Children and Youth, Education and Literacy
This paper estimates the impact of gifted and talented program participation on academic achievement and peer composition for a sample of 8th grade students. Gifted education provides children that have been identified as having high ability in some intellectual respect with a supplemental curriculum to their traditional school course work. Participation in gifted programs is not random, so OLS estimates are biased by the presence of unobserved heterogeneity which is correlated with participation status as well as outcomes. To obtain causal estimates, I use an instrumental variables approach where the instrument is a self-constructed measure of how well each child fulfills the criteria his/her school uses to admit students into the gifted program, relative to the child's peers. The IV estimates indicate that, in the short run, participation is associated with a significant increase in math standardized test score performance. In the long run, participation is found to increase the probability a child takes Advanced Placement classes. There is no evidence that participation influences the composition of a child's peer group.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:
Education and Literacy, Employment and Labor
This paper uses the Schools and Staffing Survey to examine the determinants of teacher salaries in the U.S. using a spatial econometric framework. These determinants include teacher salaries in nearby districts, union activity in the district, union activity in neighboring districts, and other school district characteristics. The results confirm that salaries for both experienced and beginning teachers are positively affected by salaries in nearby districts. Investigations of the determinants of teacher salaries that ignore this spatial relationship are likely to be mis-specified. Including the effects of union activity in neighboring districts, the study also finds that union activity increases salaries for experienced teachers by as much as 18-28 percent but increases salaries for beginning teachers by a considerably smaller amount.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:
Community and Economic Development, Education and Literacy, Government Reform
This report examines the financial health of start-up charter schools in Georgia during the 2006-07 school year. FRC Brief 197
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-Georgia
Community and Economic Development, Education and Literacy, Government Reform
This report examines how the 2001 recession affected K-12 education spending in Georgia school systems. FRC Report 200
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-Georgia
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Southern) / Georgia
Two years after starting college, recipients of Georgia's HOPE scholarship program are more likely to still be enrolled in college, have higher grade point averages (GPA), and have earned more credit hours than their counterparts. The Council for School Performance, housed in the Applied Research Center in the School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, conducted the first assessment of the impact of the HOPE scholarship on college performance. After following the 1994-95 HOPE recipients into their third year of college, the results show a positive impact of the program on all three outcomes included in the study.
HOPE provides Georgia high school graduates who earn an overall high school GPA of 3.0 or higher with free tuition, fees, and a book allowance at public colleges and universities. Only HOPE scholars with a high school GPA between 3.0 and 3.16 were selected for this evaluation. This allowed researchers to isolate the effect of the HOPE scholarship on the recipients by selecting a comparison group with similar characteristics. The comparison group was matched by their core high school GPA (includes academic courses only) and institution type. The students in the comparison group did not receive the HOPE scholarship because they did not apply or did not meet all of the HOPE eligibility requirements.
Two questions were analyzed in this evaluation: (1) Does HOPE motivate higher levels of performance and higher rates of persistence among students in college? (2) Does HOPE allow students greater choice in selecting institutions of higher education? Other factors such as institution type, sex, race, and high school preparation were included in this analysis because they also affect college performance. This study compares students with similar backgrounds to isolate the impact of HOPE on college performance. In future studies, we will examine another potential impact of HOPE, its effect on high school performance.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Southern) / Georgia
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Southern) / Georgia
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Southern) / Georgia
