Three Essays on Education Policy

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three papers on education policy. In each paper, I use applied econometric methods and descriptive quantitative analysis to examine topics related to teacher labor markets and postsecondary attainment. The first paper leverages a rich student-teacher-day data set to study the relationship between daily teacher attendance and student exclusionary discipline referrals. Prior research shows teacher absenteeism is costly for school districts and adversely impacts student achievement on standardized tests. However, little research has documented how teacher absences are related to student behavior patterns. We hypothesize suspensions are more likely to occur on days when teachers are absent due to the resulting disruption of classroom norms and routines. Our findings suggest students are slightly more likely to be suspended on days when their teachers are absent, on average. We also explore the extent to which this relationship differs by absence types, temporal dimensions, and student demographics. The second paper evaluates a partnership between a major online postsecondary education provider and a Boston-based nonprofit focused on increasing attainment for nontraditional and historically underrepresented college students. The nonprofit supports students in the completion of competency-based degrees through in-person coaching, career mentoring and wrap-around services. I leverage statewide longitudinal data and employ coarsened exact matching to estimate the effect of this partnership on students’ postsecondary outcomes compared to observably similar Massachusetts students enrolling in other postsecondary institutions. I find strong, positive effects of the partnership on college graduation rates when compared to students with similar high school experiences, postsecondary trajectories, and demographic characteristics. The third paper examines teacher shortages from an international perspective. I combine data from the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the World Bank to investigate the extent to which country level economic conditions and school characteristics explain international differences in teacher shortages both across and within countries. I find that principals’ perceptions that teacher shortages hinder instruction in their schools tend to be higher, on average, in countries experiencing higher population growth and in contexts with higher concentrations of students with disabilities, economically-disadvantaged students, and immigrant students.