Research

This paper examines the connection between high school curriculum dynamics and postsecondary enrollment. Using a policy implemented alongside the Closing the Gaps by 2015 initiative in Texas, I analyze the impact of high school curriculum assignments on student course investments and postsecondary enrollment. I present descriptive evidence showing that this policy significantly alters how students are assigned to different curriculum standards, leads to increased enrollment in more rigorous coursework, and results in higher postsecondary enrollment and attainment across the ability spectrum. Motivated by this evidence, I estimate a dynamic schooling model of high school curriculum assignments, student course investments, and college enrollment choices. The estimates reveal that a student's ability and peers have a substantial impact on their investment in high school coursework. Using the estimated model, I simulate the effects of enforcing a uniform college preparatory curriculum. The results show heterogeneous effects across different student subpopulations, with postsecondary attendance increasing by 33 percentage points for students who would have been assigned to a lower curriculum. I also examine how changing schools’ institutional objectives to prioritize college attendance affects outcomes, finding increased postsecondary enrollment, but at the cost of higher high school dropout rates.

We demonstrate that conditions in a student's local hometown labor market influence their course-taking choices while in high school, and also their initial and final majors when they go to attend college. As a possible mechanism to explain this, we demonstrate that growth in local relevant employment for STEM workers increases a measure of relevant wages for those workers. Next, motivated by evidence that past conditions in a student's labor market may continue to affect a student's present decisions, we estimate a dynamic discrete choice model in which students can respond to labor market conditions in each period, and the decisions made in one period have implications for the next. Using this model, we find that allowing students the option to pursue STEM-intensive course loads while in high school contributes to their likelihood of pursuing a STEM degree in college and increases their earnings once in the labor market. Additionally, having this course option while in high school increases the responsiveness of students' college major choices and wages to changes in the local labor market.

I study the impact of school and district accountability pressures on elementary school teacher labor markets and student performance in Wisconsin. I find a strong inverse relationship between accountability scores and teacher turnover. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find limited evidence that teacher turnover discontinuously changes at any cutoff, even when conditioning on value-added. Moreover, changes in school-level value-added and student test performance appear unaffected by being on either side of a cutoff.

We evaluate the effects of the Public Education Grant (PEG) program, a long-running school accountability initiative in Texas meant to encourage students at lower-performing schools to transfer. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find substantial effects of the program on long-term outcomes like attending a Texas four-year university and pursuing a STEM degree. However, there is little evidence that these effects are driven by increases in student transferring. In fact, we find consistently null effects across a wide range of potential types of student transferring. Instead, we find evidence that the positive effects of the PEG program may be coming through efforts to improve standardized testing results at schools placed on the PEG list.