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Economics of Education Review

February 2015 Volume 44, Number 1

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Table of Contents

Number of articles: 8

  1. Accountability incentives and academic achievement: Distributional impacts of accountability when standards are set low

    J.T. Richardson

    This paper examines the effects of a compositional shift in a school’s testing population brought about by the elimination of special education testing exemptions. The policy change forced schools ... More

    pp. 1-16

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  2. Screening mechanisms and student responses in the college market

    Jonathan Smith, Michael Hurwitz & Jessica Howell

    In light of the sizeable financial and time investments associated with obtaining a postsecondary degree, the choice of where to apply and enroll should be a deliberate and thoughtful process. In... More

    pp. 17-28

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  3. All work and no play? The effects of ability sorting on students’ non-school inputs, time use, and grade anxiety

    Liang Choon Wang

    How students’ non-school inputs respond to ability grouping may explain the currently mixed findings in the literature about the impacts of tracking. Using data from South Korea, where students are... More

    pp. 29-41

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  4. The medium-term labor market returns to community college awards: Evidence from North Carolina

    Vivian Y.T. Liu, Community College Research Center, United States; Clive R. Belfield, Queens, United States; Madeline J. Trimble, Community College Research Center, United States

    This paper examines the relative labor market gains for first-time college students who entered the North Carolina Community College System in 2002–2003. We compare the returns to diplomas,... More

    pp. 42-55

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  5. How learning a musical instrument affects the development of skills

    Adrian Hille & Jürgen Schupp, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Germany

    Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the effects of extracurricular music activities on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how music training... More

    pp. 56-82

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  6. Do cognitive skills moderate the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on subsequent educational attainment?

    Alison Aughinbaugh & Donna S. Rothstein

    This paper examines how neighborhood quality affects young adults’ educational outcomes, and whether neighborhood effects are moderated by cognitive test scores and other proxies for investments... More

    pp. 83-99

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  7. Horseshoes, hand grenades, and treatment effects? Reassessing whether nonexperimental estimators are biased

    Kenneth Fortson, Philip Gleason, Emma Kopa & Natalya Verbitsky-Savitz

    Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard in estimating treatment effects. When an RCT is infeasible, regression modeling or statistical matching are often used instead. ... More

    pp. 100-113

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  8. Performance pay, test scores, and student learning objectives

    Ryan Balch & Matthew G. Springer

    Austin Independent School District's (AISD) REACH pay for performance program has become a national model for compensation reform. This study analyzes the test scores of students enrolled in... More

    pp. 114-125

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