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The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Strikes: Evidence from Argentina
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This is the first paper to estimate the effect of teacher strikes on student long-run educational attainment and labor market outcomes. We exploit cross-cohort variation in the prevalence of teacher strikes within and across provinces in Argentina in a difference-in-difference framework to examine how exposure to teacher strikes during primary school affects long-run outcomes. We find robust evidence that teacher strikes worsen the labor market outcomes of these individuals when they are between the ages of 30 and 40: being exposed to the average incidence of teacher strikes during primary school (88 days) reduces annual labor market earnings by 2.99 percent. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this amounts to an aggregate earnings loss of $712 million in Argentina annually. This is equivalent to the cost of raising the average annual employment income of all primary school teachers in Argentina by 19 percent. We also find evidence of a decline in hourly wage, an increase in unemployment, an increase in the probability of not working or studying and a decline in the skill levels of the occupations into which students sort. Examining short- and long-run educational outcomes suggests that the labor market effects are driven, at least in part, by a reduction in educational attainment. Our analysis further identifies significant intergenerational treatment effects. Children of adults who were exposed to teacher strikes during primary school also experience adverse educational attainment effects.
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... While the phenomenon has been studied extensively in the USA, similar findings were also reported in Europe (e.g. in Austria (Paechter et al., 2015), Germany (Meyer et al., 2017) and the Netherlands (Luyten et al., 2009). school dropout, less participation in higher education and lower income (Belot & Webbink, 2010;Jaume & Willén, 2019). ...
This paper investigates the education outcomes at the end of primary education in the presence of multiple shocks. Using the exact same formative test since 2019, we document how learning deficits accumulate over time due to existing negative trends in a school system and the amplifying effects of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing the standardised test data at school level from the Flemish region of Belgium before and after the school closures suggests that in three years’ time the grade 6 school education outcomes decreased on average by -0.47 SD in the Dutch language, -0.31 SD in the French foreign language, -0.12 SD in mathematics, -0.11 SD in science and remained the same in social sciences. At student level, the estimates present the same significance and direction of the sign, although with lower magnitude. The learning deficits seem to accelerate over time, partly driven by the weak performance of the best-performing students, and exacerbated in schools with high shares of teacher shortages. Controlling for time varying and school fixed effects, one percentage point increase in unfilled vacancies is associated with a a decrease of -0.04 SD in the Dutch language, and -0.05 SD in math proficiency. Summer schools seem to mitigate part of the learning deficits. The
within-school inequality in test scores has not been reduced since the start of the pandemic. Despite an ongoing increase in between-school inequality in test scores, it slowed down in both 2021 and 2022.
... El absentismo escolar, las huelgas docentes, los períodos vacacionales o las guerras son algunas de las razones que han afectado la normalidad escolar en el pasado. Las conclusiones son coincidentes: se produce una pérdida evidente de aprendizaje que afecta especialmente a los alumnos más desfavorecidos (Alegre, 2016;Borse et al 2011;Chen et al, 2011;Goodman, 2014;Jaume y Willén, 2019;Marcotte y Hemelt, 2008;Sadique et al, 2008;Shores y Steinberg, 2018;Von Hippel, 2019). ...
The school closure produced by the Covid-19 pandemic turned the learning process into a distance education practice, mainly based on the intensive use of communication technologies. Based on the analysis of the results of an online survey answered in March 2020 by more than 35.000 families with children between the ages of 3 and 18, this article explores the consequences of the digital divide on the learning opportunities of students during confinement. The analysis highlights the interaction with other educational -different school responses- and social aspects -different possibilities of study support- to explain the different distance learning opportunities for students. The digital divide, in its various forms, the confinement conditions or the unequal family cultural capital generated unequal learning opportunities among students. The conclusions of the article point out the lessons learned from this experience to ensure equal educational opportunities in non-face-to-face educational contexts.
El cierre escolar producido por la pandemia de Covid-19 convirtió el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en una práctica a distancia, fundamentada principalmente en el uso de intensivo tecnologías de comunicación. A partir del análisis de los resultados de una encuesta online realizada en marzo de 2020 a más de 35.000 familias con hijos e hijas entre los 3 y los 18 años, este artículo explora las consecuencias de la brecha digital en las oportunidades de aprendizaje de los estudiantes durante el confinamiento. El análisis subraya la interacción de la brecha digital con otros aspectos educativos -distinta respuesta escolar- y sociales -distintas posibilidades de apoyo familiar al estudio-. La brecha digital, en sus diversas acepciones, las condiciones de confinamiento y el desigual capital cultural familiar generaron oportunidades de aprendizaje desiguales entre el alumnado. Las conclusiones señalan las lecciones aprendidas de esta experiencia para garantizar la igualdad de oportunidades educativas en contextos de educación no presencial.
The COVID-19 pandemic and measures taken to decrease the spread impacted youth in foster care and foster parents in a myriad of ways. One critical yet unexplored area is how educational changes during the first 2 years of the pandemic impacted this specific group of youth in foster care and foster parents. This exploratory study used three methods: (1) A scoping review of the prior research on pandemics/climate events and school closures and the research from early 2020; (2) individual interviews and focus groups with foster parents and teachers; and (3) an online survey of 88 foster parents. We endeavored to include findings at each stage of the process. Research from prior epidemics and school closures and predictive models predicted learning losses which were verified by the findings in the survey and interviews. Foster parents reported that the youth in foster care had great difficulty concentrating with on-line delivery and the absence or greatly limited access to mental health services compounded the challenges. Even as children returned to classrooms, the behavior of children, youth resulted in suspensions and expulsions likely increasing learning losses. The discussion identifies some approaches to addressing COVID-19 learning gaps and the mental health needs of this vulnerable group of children and youth.
We combined information on daily rainfall at school locations and standardized test scores to study how learning outcomes at primary schools are affected by precipitation during school days in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that student test scores are lower in schools that are exposed to more rainy days during the academic year. Students in locations that had more rainy school days are also more likely to experience grade repetition. We tested the mechanisms through which rainfall affects learning outcomes in our study area and found that teachers are more likely to be absent in locations with more rainy school days. We discuss the implications of these results and draw attention to policy options to mitigate learning loss during rainy school days.
Based on data on school visits from Safegraph and on school closures from Burbio, we document that during the Covid-19 crisis secondary schools were closed for in-person learning for longer periods than elementary schools, private schools experienced shorter closures than public schools, and schools in poorer US counties experienced shorter school closures. To quantify the long-run consequences of these school closures, we extend the structural life cycle model of private and public schooling investments by Fuchs-Schündeln et al. (Econ J 132:1647–1683, 2022) to include private school choice and feed into the model the school closure measures from our empirical analysis. Future earnings and welfare losses are largest for children that started public secondary schools at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. Comparing children from the top to children from the bottom quartile of the income distribution, welfare losses are 0.5 percentage points larger for the poorer children if school closures were unrelated to income. Accounting for the longer school closures in richer counties reduces this gap by about 1/4. A policy intervention that extends schools by 6 weeks generates significant welfare gains for children and raises future tax revenues sufficient to pay for the cost of this schooling expansion.
To what extent has the learning progress of school-aged children slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing number of studies address this question, but findings vary depending on context. Here we conduct a pre-registered systematic review, quality appraisal and meta-analysis of 42 studies across 15 countries to assess the magnitude of learning deficits during the pandemic. We find a substantial overall learning deficit (Cohen’s d = −0.14, 95% confidence interval −0.17 to −0.10), which arose early in the pandemic and persists over time. Learning deficits are particularly large among children from low socio-economic backgrounds. They are also larger in maths than in reading and in middle-income countries relative to high-income countries. There is a lack of evidence on learning progress during the pandemic in low-income countries. Future research should address this evidence gap and avoid the common risks of bias that we identify.
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This paper studies school segregation among students from different socioeconomic strata attending public and private schools in Argentina. The study contributes with empirical evidence to the measurement of this phenomenon from 1986 to the present, including projections to 2014. To this end, all major household surveys conducted in the country are used. The results suggest that the degree of school segregation has increased substantially since the mid-1980s to the present and is likely to continue rising in the early years of the 2010s.
Objectives:
We monitored trends in pregnancy by intendedness and outcomes of unintended pregnancies nationally and for key subgroups between 2001 and 2008.
Methods:
Data on pregnancy intentions from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and a nationally representative survey of abortion patients were combined with counts of births (from the National Center for Health Statistics), counts of abortions (from a census of abortion providers), estimates of miscarriages (from the NSFG), and population denominators from the US Census Bureau to obtain pregnancy rates by intendedness.
Results:
In 2008, 51% of pregnancies in the United States were unintended, and the unintended pregnancy rate was 54 per 1000 women ages 15 to 44 years. Between 2001 and 2008, intended pregnancies decreased and unintended pregnancies increased, a shift previously unobserved. Large disparities in unintended pregnancy by relationship status, income, and education increased; the percentage of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion decreased; and the rate of unintended pregnancies ending in birth increased, reaching 27 per 1000 women.
Conclusions:
Reducing unintended pregnancy likely requires addressing fundamental socioeconomic inequities, as well as increasing contraceptive use and the uptake of highly effective methods.
We analyze how exposure to teacher collective bargaining affects long-run outcomes for students, exploiting the timing of state duty-to-bargain law passage in a cross-cohort difference-in-difference framework. Among men, exposure to a duty-to-bargain law in the first 10 years after passage depresses annual earnings by $2,134 (3.93 percent), decreases weekly hours worked by 0.42, and reduces employment and labor force participation. The earnings estimate implies that current duty-to-bargain laws reduce earnings by $213.8 billion annually. Effects grow with time since law passage, are largest among nonwhites, and are not evident for women. Duty-to-bargain laws reduce male noncognitive skills, supporting the labor market findings. (JEL I21, J22, J31, J45, J51, J52, K31)
The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children's long-term outcomes. (JEL I31, I38, J13, R23, R38).
We study the impact of accountability pressure in Texas public high schools in the 1990s on postsecondary attainment and earnings, using administrative data from the Texas Schools Project. Schools respond to the risk of being rated Low Performing by increasing student achievement on high-stakes exams. Years later, these students are more likely to have attended college and completed a four-year degree, and they have higher earnings at age 25. However, we find no overall impact of accountability pressure to achieve a higher rating, and large negative impacts on attainment and earnings for the lowest-scoring students. © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K-3-as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores-have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.
The universal nature of school attendance precludes the experimental investigation of the absolute effect of schooling on achievement. The available empirical evidence consists of the results of post hoc analyses of the within-grade-level relationship of students’ achievement to the quality and quantity of schooling. This paper suggests a between-grade-levels quasi-experimental approach to the investigation of school’s effect on achievement, involving the estimation of this effect by means of a regression discontinuity design. The paper presents the rationale underlying the suggested approach and demonstrates its application to the estimation of the effect of schooling at grade 2 on achievement in mathematics and reading comprehension.
Based on a theoretical model that emphasises the distinction between individual and contextual determinants of antisocial behaviour, the current study examined whether school attendance throughout adolescence acted as a protective factor for individuals at risk for criminal behaviour in early adulthood. Specifically, Lack of Control, an index of self-regulation which has previously been shown to predict later criminal behaviour, was expected to interact with early school leaving to predict self-reports and official records of criminal behaviour collected at age 21. Multivariate regression analyses revealed a significant three-way interaction between school attendance, self-regulation, and sex. Among males, after controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status and IQ, the main effects for Lack of Control and school attendance were found to be significant; additionally, the interaction between Lack of Control and school attendance was significant, indicating that the strength of the relation between Lack of Control and criminal outcomes was moderated by school attendance. The main effects for Lack of Control and school attendance were significant for females, but the interaction between Lack of Control and school attendance was not significant. The protective effect of school attendance among males could not be accounted for by differences in familial disruption or adolescent delinquency.
This article provides an illustration of how multilevel modelling, which is the standard method for assessing the ‘school effect’ in school effectiveness research, can be combined with the regression‐discontinuity approach. While multilevel modelling yields only estimates of relative school effects (differences between schools), the regression‐discontinuity approach allows the assessment of the absolute effect of schooling (schooling versus no schooling). A combination of both approaches yields an estimate of this absolute effect and its variation between schools. This study applied the method in a secondary analysis of data derived from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
This paper investigates the impact of instructional days on student performance. Be-cause school year length is endogenously determined, I estimate the causal impact of school year length through two quasi-experiments that exploit diierent sources of variation in in-structional days. The rst identiies school year length's eeect through weather-related cancellations in Colorado and Maryland. Weather-related cancellations are made up at the end of school years, allowing relatively large uctuations in instructional days within school districts prior to test administration. Because school cancellations are not recorded for past school years, this data limitation is overcome by using two-sample indirect least squares. The second identiication strategy takes advantage of state-mandated changes in test-date administration in Minnesota, which moved 5 times in 5 years. The results are similar for either source of instructional day variation: more instructional time prior to test adminis-tration increases student performance. The eeects are consistent across various thresholds of performance and grade levels.