Arkansas Department of Education

About: Arkansas Department of Education is a government organization based out in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: School choice & Voucher. The organization has 37 authors who have published 112 publications receiving 1325 citations. The organization is also known as: ADE.

Retirement Effects on Health in Europe

Abstract: What are the health impacts of retirement? As talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world, it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual as well as government budgets. The authors use the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset to address this question in a multicountry setting. Statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement, but are not related to an individual's health. The authors find significant evidence that retirement has a health-preserving effect on overall general health but no evidence that retiring at younger ages has a health-preserving effect.

Gender Differences in Couples’ Division of Childcare, Work and Mental Health During COVID-19

Abstract: The current COVID-19 crisis, with its associated school and daycare closures as well as social-distancing requirements, has the potential to magnify gender differences both in terms of childcare arrangements within the household and at work. We use data from a nationally representative sample of the United States from the Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey to understand gender differences within households on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. We study how fathers and mothers are coping with this crisis in terms of childcare provision, employment, working arrangements, and psychological distress levels. We find that women have carried a heavier load than men in the provision of childcare during the COVID-19 crisis, even while still working. Mothers’ current working situations appear to have a limited influence on their provision of childcare. This division of childcare is, however, associated with a reduction in working hours and an increased probability of transitioning out of employment for working mothers. Finally, we observe a small but new gap in psychological distress that emerged between mothers and women without school-age children in the household in early April. This new gap appears to be driven by higher levels of psychological distress reported by mothers of elementary school-age and younger children.

The Participant Effects of Private School Vouchers Across the Globe: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review

Abstract: School voucher programs (a.k.a. opportunity scholarships) are scholarship programs - frequently government funded - that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. Many private school vouchers programs have been initiated around the world with the goal of increasing the academic performance of students. Voucher programs are often viewed as a way to increase achievement and satisfaction for individual students and families, while at the same time creating competitive pressures that encourage other schools in the area to improve. Countries like Chile and India have developed extensive school voucher programs. While many studies have been conducted on school vouchers, a meta-analysis of the international randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the achievement effects of vouchers has never been conducted. This study is a meta-analytic consolidation of the evidence from all RCTs evaluating the participant test score effects of school vouchers internationally. Our search process turned up 9,443 potential studies, 19 of which ultimately were included. These 19 studies represent 11 different voucher programs. A total of 262 effect sizes are included, with a two-stage consolidation of those estimates yielding a total of 44 drawn from the last year of the studies. We have included only math and reading outcomes as other subjects are rarely reported and are difficult to compare across countries. We also differentiate between English and reading outcomes and present English results as a subcomponent of the reading effects to account for the effect of local language in the international context. Our meta-analysis indicates overall positive and statistically significant achievement effects of school vouchers that vary by subject (math or reading), location (US v. non-US), and funding type (public or private). Generally, the impacts are larger (1) for reading than for math, (2) for programs outside the US relative to those within the US, and (3) for publicly-funded programs relative to privately-funded programs.

Finance for All: The Impact of Financial Literacy Training in Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain

Abstract: We estimate the impact on objective measures of financial literacy of a 10-hour financial education program among 15-year-old students in compulsory secondary schooling. We use a matched sample of students and teachers in Madrid and two different estimation strategies. Firstly, we use reweighting estimators to compare the performance in a test of financial knowledge of students in treatment and control schools. In another specification, we use school fixed-effect estimates of the effect of the course on changes in scores in tests of financial knowledge. The program increased treated students’ financial knowledge by between one-fourth and one-third of a standard deviation. We uncover heterogeneous effects, as students in private schools did not increase their knowledge much, possibly owing to a less intensive implementation of the program. Secondly, we analyze the bias that arises because the set of schools that participate in financial literacy programs is not random. Such selection bias is estimated as the pre-program performance in financial PISA of students in applicant schools relative to a nationally representative sample of schools. We then study whether estimators that condition on school and parental characteristics mitigate selection bias.

When You Say Nothing at All: The Predictive Power of Student Effort on Surveys

Abstract: Character traits and noncognitive skills are important for human capital development and long-run life outcomes. Research in economics and psychology now shows this clearly. But research into the exact determinants of noncognitive skills have been slowed by a common data limitation: most large-scale datasets do not contain adequate measures of noncognitive skills.This is a particularly acute problem in education policy evaluation. We demonstrate that there are important latent data within any survey dataset that can be used as proxy measures of noncognitive skills. Specifically, we examine the amount of conscientious effort that students exhibit on surveys, as measured by their item response rates. We use six nationally representative, longitudinal surveys of American youth. We find that the percentage of questions left unanswered during the baseline year, when respondents were adolescents, is a significant predictor of later-life outcomes. Respondents with higher item response rates are more likely to attain higher levels of education. The pattern of findings gives compelling reasons to view item response rates as a promising behavioral measure of noncognitive skills for use in future research in education. We posit that response rates are a partial measure of conscientiousness, though additional research from the field of psychology is required to determine what exact noncognitive skills are being captured by item response rates.