We analyze a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives high-scoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the eligibility threshold finds that students are remarkably willing to forgo college quality and that scholarship use actually lowered college completion rates. These results suggest that college quality affects college completion rates. The theoretical prediction that in-kind subsidies of public institutions can reduce consumption of the subsidized good is shown to be empirically important.

We use admissions lotteries to estimate effects of attendance at Boston's charter high schools on college preparation and enrollment. Charter schools increase pass rates on Massachusetts' high-stakes exit exam, with large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a statesponsored scholarship. Charter attendance also boosts SAT scores sharply and increases the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement ðAPÞ exam, the number of AP exams taken, and AP scores. Charters induce a substantial shift from 2-to 4-year institutions, though

Public health insurance programs comprise a large share of federal and state government expenditures. Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of these programs on health care utilization and health outcomes, little prior work has examined the long-term effects and resultant health improvements on important outcomes, such as educational attainment. We contribute to filling this gap in the literature by examining the effects of the public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. Our findings indicate that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children increases the rate of high school completion and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions, and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are older (i.e., not newborns). We present suggestive evidence that better health is one of the mechanisms driving our results by showing that Medicaid eligibility when young translates into better teen health. Overall, our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.

Public health insurance programs comprise a large share of federal and state government expenditures. Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of these programs on health care utilization and health outcomes, little prior work has examined the long-term effects and resultant health improvements on important outcomes, such as educational attainment. We contribute to filling this gap in the literature by examining the effects of the public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. Our findings indicate that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children increases the rate of high school completion and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions, and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are older (i.e., not newborns). We present suggestive evidence that better health is one of the mechanisms driving our results by showing that Medicaid eligibility when young translates into better teen health. Overall, our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.

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 (TSP). We find that high 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 impactand large declines in attainment and earnings for low-scoring students -of pressure to achieve a higher accountability rating. An online appendix is available at: http://www.nber.org/data-appendix/w19444 2 Today's schools must offer a rigorous academic curriculum to prepare students for the rising skill demands of the modern economy (Levy and Murnane, 2004). Yet at least since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, policymakers have acted on the principle that America's schools are failing. The ambitious and far-reaching No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) identified test-based accountability as the key to improved school performance. NCLB mandates that states conduct annual standardized assessments in math and reading, that schools' average performance on assessments be publicized, and that rewards and sanctions be doled out to schools on the basis of their students' performance on the exams.However, more than a decade after the passage of NCLB, we know very little about the impact of test-based accountability on students' long-run life chances. Previous work has found large gains on high-stakes tests, with some evidence of smaller gains on low-stakes exams that is inconsistent across When do improvements on high-stakes tests represent real learning gains? And when do they make students better off in the long-run? The main difficulty in interpreting accountability-induced student achievement gains is that once a measure becomes the basis of assessing performance, it loses its diagnostic value (Campbell 1976, Kerr 1995, Neal 2013. Previous research has focused on measuring performance on low-stakes exams, yet academic achievement is only one of many possible ways that teachers and schools may affect students (Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff 2012, Jackson 2012).While there are many goals of public schooling, test-based accountability is premised on the belief that student achievement gains will lead to long-run improvements in important life outcomes such as educational attainment and earnings. High-stakes testing creates incentives for teachers and schools to adjust their effort toward improving test performance in the short-run. Whether these changes make students better off in the long-run depends critically on the correlation between the actions that schools take to raise test scores, and the resulting changes in earnings and educational attainment at the margin (Holmstrom and Milgrom 1991, Baker 1992, Hout et al., 2011.