How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star

Abstract

In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This paper evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K-3 -as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores -have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades but gains in non-cognitive measures persist.

Long-Term Effects of Class Size *

“…The first is years of completed schooling, which is inferred from the highest level attained. 15 The second is a binary indicator for having at least a bachelor's degree, which is analogous to the college indicator used in studies based on the STAR experiment (see Krueger and Whitmore 2001;Schanzenbach 2007;Chetty et al 2011). Data on annual earnings come from the Income Tax Register, and data on wages stem from the Wage Register; both registers are maintained by Statistics Sweden.…”

“…Chetty et al (2011) are, however, able to link the original STAR data to administrative data from tax returns. They find that students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes.…”

“…Second, the identifying assumptions in the literature on school quality on earnings are not completely credible. Third, when a credible identification strategy has been used (see Chetty et al 2011), earnings are observed too early to provide a reliable estimate of the long-run impact of class size on labor market success.…”

Water supply, sanitation and hygiene education in secondary schools in Ibadan, Nigeria

“…Also, where there is sanitation and hygiene education, it is implemented sporadically and generally took the form of printed handouts distributed to teachers or posters displayed on walls (Adukia, 2013). The direct impacts of educational interventions on sanitation and hygiene often fade out over time (Kane, Staiger, 2008;Almond, Currie 2011;Adukia, 2013), but long-term benefits may be sustained for students (Chetty et al, 2011). Sanitation and hygiene education is important because diseases related to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene constitute a huge burden in developing countries (WHO, 2009).…”

Class-size reduction policies and the quality of entering teachers

“…In a follow-up, Krueger & Whitmore (2001) find that being in a small class also impacted student outcomes well after the experiment, such as increasing the likelihood of taking a college entrance exam. More recent work by Chetty et al (2011) suggests that the benefits of being assigned to a small class in STAR even persist into the adult labor market…”