Using New Longitudinal Linked Data to Investigate the Determinants of Educational Attainment and Achievement

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In spite of the policy relevance of what determines educational attainment and achievement, economists do not have a good understanding of the issue even though there are several studies on the subject. This research will study the determinants of educational attainment and achievement, as measured by scores on standardized tests for children/youth in grades 6-12 using newly available administrative test score and survey data. The study is based on a nationwide standardized tests to children in all public schools as well as surveys of special students, teacher, principal and parents in a random sample of schools. These rich data provide opportunities to analyze how school quality, teacher quality and family characteristics affect student enrollment and performance in a way that learning is a cumulative process across grades. The researchers will also use the data to study how a program that pays subsidies to children to attend school affects child working behaviors, schooling attainment and performance. The research will also study how school quality, differences in curricula, and distances from home affect parents’ willingness to pay for education; it will also analyze how willingness to pay for their children’s education is influenced by family background. The results of this research can inform educational policies in the US and many other countries. The research project will also help establish the global leader in educational outcomes research.Despite several studies, researchers do not have a good understanding of the determinants of educational attainment and achievement, especially at the K-12 level. This research will contribute the literature on the determinants of K-12 education. Specifically, this research aims at: (i) estimating value-added models of test score dynamics to study how school quality and family inputs affect student performance and to examine how cash transfer a program affects beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries through peer effects; (ii) develop and estimate a dynamic model of the determinants of student enrollment, achievement and grade progression that incorporates failure, grade retention and dropout; (iii) estimate the demand for different types of schools, accounting for individual-specific choice sets (based on geographic location), and analyze how demand depends on school quality, distances to schools, family background, subsidy status and local labor market conditions that affects returns to education and the demand for child labor; (iv) develop and estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming (DCDP) model of student enrollment, study effort, drop-out, and working decisions and use the model to study the effect of varying income transfer incentive payments, modifying school quality and increasing schooling access. (v) Finally, the research develops and estimate a strategic model of student effort choices within classrooms to study how initial ability distribution influences effort choices and test score outcomes. The results of this research will provide important inputs into policies to improve education outcomes, increase human capital formation, and increase long-term economic growth. The research results could also help establish the US as the global leader in research on educational outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.