b) labor earnings are correlated with cognitive and socioemotional skills as well as years of schooling; and (c) the earnings-skills correlations depend on respondents' migration status. The magnitudes of the correlations between schooling and skills on the one hand and earnings and skills on the other are consistent with a widespread concern that such skills are under-produced in the schooling system. [This report was prepared by the World Bank Group's Development Research Group, Development Economics. Funding was provided by RISE and World Bank's Strategic Research Program Fund.]

This report presents a holistic approach to understanding and comparing vocational education and training (VET) systems. The approach has been developed jointly by a group of interdisciplinary VET researchers over a 5-year period as part of Cedefop's research on the future of VET and has been reviewed several times. The framework introduces 50 dimensions for analysing VET systems, as well as parts of them, structured according to three overlapping main perspectives: epistemological and pedagogical, education system, and socioeconomic or labour market. The framework is particularly suited to 'clearing the ground' for policy work and provides a model for how research can support policy. This model can be flexibly adapted and applied in any comparative research or international policy learning activity related to VET. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmungsberatung (Austria). The consortium includes Ockham IPS (the Netherlands) and the Fondazione Giacomo Brodolino (Italy). The German Federal Institute of Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) supports the project as sub-contractor. For "The Changing Nature and Role of Vocational Education and Training in Europe. Volume 1: Conceptions of Vocational Education and Training--An Analytical Framework. Cedefop Research Paper. No 63," see ED586251.]

The purpose of this occasional paper is to compare point estimates and trends included in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Panel Study annual report: "National Data on Substance Use among Adults Ages 19 to 60, 1976-2021" prepared using historical post-stratification weights, with the same point estimates and trends obtained when using MTF age-specific panel analysis weights. The current report is organized into four sections: (1) Part 1: Overview of Old and New Weighting Methods; (2) Comparison Approach and Summary; (3) Differences Observed Between Old and New Weighting Approaches, by Substance; and (4) Updated Panel Report Figures and Tables. Evaluating the impact of the new MTF panel analysis weights on point estimates and trends reported in the MTF panel annual report for 1976-2021 indicates that, overall, 63.1% of all point estimate comparisons exhibited less than a |5%| mean change between weighting approaches. Further, no trend comparisons indicated a sign flip, and 87.1% were substantively unchanged in regards to trend significance. [For "National Data on Substance Use among Adults Ages 19 to 60, 1976-2021," see ED623992.]

While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, our difference-indifferences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

India has the second largest higher education system in terms of institutions worldwide, despite having only 26.3% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), including vocational education. It aspires to achieve a target of 50% GER by 2035. It means it would require a larger number of higher education institutions (HEIs), public and private, in addition to huge fiscal resources. At present about 75% of the HEIs are privately managed with about 66% of student enrolment. Though there is no provision of for-profit higher education institutions in India, many non-profit private HEIs are actually working as for-profit. They are growing fast and are visible too. Therefore, it is high time now to think seriously about the pros and cons, causes and consequences of for-profit and nonprofit private HEIs in India. India provides a big market for non-profit and for-profit higher education to domestic and foreign stakeholders. Already 160 foreign universities are working in collaboration with public or private limited companies in India. This essay provides an analysis of issues related to for-profit and nonprofit HEIs, including desirability, size, funding, transparency, accountability, quality, feasibility and sustainability, government policies, regulation, foreign collaborations, private investments, and incentives. The methodology adopted is analytical, comparative, and empirical.

Measures of student disadvantage--or risk--are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little innovation in these measures for decades. We develop a new measure of student risk for use in education policies, which we call Predicted Academic Performance (PAP). PAP is a flexible, data-rich indicator that identifies students at risk of poor academic outcomes. It blends concepts from emerging "early warning" systems with principles of incentive design to balance the competing priorities of accurate risk measurement and suitability for policy use. PAP is more effective than common alternatives at identifying students who are at risk of poor academic outcomes and can be used to target resources toward these students--and students who belong to several other associated risk categories--more efficiently.

Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems to assign students to schools. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. The latter is often criticized for harming disadvantaged families who fail to get access to popular schools. This paper investigates the effect of the national ban of the IA mechanism in England in 2008. Before the ban, 49 English local authorities used DA and 16 used IA. All IA local authorities switched to DA afterwards, giving rise to a cross-market difference-in-differences research design. Our results show that the elimination of IA reduces measures of school quality for low-SES students more than high-SES students. After the ban, low-SES students attend schools with lower value-added and more disadvantaged and low-achieving peers. This effect is primarily driven by a decrease in low-SES admissions at selective schools. Our findings point to an unintended consequence of the IA to DA transition: by encouraging high-SES parents to report their preferences truthfully, DA increases competition for top schools, which crowds out low-SES students.

Has the gap in average standardized test scores between students from high- and low-income families widened, narrowed, or remained stable over the last 3 decades? The question is important both because the achievement gap is measure of how (un)equally educational opportunities are distributed in the US, and because the disparity in educational outcomes is a leading indicator of the degree of economic mobility. If the gap is widening, it suggests that children's educational experiences and opportunities in early and middle childhood -- in their homes, neighborhoods, childcare and preschool programs, and K-12 schools -- are becoming increasingly unequal, a sign that the growing economic inequality in the US has led to a parallel growth in educational inequality. A narrowing gap, however, would suggest the opposite: changes in early childhood or K-12 schooling have been equity-enhancing, even in the face of increased economic inequality among families. And because test scores and the skills they measure are valued in college admissions and the labor market, the trend in the test score gap may predict the trend in economic mobility several decades later.

In recent ACT mode comparability studies, students testing on laptop or desktop computers earned slightly higher scores on average than students who tested on paper, especially on the ACT® reading and English tests (Li et al., 2017). Equating procedures adjust for such "mode effects" to make ACT scores comparable regardless of testing mode. However, it remains possible that the mode effects are different for different groups of students. For example, differences in performance between paper and online testing may be different for groups with different levels of comfort taking tests on computers. Thus, a general mode adjustment may be inappropriate. The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of differential mode effects by gender, race/ethnicity, and ability using data from three recent mode comparability studies (Steedle, Pashley, & Cho, 2020). Results indicated that mode effects in English, reading, math, and science did not vary significantly between genders or race/ethnicity groups. Analyses detected significant interactions between mode effects and ability because mode effects tended to be smaller for lower ability examinees. Fortunately, equating processes appropriately adjust scores for differential mode effects by ability.

Do Americans hold a consistent set of opinions about their public schools and how to improve them? From 2013 to 2018, over 5,000 unique respondents participated in more than one consecutive iteration of the annual, nationally representative "Education Next" poll, offering an opportunity to examine individual-level attitude stability on education policy issues over a six-year period. The proportion of participants who provide the same response to the same question over multiple consecutive years greatly exceeds the amount expected to occur by chance alone. We also find that teachers offer more consistent responses than their non-teaching peers. By contrast, we do not observe similar differences in attitude stability between parents of school-age children and their counterparts without children.

Prior work has documented a substantial penalty associated with taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online relative to on paper (Backes & Cowan, 2019). However, this penalty does not necessarily make online tests less useful. For example, it could be the case that computer literacy skills are correlated with students' future ability to navigate high school coursework, and thus more predictive of later outcomes. Using a statewide implementation of PARCC in Massachusetts, we test the relative predictive validity of online and paper tests. We are unable to detect a difference between the two and in most cases can rule out even modest differences. Finally, we estimate mode effects for the new Massachusetts statewide assessment. In contrast to the first years of PARCC implementation, we find very small mode effects, showing that it is possible to implement online assessments at scale without large online penalties.

This paper estimates private and social returns to investment in education in Azerbaijan, using the 2015 Azerbaijan Monitoring Survey for Social Welfare. The private rate of return to education is 6 percent; this is the first estimate of returns to schooling in Azerbaijan since 1995. The returns to schooling are 6 percent for men and 8 percent for women, even controlling for selection. In addition, the paper estimates the returns for higher education; for this level, the rate of return is 9 percent. Finally, using the full discount method, the private rate of return to tertiary education is 9 percent, and the social rate of return is 8 percent. One policy implication is to re-examine the funding of higher education and for its expansion. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California's CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students' SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students' growth in SEL appears similar to impacts on students' growth in ELA and math, although the growth models of SEL do not perform as well as growth models of academic outcomes. Results suggest that across-classroom-within-school impacts may be larger in magnitude than across-school impacts on students' SEL growth. Finally, we show that there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in ELA or math; however, growth mindset stands apart from the other three SEL constructs in that there is a moderately strong relationship. By assessing whether we can develop a sound approach for measuring classroom-level impacts on students' SEL, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about appropriate and innovative uses of data on students' non-cognitive and social-emotional learning. [For the policy brief, "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?," see ED600449.]

This study finds that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago. This descriptive analysis is designed to be understood by a general, non-technical readership. It primarily compares student achievement gains on the NAEP after implementation of Common Core to student achievement gains in the years preceding implementation of Common Core. Since test score results, by their nature, tend to "bounce" somewhat from one year to the next and gains are rarely perfectly smooth, a significant part of the analysis determines the average annual gain since implementation of Common Core and compares that to the average annual gain before implementation of Common Core. This report also includes a section addressing defenses by Common Core advocates denying responsibility for the poor results. The following state samples are included: (1) California; (2) Florida; (3) Georgia; (4) Illinois; (5) Kentucky; (6) Massachusetts; and (7) New York.

We study the effects of exposure to non-resident students on the outcomes of undergraduate in-state students during a period of high non-resident enrollment growth at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Our models leverage within-major, cross-time variation in nonresident exposure for identification. We find no evidence that increased exposure to domestic non-residents affects in-state student outcomes and our null results are precisely estimated. We find evidence of modest negative impacts on in-state students when their exposure to foreign students increases using our preferred specification. However, the identifying variation in exposure to foreign students in our data is limited and this result is not robust in all of our models.

This study compares the differences in the mismatch between the education and occupations of immigrants in Canada and the United States, operationalized by over-education. It further explores how the cross-country differences may be related to the supply of and demand for university-educated immigrants and the way they are selected. Using comparable data and three measures of over-education, this study found that university-educated recent immigrants in Canada were much more likely to be overeducated than their U.S. peers. The over-education rate gap between recent immigrants and the native-born was much more pronounced in Canada than in the United States. In addition, while labour market demand was associated with a lower level of over-education in both countries, a greater supply of university-educated recent immigrants was positively associated with a likelihood of over-education among recent immigrants in Canada, but not in the United States. Furthermore, in Canada, the over-education rate was significantly lower among immigrants who were admitted through some form of employer selection (e.g., immigrants who worked in skilled jobs in Canada before immigration) than those who were admitted directly from abroad. Overall, this study provides insight into how the immigration system interacts with broader aspects of the labour market to shape the labour market outcomes of immigrants.

This paper presents new benefit-cost estimates for the Tulsa universal preschool program. These calculations are based on estimated effects from previous papers of Tulsa pre-K on high school graduation rates and college attendance rates of students who were enrolled in kindergarten in Tulsa Public Schools in the fall of 2006. In this paper, educational effects from these prior papers are used to infer lifetime earnings effects and are compared with program costs. Our conservative estimates of earnings effects suggest that per pre-K participant, the present value of earnings effects in 2021 dollars is $25,533, compared with program costs of $9,628, for a benefit-cost ratio of 2.65. Compared to prior benefit-cost studies of Tulsa pre-K, this benefit-cost ratio is below what was predicted from Tulsa pre-K's estimated effects on kindergarten test scores, but above what was predicted from Tulsa pre-K's estimated effects on grade retention by ninth grade. This fading and recovery of predicted pre-K effects as children go through K-12 and then enter adulthood is consistent with prior research. It attests to the importance of the "soft skill" effects of pre-K and reminds us that short-term studies of pre-K provide useful information for public-policy decisions.

In low-income countries, private schools are perceived as superior alternatives to the public sector, often improving achievement at a fraction of the cost. It is unclear whether private schools are as effective in middle-income countries where the public sector has relatively more resources. To address this gap, this paper takes advantage of lottery-based admissions in first grade for a Mexico City private school that targets and subsidizes attendance for low-income children. Over three years, selected students via lottery scored 0.21 standard deviation higher than those not selected in literacy tests, corresponding to a normalized gain of one-half of a grade level every two years. Lottery winners also statistically outperformed those not selected in math, but the gains were more modest. Relative to the control group, parents of selected students were more satisfied with their school and had higher educational expectations for their children. Unlike findings from low-income countries, these gains came at increased cost--twice as much on a per pupil basis relative to public schools. Additional analyses indicate gains made by the lowest income students in the sample help explain the school's impact. This suggests private schools could bring down persistent achievement gaps in these countries, but puts into question the validity of implementation at scale. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

Charter schools enroll a growing share of public school students, leading to concerns about the financial implications of charter schools for traditional public schools (TPSs). Using detailed expenditure data for school districts in California, I exploit variation in charter school enrollment across time and between districts to evaluate how district spending and overall financial health change as nearby charter sectors expand. I find that larger charter enrollment shares are associated with lower levels of per-pupil spending and reduced fiscal health in TPSs. However, these relationships in some cases exhibit significant nonlinearities and are much smaller in magnitude than what has been observed in other states. Consequently, larger charter enrollment shares are not associated with differences in the proportion of expenditures allocated to various activities, goods, or services. Differences between these results and those from similar analyses in other states may be explicable in terms of California's economic and policy context, providing lessons for policymakers.

EPortfolios can showcase students' learning progression, achievements, and abilities through the purposeful collection of their work. The implementation of ePortfolios within curricula can also demonstrate institutional accountability and serve as primary evidence for accreditation. The authors explore the current available ePortfolio platforms that are utilized in academic settings. They developed a set of evaluation matrices to review current ePortfolio platforms, consisting of (a) learning activities/goals, (b) competency tracking, (c) collaboration ability, (d) access, (e) user-friendliness, (f) customization, and (g) retrospection/concept mapping. Although no ePortfolio platform satisfies all these criteria completely, each possesses individual advantages that make it uniquely useful in particular academic situations. The authors provide a rubric to guide faculty or administrators when choosing an ePortfolio platform, which considers the platform's purpose and how it will be integrated into existing curricula. [This work is supported by the Academic Innovation Funds sponsored by the Office of Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.]

Community colleges are a large sector of postsecondary education. In 2016-2017, the United States had nearly 1,000 public 2-year postsecondary institutions (community colleges), serving almost nine million students, representing 39% of all undergraduates. The majority of entering community college students require developmental (or remedial) math. Success rates in the developmental math course sequence and college more broadly are discouragingly low. Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike are eagerly searching for reforms to improve success rates, but there is a dearth of causal evidence on the effectiveness of most proposed reforms. We sought to answer the following question: What effect does a modularized, computer-assisted, self-paced approach to developmental math (compared with a more "traditional" direct-instruction course alternative) have on students' likelihood of completing the developmental math course sequence? Findings from a randomized controlled trial (n = 1,403) are presented. The program was well implemented; however, we did not find evidence that this approach was superior to the "traditional" math class. Although these results are disappointing, they are important because modularization and self-paced computer-assisted instruction are popular reforms.

School authorities, universities, and employers often schedule multiple tests on the same day or week, causing overlapping exam preparation and a dense testing schedule. This multitask learning can be intense, under pressure, and challenge the student's mental and physical perseverance. As a result, it can compromise performance relative to a more 'relaxed' schedule. This paper examines the consequences of multitasking for test scores and cheating in exams and its implications for the ability and gender cognitive gap. The empirical context is high-stakes exit exams in Israel, done at the end of high school. I leverage the empirical setting on two natural experiments to estimate the causal effect of this multitasking learning. The first exploits random variation in the number of weekly tests--the second hinges on days with multiple exams versus days with a single exam. The results show several important regularities. First, the number of exams in a day or a week harms test performance. Second, these effects are evidenced for high and low-ability students, boys and girls. They are much more extensive for immigrants than natives. Third, the harm of such multitasking is larger in tests later in the schedule, daily or weekly. Fourth, these effects are larger in tests of STEM subjects. Fifth, dense exams schedule increase the likelihood of students behaving dishonestly in exams.

This paper summarises the evolution of student contributions in Australia since 1989, exploring system redesigns that commenced in 1997, 2005 and 2021. Public and private benefits are recurring themes in setting student contributions, both as high-level justifications for government policy and in pricing specific disciplines. Professor Andrew Norton evaluates five different rationales used by successive Australian governments to satisfy competing policy and political considerations: course costs, private benefits, public benefits, increasing resources per student place, and incentivising course choices. Professor Norton argues that despite using student contributions to guide course choices being central to current funding policy it is never likely to be effective. Student contributions do, however, have practical consequences that seem to be given little consideration by the government. These include how long it takes to repay student debt, how much of that debt the government will eventually write off, and university incentives to enrol students. As the new government reviews the Job-ready Graduates policy, the paper provides a useful basis for discussion, offering lessons from history in what works and what does not, and guiding policymakers towards student contribution systems that minimise problems for students, government and universities.

International students are critical to the competitiveness of American higher education in terms of financial, intercultural, and educational contributions. However, recent data indicates that the U.S institutions enrolled 31,520 fewer international students in Fall 2017 as compared to Fall 2016. At average tuition and fees of US$ 25,000, higher education institutions are likely to lose potential revenue of US$ 788 million for the first year of studies alone. This paper examines the shifting landscape of international enrollment from the lens of three overlapping Waves spread over seven years and takes a deeper dive into implications for American universities. Wave I was shaped by the terrorist attacks in September 2001 and resulted in slower overall growth in international student enrollment of 11% between 1999 and 2006. Wave II has its origins in the global financial crisis which prompted universities to search for self-funded students and experienced overall robust growth of 44 percent in international student enrollment between 2006 and 2013. Finally, Wave III is shaped by the new political order and intensified competition from English-taught programs in Europe and Asia which will slow down the pace of projected growth in international enrollment to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020. In this current Wave of intensified global competition, overall international student enrollment is likely to flatten or decline for most universities. While the reputation and quality of American higher education is admired and emulated around the world, resting on its past laurels will not be sufficient for attracting international students in the Third Wave. This means that universities must get proactive and strategic in reaching, engaging and supporting international students throughout their educational lifecycle. Demand for studying abroad among international students remains robust, however, increasing competition and expectations for value for money will requires proactive and concerted efforts to maintain the global competitiveness of American higher education.

Capitalizing on the findings in our preceding study of a purely theoretical model, this paper aims to empirically examine whether and to what extent public universities' institutional missions have transformed in recent years in the States of California and New York by quantifying a degree of functional diversification of universities. We focus on research funding and productivity, and public service activities, and have developed a Concentration Equality Index (CEI) to help in this analysis. We then apply the CEI over time to a selected group of public university-system campuses within the State University of New York (SUNY) system, the City University of New York (CUNY), and the California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) systems. Among our findings: a select group of CSU campuses which all have roles at teaching-intensive schools, have gained increasingly versatile roles with rapidly expanded spending capacity in research and public service. These focal shifts resulted in some CSU campuses transforming into "UC-like universities", that is, a trend toward an institution with multi-functional operations of equally weighted instruction, research, and public service. In contrast, several campuses of both SUNY and CUNY systems have come to place varied weights on chosen missions rather than evening out their roles in instruction, research, and public service.

This report presents the results of RTI International Education's study on teachers' guides across 13 countries and 19 projects. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we examine how teachers' guides across the projects differ and find substantial variation in the design and structure of the documents. We develop a scripting index so that the scripting levels of the guides can be compared across projects. The impact results of the programs that use teachers' guides show significant impacts on learning outcomes, associated with approximately an additional half year of learning, showing that structured teachers' guides contribute to improved learning outcomes. During observations, we find that teachers make a variety of changes in their classroom instruction from how the guides are written, showing that the utilization of structured teachers' guides do not create robotic teachers unable to use their own professional skills to teach children. Unfortunately, many changes that teachers make reduce the amount of group work and interactivity that was described in the guides, suggesting that programs should encourage teachers to more heavily utilize the instructional routines designed in the guide. The report includes a set of research-based guidelines that material developers can use to develop teachers' guides that will support effective instructional practices and help improve learning outcomes. The key takeaway from the report is that structured teachers' guides improve learning outcomes, but that overly scripted teachers' guides are somewhat less effective than simplified teachers' guides that give specific guidance to the teacher but are not written word for word for each lesson in the guide.

With an increased appreciation of students' social-emotional skills among researchers and policy makers, many states and school districts are moving toward a systematic process to measure Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). In this study, we examine the measurement properties of California's CORE Districts' SEL survey administered to over 400,000 students in grades 3 to 12 during the 2015-16 school year. We conduct analyses through both classical test theory and item response theory frameworks, applying three different polytomous IRT models on both the full student sample and on separate samples from each grade. From these analyses, we summarize the psychometric properties of items at each grade level, compare items' functionality across grades, compare student outcomes from IRT models and the classical approach, make suggestions on approaches to modeling and scaling the SEL survey data, and identify items, by grade, that do not contribute positively to measurement of each outcome. Finally, we discuss policy implications in using SEL measures among educators, administrators, policy makers, and other stakeholders.

Nearly two dozen states now administer online exams. These tests have real consequences: their results feed into accountability systems, which have been used for more than a decade to hold schools and districts accountable for their students' learning. We examine the rollout of computer-based testing in Massachusetts over 2 years to investigate test mode effects. Crucial to the study design is the fact that the state administers the same exam (PARCC) in online and offline formats each year during the transitional period. We find mode effects of about 0.10 standard deviations in math and 0.25 standard deviations in English language arts (ELA). Our preferred estimates of the effects of online testing in the second year of administration suggest that mode effects for second-time test takers were about one third as large as the first year in math and about half as large in ELA. There is little evidence of systematic variation in mode effects by student demographic groups, although on ELA tests they are larger for students scoring at the bottom of the achievement distribution.

Community college transfer students encounter challenges progressing toward a bachelor's degree, leading to widespread transfer credit loss. This in turn may lower students' chances of credential completion and increase the time and costs for students, their families, and taxpayers. In this study we review three definitions of credit transfer inefficiency--"credit transferability," "credit applicability," and "excess credits among completers"--focusing on the last to examine why students who start at a community college and transfer to a four-year institution so often end up with excess credits that do not count toward a bachelor's degree. To shed light on credit transfer inefficiency, we examine the course-taking behaviors of community college transfer students who earn bachelor's degrees with numerous excess credits compared with transfer students who earn bachelor's degrees with few excess credits. We employ data-mining techniques to analyze student transcripts from two state systems, enabling us to examine a large number of variables that could explain the variation in students' excess credits at graduation. These variables include not only student demographics but also the types and timing of courses taken. Overall, we find more excess credits associated with several factors, including taking larger proportions of 100- and 200-level courses and smaller proportions of 300-level courses throughout students' progression toward completion, and taking 100-level courses in any subject--and specifically 100-level math courses--immediately after transferring to a four-year institution. Findings suggest that institutions could help students reduce credit transfer inefficiency by encouraging them to explore and choose a bachelor's degree major early on so they can take the required lower division (100- and 200-level) courses at the community college, thereby enabling them to take mostly upper division 300- and 400-level courses in their desired major field once they transfer to a four-year institution.

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that teachers working in above-average poverty charter schools have significantly higher value-added scores compared to traditional public school teachers working in similar settings, which is mainly driven by the right tail of the value-added score distribution, yet we find no such differences in below-average poverty settings. Second, we find that cross-sector differences in observed teacher characteristics such as experience and educational attainment fail to explain any of the observed gaps in teacher effectiveness in higher-poverty settings. Instead, we find that differences in returns to experience on teacher productivity, which is significantly higher in the charter sector, explains most of the observed cross-sector effectiveness gaps. Third, we find considerable differences in teacher support and teacher influence on instructional policies and practices between charter schools and traditional public schools, which might help explain the higher returns to experience on teacher effectiveness as well as the observed effectiveness gaps between charter schools and traditional public schools serving disadvantaged students.

Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented individuals who might have otherwise been overlooked due to systemic disadvantages, these programs may enable students to bridge the gap and catch up to their peers. In this study, we examine the effects of a quota-type affirmative action policy on gaps in college outcomes between potential beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Using comprehensive administrative data from a leading Brazilian university which implemented affirmative action in 2005, we find that compared to their non-quota peers, potential quota beneficiaries are less likely to progress smoothly through college and less likely to graduate, a result that is mostly driven by those who would not be admitted to the university otherwise. Notably, however, most of these differences shrink as the students progress through college, suggesting a catch-up effect between those groups. While potential quota students initially face challenges, resulting in a reduced course load in their early college years, they compensate by taking more credits in later years to ultimately graduate. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), and the World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER).]

This paper examines evidence from the HESA DLHE six-month Censuses and 3½ year ('longitudinal') surveys relating to three aspects of the flows of those who have left university with Higher Education Engineering qualifications, to test the robustness of the conclusions of SKOPE Research Paper No. 122 (Dixon, 2015), which showed strong evidence that most Engineering graduates do not go on to work in the sectors of the economy that might be expected, in particular in the 'natural' Manufacturing sub-sector. Specifically, the paper examines three questions: (1) whether evidence of starting salary levels for those from particular disciplines going into particular sectors could explain the relative flows (on the assumption that higher salaries for graduate vacancies in a particular sector would attract more applications); (2) whether evidence of sector destinations three years on from the (six-month after graduation) Census data analysed in Dixon (2015) would show up significantly different levels of 'leakage'; and (3) whether those entering employment having completed Taught Masters (as opposed to First Degree) courses in particular Engineering disciplines would tend (in the light of their apparent greater interest and deeper understanding in the specific discipline) to enter the "expected" sectors more than their Bachelors colleagues. The "bottom line" answers to these questions is that -- with rather minor exceptions -- none of the relevant broader evidence from HESA DLHE data over a ten-year period significantly questions the very considerable 'leakage', away from the 'natural' Manufacturing sub-sector, that was found and presented in Dixon (2015). (1) There is "some" correlation between the "average salaries offered" (by employers in each 'destination' sector to cohorts from each Engineering discipline examined) and the "size of the flows" from each discipline into each sector, but it is limited and rarely strong. While there might be reasons why average salary differences might not be large enough to provide a sufficient incentive for Engineering graduates to choose one sector over another, evidence of considerably greater correlation would have been helpful to justify the traditional response of classical economics to employers' concerns about shortages: "offer more money"! (2) While there are sample size issues constraining the statistical precision of comparisons between the two DLHE surveys, these have been addressed, and comparisons of the "linear flows" of graduates from each discipline into the natural Manufacturing sub-sector show (a) comparatively very small differences, and (b) on balance, slightly "greater" 'leakage' three years on; and (3) More MSc's in "Automotive" and "Aerospace Engineering" have, over the ten years examined, then gone into the "Manufacture of Motor Vehicles"... and "Air and Space craft manufacture" (respectively) than BEng's from these disciplines. However, for the other disciplines compared, there is little difference, and -- in terms of entry into Manufacturing as a whole, for the most recent year in the period - the fraction of the disciplinary cohorts entering "any type of Manufacturing" is slightly "higher" for MSc's than First Degree (FD) graduates in "three" Engineering disciplines, though "lower" for MSc's than FD's in "four"! This new evidence, therefore, only serves to "strengthen" the great importance of NOT assuming linear flows of Engineering graduates into the "natural" Manufacturing sub-sectors corresponding to their discipline, in particular in policy responses to reports of shortages from such sub-sectors.

Internationally, Australia's tertiary education system, comprising the higher education and vocational education and training (VET) sectors, is highly regarded, with both sectors subject to ongoing national review and reforms. This paper explores in detail the multiple issues that lie at what might be termed the "boundaries and connections" between these sectors. The purpose of this occasional paper is twofold, the first being to provide a brief illustration and commentary on the relative trend change and potential trajectories of Australia's vocational education and training (VET) sector by comparison with the higher education sector. This provides the necessary context for the second objective, which is to explore in detail the multiple issues that lie at what might be described as the "boundaries and connections" between these two components of the tertiary education sector.

This paper focuses on the authors' experiences teaching on Ohio University's Learning Network (OULN), which uses interactive television and real-time face-to-face interaction as a distance-education (DE) delivery tool. One of the authors is a sociology professor, and the other is her former student and an experienced OULN system operator. The transition to DE from a traditional, less technological approach presents numerous challenges as well as opportunities. This paper compares the semester-long progress of two different sociology courses that used the OULN. It presents an analysis of each class's strengths and weaknesses, along with qualitative data based on interviews with each class's students, as recorded in a diary that the authors kept throughout the semester on the progress of each class. One class experienced more success than the other, which presented numerous teaching challenges. The paper concludes by offering guidance for integrating traditional teaching methods, including group work, into DE environments.

The change of government in 2010 provoked a large structural change in the English education landscape. Unexpectedly, the new government offered primary schools the chance to have "the freedom and the power to take control of their own destiny", with better performing schools given a green light to convert to become an academy school on a fast track. In England, schools that become academies have more freedom over many ways in which they operate, including the curriculum, staff pay, the length of the school day and the shape of the academic year. However, the change to allow primary school academisation has been controversial. In this paper, we study the effect for the first primary schools that became academies. While the international literature provides growing evidence on the effects of school autonomy in a variety of contexts, little is known about the effects of autonomy on primary schools (which are typically much smaller than secondary schools) and in contexts where the school is not deemed to be failing or disadvantaged. The key finding is that schools did change their modes of operation after the exogenous policy change, but at the primary phase of schooling, academisation did not lead to improved pupil performance. An appendix provides information on the way in which the sample of pupils and schools are selected for the analysis of primary academies and on issues related to the school income and expenditure data analysed in the paper. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre for Economic Performance's Education and Skills Programme.]

The rise of the accountability movement in education has resulted in the proliferation of school report cards, school ratings and rankings, and other kinds of performance reporting for public consumption and policy use. To understand the strengths and limitations of school rating systems and the role they play in shaping public perceptions and school improvement practices, this paper situates rating systems within the broader field of comparative organizational assessments and neo-institutional theory; describes school rankings and rating systems in use by states and consumer-oriented enterprises; and details four aspects of school ratings (measurement, transformation, integration, and presentation) that affect their use and interpretation.

This paper provides the first population-based evidence on how much standardized test scores vary among public school districts within each state and how segregation explains that variation. Using roughly 300 million standardized test score records in math and ELA for grades 3 through 8 from every U.S. public school district during the 2008-09 to 2014-15 school years, we estimate intraclass correlations (ICCs) as a measure of between-district variation. We characterize the variation in the ICCs across states, as well as the patterns in the ICCs over subjects, grades and cohorts. Further, we investigate the relationship between the ICCs and measures of racial and socioeconomic segregation. We find that between-district variation is greatest, on average, in states with high levels of both white-black and economic segregation.

Recently, studies have adopted fixed effects modeling to identify the returns to college. This method has the advantage over ordinary least squares estimates in that unobservable, individual-level characteristics that may bias the estimated returns are differenced out. But the method requires extensive longitudinal data and involves complex specifications, raising the possibility that results are sensitive either to sample restrictions or to alternative specifications. Also, the extra requirements might not be justified if results from fixed effects models are broadly similar to those from conventional ordinary least squares models. In this paper we review results from fixed effects models of the earnings gains from completing an associate degree relative to non-completion for community college students. We examine both sampling restrictions and specification issues. We find results to be sensitive to assumptions about missing earnings data and to how time trend specifications are modeled. However, we find no substantively meaningful differences between estimates using fixed effects models and ordinary least squares methods. A main benefit of fixed effects models--controlling for unobservable student characteristics--should be weighed against the difficulty in interpreting coefficients and more intensive data requirements. On the other hand, a distinct advantage of fixed effects models is that they allow for analysis of earning profiles over the period from before to after college. Given the large fluctuations in earnings over this period, this advantage may be significant in yielding evidence on the full returns to college. The following two tables are appended: (1) Robustness Checks on Returns to Associate Degrees; and (2) Percentage Decline in Earnings From Two Quarters Prior to College Entry to Quarter of College Entry (Kentucky, Ohio).

The increasing availability of massive administrative datasets linking postsecondary enrollees with post-college earnings records has stimulated a wealth of new research on the returns to college, and has accelerated state and federal efforts to hold institutions accountable for students' labor market outcomes. Many of these new research and policy efforts rely on state databases limited to postsecondary enrollees who work in the same state post-college, with limited information regarding family background and pre-college ability. In this paper, we use recent waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to provide new, nationally representative, non-experimental estimates of the returns to degrees, as well as to assess the possible limitations of single-state, administrative-data-based estimates. To do this we evaluate how the national estimates change, depending upon the baseline comparison group, adjustments for pre-college achievement and family background, and alternative ways of addressing interstate mobility. We conclude with a discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of survey versus administrative data for estimating returns to college, as well as implications for research and policy efforts based upon single-state administrative databases. The appendices presented here include: (1) Definitions and Additional Notes for Key Variables; (2) Additional Details of Data Cleaning; (3) Comparing Self-Reported and Administrative College Enrollment and Attainment Data; (4) Results of Crosschecking Self-Reported Survey Data and Postsecondary Transcripts Data for the NLSY97; and (5) Selected Studies on the Labor Market Returns to Postsecondary Education. [For the full report: "Estimating Returns to College Attainment: Comparing Survey and State Administrative Data Based Estimates," see ED573076.]

The increasing availability of massive administrative datasets linking postsecondary enrollees with post-college earnings records has stimulated a wealth of new research on the returns to college, and has accelerated state and federal efforts to hold institutions accountable for students' labor market outcomes. Many of these new research and policy efforts rely on state databases limited to postsecondary enrollees who work in the same state post-college, with limited information regarding family background and pre-college ability. In this paper, we use recent waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to provide new, nationally representative, non-experimental estimates of the returns to degrees, as well as to assess the possible limitations of single-state, administrative-data-based estimates. To do this we evaluate how the national estimates change, depending upon the baseline comparison group, adjustments for pre-college achievement and family background, and alternative ways of addressing interstate mobility. We conclude with a discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of survey versus administrative data for estimating returns to college, as well as implications for research and policy efforts based upon single-state administrative databases. [For "Estimating Returns to College Attainment: Comparing Survey and State Administrative Data Based Estimates: Appendices A, B, C, D, and E," see ED573077.]

In preparation for online administration of the ACT® test, ACT conducted studies to examine the comparability of scores between online and paper administrations, including a timing study in fall 2013, a mode comparability study in spring 2014, and a second mode comparability study in spring 2015. This report presents major findings from these studies, focusing on the mode comparability studies.

While destination-country education provides many potential advantages for immigrants, empirical studies in Australia, Canada and the United States have produced mixed results on the labour outcomes of immigrants who are former international students. This study uses large national longitudinal datasets to examine cross-cohort trends and within-cohort changes in earnings among three groups of young university graduates: immigrants who are former international students in Canada (Canadian-educated immigrants), foreign-educated immigrants who had a university degree before immigrating to Canada and the Canadian-born population. The results show that Canadian-educated immigrants on average had much lower earnings than the Canadian-born population but higher earnings than foreign-educated immigrants both in the short term and in the long term. However, Canadian-educated immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group, and the key factor differentiating their post-immigration earnings from the earnings of the Canadian-born population and foreign-educated immigrants is whether they held a well-paid job in Canada before becoming permanent residents.

In lower- and middle-income countries, including Ghana, students in rural areas dramatically underperform their urban peers. Rural schools struggle to attract and retain professionally trained teachers (GES 2012; World Bank 2012). We explore one potential solution to the problem of teacher recruitment: distance instruction. Through a cluster randomized controlled trial, we estimate the impact of a program that broadcasts live instruction via satellite to rural primary school students. The program equipped classrooms in 70 randomly selected Ghanaian schools with the technology required to connect to a studio in Accra. An additional 77 schools served as the control. Instructors in Accra provided math and English lessons to classrooms in the treatment group. The model is interactive, and students in satellite classes could communicate in real time with their remote teachers. We estimate significant gains (p<0.05) in rural students' numeracy and foundational literacy skills. We find no impact on attendance and classroom time-on-task (as measured through unannounced classroom observations), suggesting that these gains may result from improved instructional quality rather than from increased instruction time.

There is no comprehensive database of U.S. district-level test scores that is comparable across states. We describe and evaluate a method for constructing such a database. First, we estimate linear, reliability-adjusted linking transformations from state test score scales to the scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We then develop and implement direct and indirect validation checks for linking assumptions. We conclude that the linking method is accurate enough to be used in analyses of national variation in district achievement, but that the small amount of linking error in the methods renders fine-grained distinctions among districts in different states invalid. Finally, we describe several different methods of scaling and pooling the linked scores to support a range of secondary analyses and interpretations.

The percentage of students retaking college admissions tests is rising (Harmston & Crouse, 2016). Researchers and college admissions offices currently use a variety of methods for summarizing these multiple scores. Testing companies, interested in validity evidence like correlations with college first-year grade-point averages (FYGPA), often use the most recent test score available (Allen, 2013; Mattern & Patterson, 2014). In contrast, institutions report using a variety of composite scoring methods for applicants with multiple test records, including averaging and taking the maximum subtest score across test occasions ("superscoring"). We compare four scoring methods (average, highest, last, and superscoring) on two criteria. First, we compare correlations between scores from each scoring method and FYGPA. We find them similar (?? ˜ 0.40). Second, we compare scores from each scoring method based on whether they differentially predict FYGPA across the number of testing occasions (retakes). We find that retakes account for additional variance beyond standardized achievement and positively predict FYGPA across all scoring methods. We also find that superscoring minimizes this differential prediction--although it may seem that superscoring should inflate scores across retakes, this inflation is "true" to the extent that it accounts for the positive effects of retaking for predicting FYGPA. Future research should identity what factors, such as academic motivation and socioeconomic status, are related to retesting and consider how these should be considered in college admissions.

A growing body of research provides evidence that quality early childhood experiences can affect a host of life outcomes. Equally well documented is the variation in the quality of prekindergarten programs (pre-K) offered to children. In this study I employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach to evaluate the efficacy of Transitional Kindergarten (TK) on student outcomes in the San Francisco Unified School District. TK is a highly regulated, state funded, early education program. Importantly, universal prekindergarten was already established in San Francisco, making this study a comparison of prekindergarten opportunities. This study tests whether a more highly regulated pre-K program, situated solely in schools, can provide benefits to young five year olds over a modern, robust universal pre-K market. I find that students who attended TK outperform their peers on a variety of foundational literacy skills, with some evidence that the gains are larger for minority children. TK, however, had little effect on the rate of absences in kindergarten and first grade