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This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We use the random assignment in the Project STAR experiment to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We find that assignment to a small class increases the probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among blacks. Among students enrolled in the poorest third of schools, the effect is 7.3 percentage points. Smaller classes increase the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shift students towards high-earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), business and economics. We find that test score effects at the time of the experiment are an excellent predictor of long-term improvements in postsecondary outcomes. (Ludwig & Miller, 2007;Deming, 2009;Angrist & Krueger, 1991;Dee, 2004;Lleras-Muney, 2005). But decisionmakers attempting to gauge the effectiveness of current education inputs, policies and practices in the present cannot wait decades for these long-term effects to emerge. SusanThey therefore rely upon short-term outcomes -primarily standardized test scores -as their yardstick of success.A critical question is the extent to which short-term improvements in test scores translate into long-term improvements in well-being. Puzzling results from several evaluations make this a salient question. Three small-scale, intensive preschool experiments produced large effects on contemporaneous test scores that quickly faded (Schweinhart, et al., 2005;Anderson, 2008). Quasi-experimental evaluations of Head Start, a preschool program for poor children, reveal a similar pattern, with test score effects gone by middle school. In each of these studies, treatment effects have reemerged in adulthood as increased educational attainment, enhanced labor market attachment, and reduced crime (Deming, 2009;Garces, Thomas, & Currie, 2002;Ludwig & Miller, 2007). Further, several recent papers have shown large impacts of charter schools on test scores of disadvantaged children (Abdulkadiroglu, et al., 2011;Angrist, et al., 2012;Dobbie & Fryer, 2011). A critical question is whether these effects on test scores will persist in the form of long-term enhancements to human capital and wellbeing.We examine the effect of smaller classes on educational attainment in adulthood, including college attendance, degree completion and field of study. We exploit random variation in class size in the early grades of elementary school created by the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Experiment. Participants in the STAR experiment are now in their thirties, an age at which it is plausible to measure 1 completed education. Our postsecondary outcome data is obtained from th...

G overnment spending on primary and secondary education accounts for 4.3 percent of US GDP (National Center for Education Statistics 2013). Despite this large government investment, it remains unknown whether education spending improves students' long-run outcomes. One difficulty in answering this question is the lack of plausibly exogenous variation in spending. A second challenge is the necessity of high quality administrative data with which to track students over time, and especially past high school graduation.An extensive literature has solved the first challenge by exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in education spending due to school finance reform. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, dozens of states reformed education financing with the goal of reducing inequalities in education by equalizing spending across school districts. These reforms generally succeeded in (at least partially) equalizing spending between poor and rich school districts (Downes 1992; Murray,

This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest in using NSC data. Second, using information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we calculate enrollment coverage rates for NSC data over time, by state, institution type, and demographic student subgroups. We find that coverage is highest among public institutions and lowest (but growing) among for-profit colleges. Across students, enrollment coverage is lower for minorities but similar for males and females. We also explore two potentially less salient sources of non-coverage: suppressed student records due to privacy laws and matching errors due to typographic inaccuracies in student names. To illustrate how this collection of measurement errors may affect estimates of the levels and gaps in postsecondary attendance and persistence, we perform several case-study analyses using administrative transcript data from Michigan public colleges. We close with a discussion of practical issues for program evaluators using NSC data.

Abstract

School finance reforms caused some of the most dramatic increases in intergovernmental aid from states to local governments in U.S. history. We examine whether teachers' unions affected the fraction of reform-induced state aid that passed through to local spending and the allocation of these funds. Districts with strong teachers' unions increased spending nearly dollar-for-dollar with state aid and spent the funds primarily on teacher compensation. Districts with weak unions used aid primarily for property tax relief and spent remaining funds on hiring new teachers. The greater expenditure increases in strong union districts led to larger increases in student achievement.

This paper examines the effects of requiring and paying for all public high school students to take a college entrance exam, a policy adopted by eleven states since 2001. I show that prior to the policy, for every ten poor students who score college-ready on the ACT or SAT, there are an additional five poor students who would score college-ready but who take neither exam. I use a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the effects of the policy on postsecondary attainment and find small increases in enrollment at four-year institutions. The effects are concentrated among students less likely to take a college entrance exam in the absence of the policy and students in the poorest high schools. The students induced by the policy to enroll persist through college at approximately the same rate as their inframarginal peers. I calculate that the policy is more cost-effective than traditional student aid at boosting postsecondary attainment.

I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, low-income students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.ABSTRACT I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, lowincome students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.