93 research outputs found
Public and Private School Competition: The Spatial Education Production Function
No full textSchool vouchers may increase the competition public school districts face. Greater competition may spur public schools to improve student outcomes, which reliably predict labor market productivity and earnings. Previous school competition studies do not use spatial statistics; they fail to incorporate spillovers and the effect of omitted variables into their education production functions. Significant spatial effects are found in all regressions, and spatial statistics improves adjusted R-squared. There seems to be no consistent association between private school attendance rates and public school achievement, or between the number of public school districts in a county and public school performance. Competitive effects, which seem plausible in non-spatial regressions, dissipate when spatial statistics is used. When school inputs appeared statistically significant in non-spatial regressions, the spatial regressions generally made the significance disappear. Poverty appeared to depress reading and writing passage rates, but this effect disappeared in the spatial models.
School Choice and the Flight to Private Schools: To What Extent Are Public and Private Schools Substitutes?
No full textOpponents of school choice sometimes charge that vouchers, charter schools, and tuition tax credits would strip funding and talented students from the public schools. Proponents say this is exactly what is needed to provide extra competition for public schools. Flight to private schools may happen if parents think private schools are good substitutes for public schools. For goods with explicit market prices, economists estimate substitutability by specifying a demand curve and finding a cross price elasticity, but the non-market nature of schooling has prevented this. The current study finds a way to estimate the demand for public schooling and calculate a cross price elasticity by exploiting Rosen’s (1974) two-stage hedonic technique. It estimates the cross price elasticity between public schooling and the price of private schooling to be 0.32: Americans view private schools as fairly weak substitutes for public schools. The use of spatial statistics accounts for potential spillovers and omitted variable bias in the house price hedonics and the demand curve estimation. In fact, the -1.72 price elasticity of demand is much larger than the -0.20 to -0.40 estimates generally found by non-spatial studies.
The Demand for Educational Quality: Combining a Median Voter and Hedonic House Price Model
No full textCommunities differ in both the bundle of amenities offered to residents and the implicit price of these amenities. Thus, households are faced with a choice of which bundle to select when they select their residence. This choice implies households make tradeoffs among the amenities; that is, the amenities are substitutes or complements. We focus on estimating the demand for one of the most important amenities -- public school quality. We use transaction prices from the housing market and the hedonic house price model to generate the implicit prices of community amenities. The median voter model is used to estimate the income and price elasticities of demand for educational quality. We find that the own price elasticity of demand for schooling is about -0.5 and the income elasticity of demand is about 0.5. New findings include estimates of a set of cross-price elasticities of demand for school quality. We find that a community’s income level, percentage white households, and level of public safety are substitutes for school quality.
Educational Outcomes and House Values: A Test of the Value-Added Approach
No full textWe use house price hedonics to compare the extent that homeowners value traditional measures of school quality or the “value added” of schooling. Unlike other studies, we use spatial statistics as an identification strategy. Based on our study of 310 school districts and 77,000 house transactions, we find little support for the value added model. Instead, we find that households consistently value a district’s average proficiency test scores and expenditures. The elasticity of house prices with respect to school expenditures is 0.49 and an increase in test scores by one standard deviation, ceteris paribus, raises house prices by 7.1%.
Capitalization of Parent, School, and Peer Group Components of School Quality into House Price
No full textWe decompose school proficiency test scores into their parent, peer group, and school input components to see which are valued by the housing market. The value-added model proposes that only locationally fixed district-specific factors such as inputs to schooling and the characteristics of student peers are capitalized into house prices. This model claims that portable inputs to student outcomes, such as parental contributions, are not capitalized. A competing model argues that value-added is not easily observed; rather, educational outcomes such as proficiency test scores are easily observed and are capitalized into house prices. Based on our study of 123 school districts and 27,000 house transactions, we find little support for the value-added model. Instead, we find that households value a district’s average proficiency test scores. The primary component of the proficiency test score that is capitalized into house prices is the parental input component. The peer group component is also valued, but less strongly. The school input component is not valued.
Which Measures of School Quality Does the Housing Market Value?
No full textThis study explores which measures of public school quality the housing market values. Both a traditional hedonic house price estimation and a hedonic corrected for spatial autocorrelation are used. Proficiency tests, expenditure per pupil and the pupil / teacher ratio are consistently capitalized into housing prices. Teacher salary and student attendance rates are also valued, but these results are sensitive to the estimation technique employed. Value-added measures, the graduation rate, teacher experience levels and teacher education levels are not consistently positively related to housing prices, so researchers should probably avoid using them as public education quality measures.
Linking geomorphic changes to salmonid habitat at a scale relevant to fish
No full textThe influence of geomorphic change on ecohydraulics has traditionally been difficult to quantify. With recent improvements in surveying technology, high-resolution, repeat and topographic surveys have become a common tool for estimating fluvial sediment budgets and documenting spatial patterns of net erosion and net deposition. Using a case study from a spawning habitat rehabilitation (SHR) project on California's Mokelumne River, some new DEM-differencing analytical tools and ecohydraulic models were used to test whether hypotheses about pool-riffle maintenance mechanisms used in designing SHR projects were producing self-sustaining spawning habitat when subjected to competent flows. Following peak flows associated with the spring snow-melt, a total of 999.6 m3 of erosion and 810.1 m3 of deposition were recorded throughout the study area, with a net loss of 196.2 m3. Using an ecohydraulic spawning habitat suitability model to segregate the sediment budget, over 53% of the area in which gravel was placed in a 2005 SHR retained the same habitat quality characteristics, and 22% improved. The response to the flood was generically characterized by shallow deposition associated with areas of divergent flow over riffles and scour associated with areas of convergent flow in pools. Areas where habitat remained stable generally experienced only low-magnitude elevation changes, and accounted for only 19.5% of the total volumetric change. Areas where habitat quality degraded (primarily pool exit slopes) were dominated by larger magnitude erosion and made up 46% of the total volumetric change. By contrast, areas where habitat quality improved (primarily constructed riffle) accounted for 34.5% the total volumetric change, and were dominated by shallow, low magnitude deposition. The results support hypotheses about pool-riffle maintenance mechanisms used to design the rehabilitation projects, while also highlighting some simple but powerful techniques for linking ecohydraulic and geomorphic field monitoring data at a salmon-relevant spatial scale
School Choice: Supporters and Opponents
No full textWe conduct a phone survey to examine the attitudes of Ohioans about school choice, which includes open enrollment programs, school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools. Previous studies examine more limited forms of choice and investigate fewer possible influences. We find the strongest opposition for school choice by people with graduate degrees and people who believe their assigned public school district is excellent. In fact, people’s opinions about their public schools are stronger predictors of school choice support than are objective measures of school quality. We find people with children in private schools and people with associate’s degrees to be the strongest supporters. Males tend to oppose choice and blue collar workers support it. We find no role for age, the convenience of alternative schools, or the protection of house values in support for school choice.
Morphodynamic signatures of braiding mechanisms as expressed through change in sediment storage in a gravel-bed river
No full textPrevious flume-based research on braided channels has revealed four classic mechanisms that produce braiding: central bar development, chute cutoff, lobe dissection, and transverse bar conversion. The importance of these braiding mechanisms relative to other morphodynamic mechanisms in shaping braided rivers has not yet been investigated in the field. Here we exploit repeat topographic surveys of the braided River Feshie (UK) to explore the morphodynamic signatures of different mechanisms of change in sediment storage. Our results indicate that, when combined, the four classic braiding mechanisms do indeed account for the majority of volumetric change in storage in the study reach (61% total). Chute cutoff, traditionally thought of as an erosional braiding mechanism, appears to be the most common braiding mechanism in the study river, but was more the result of deposition during the construction of diagonal bars than it was the erosion of the chute. Three of the four classic mechanisms appeared to be largely net aggradational in nature, whereas secondary mechanisms (including bank erosion, channel incision, and bar sculpting) were primarily net erosional. Although the role of readily erodible banks in facilitating braiding is often conceptualized, we show that bank erosion is as or more important a mechanism in changes in sediment storage than most of the braiding mechanisms, and is the most important “secondary” mechanism (17% of total change). The results of this study provide one of the first field tests of the relative importance of braiding mechanisms observed in flume settings
THE HAUSMAN TEST, AND SOME ALTERNATIVES, WITH HETEROSKEDASTIC DATA
No full textFirst of all, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. R. Carter Hill for his guidance, help, support and patience through this entire journey. He has been much more than one would have expected from an advisor. I would also like to thank the remaining committee members: Dr. Eric T. Hillebrand, Dr. M. Dek Terrell, Dr. David M. Brasington and Dr. Bin Li for their valuable comments and suggestions. Special thanks go to my Baton Rouge host family and friends for their continuous support, caring and encouragement. Without them, I would never have made it this far. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................. i
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