NYU Abu Dhabi Conference on Education Media and Human Development.

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NYU Abu DhabiConference on Education Media and
Human Development.

• Quantitative Analysis of Education Policy in the
  UK
• Peter Dolton
• Royal Holloway College, University of London and
• Centre for Economics of Education, London School
  of Economics
• Peter.Dolton_at_lse.ac.uk

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Im giving education just one more try if I
fail again, Im entering politics!
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Outline

• Examples of Analysis (and failures of analysis)
  of Policy in the UK (and data).
• My take on the causal v observational debate
  - IDENTIFICATION
• Brief follow up on the Andreas Scheicher
  presentation on a paper I am writing.

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Examples of Key Education Policy Reform Questions

• What are effects of National Curriculum from
  1988?
• What has been the effect of the Literacy and
  Numeracy Hour?
• What is the effect of National KS tests at age
  7,11, 13, 16, 18
• Have educational standards been rising
• Has publication of school results encouraged
  competition?
• What has been the effect of the Introduction of a
  School Teacher Performance threshold on pay in
  2000?

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Some outputs are easier to observe than others!
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Recent Policy Questions

• Effect of Class size on outcomes
• Why boys are doing so much worse than girls.

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The proportion of boys and girls achieving 5 good
GCSEs
Source DfES (2003)
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Data to Answer these Questions

• Administrative Data on
• National Pupil Database on every child with all
  their scores on all KS tests.
• Database of Teacher Records.
• School level data on performance in KS tests.
• Assorted other Admin data on House Prices, (Land
  Registry), Deprivation etc

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Other Data Sources

• Loads of good surveys cohort data etc
• BUT

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• NO LINK BETWEEN ADMIN DATA
• Hence impossible to find out which teacher taught
  which class.

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Some Real Effects of these Policies Which we
dont need data to tell us.

• Teaching to the test to push up school scores.
• Educational improvement by government edict.
• Squashing of teacher initiative to teach 9/11
  example.

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IDENTIFICATION

• OLS observational
• RCT causal
• Many other techniques
• Panel, Longitudinal, Cohort, Spatial
• Statistical Matching
• Difference-in-Differences
• Regressional Discontinuity Design
• Instrumental Variables - LATE

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• Often involve the creative use of
• Some administrative change or rule like
  Miamonides Rule (Angrist and Lavy)
• Changes in Policy

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• Above techniques may give us as close an estimate
  of causal effects as you are going to get with
  RCTs.

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If You Pay Peanuts do You Get Monkeys? A Cross
Country Comparison of Teacher Pay and Pupil
Performance.

• Peter Dolton1Oscar D. Marcenaro-Gutierrez2
  1 Royal Holloway University of London Centre
  for Economic Performance, LSE. 2 University of
  Malaga.

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UK ADVERT Make a Difference Become a
Teacher!!!!
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To save democracy, is it? I have been hurling
stones thinking its about teachers pay!
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What Makes a Good Teacher??

• Not sure we really know the answer
• BUT

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1. Central Motivation

• Why do teachers in Holland Earn 4 times teachers
  in Israel (after allowing for PPP adjustments)?
• Kids in some countries do 2-6 times as well as
  kids in other countries.
• Is there a link between these 2 facts
• If we take relative salary as a measure of
  teacher quality, is it the case that kids perform
  better?

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Motivation contd

• Think of two possible basic causal mechanisms
• You pay teachers better gives them an incentive
  to work harder and be more effective in teaching
  kids.
• You pay teachers better and this raises the
  status of the job and induces more able young
  people to want to be teachers in the future.

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3. Data

• We have new data to do this with
• OECD data on teachers salaries
• PISA, TIMSS data on pupil performance.
• PISA 2000, 2003, 2006 for Maths, Science and
  Reading
• TIMSS 1995, 1999, 2003 Maths and Science

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Data contHow do we measure teacher salary?

• In terms of real PPP
• Relative to countrys standard of living - In
  terms of PPP divided by GDP per head.
• Relative point in the income distribution of the
  country. (Assuming Income is lognormal, and we
  have Gini coeff and Ave earnings)

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Figure 1.a. Actual and fitted Upper Secondary
school teachers salaries after 15 years
experience in 2007 PPP (2005)
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Figure 1.c. Actual and fitted Upper Secondary
school teachers salaries after 15 years
experience relative to the earnings distribution
of the whole population (2003)
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Teacher Salaries

• We also have data on
• Starting
• After 15 years
• At top of scale.
• AND
• Primary
• Lower Secondary
• Upper Secondary

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Figure 2. Relative position (percentile) of
teachers salaries in the earnings distribution
of the popn (Upper Secondary Education)
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Data Conclusions

• Most countries pay their teachers between
  50-75ile.
• Some countries have flat career salaries
• Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Peru
• Other significant advancement
• Austria, Belgium, France etc
• Some countries teacher wages are falling back
• Indonesia, Chile, Thailand, Australia
• Others teachers are being paid better
• Brazil, Czech, Uruguay

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Figure 3.a. Standardised Average Scores (8th
grade students) by country (2006)
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Figure 4. Scores percentile at 8th grade
students as a function of teachers salaries
after 15 years experience.
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4. Econometric Estimation

• Teacher Salaries -gt function of
• Supply of Teachers
• Demand for Teachers
• Production Function for Pupil Outcomes
• function of Teacher Hours,
• Pupil Teacher Ratios
• Educational Expenditure
• GDP Growth

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4. Econometric Estimation Identification

• Use panel data therefore
• With fixed country effects we are arguing that
  there are not systematic influences on pupil
  outcomes which are
• Not measured i.e. in u
• and correlated with teacher earnings.
• Then identification of causal effects would
  rely on changes.

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Controls

• Teaching Hours
• Pupil/Teacher ratios
• Fraction of Women
• GDP growth
• Educational Expenditure
• Growth in size of teacher cohort.
• Growth in size of pupil popn

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5. Results

• Teachers salaries vary across country
• -ve With supply
• ve with Pupil/teacher ratios
• -ve with size of pupil cohort.

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Marginal Effects

• 5000 or 15 rise in teachers earnings
• OR
• 5 shift up the wage distribution for teachers
• will mean .20 of a SD in test score and hence
  around 8 rise in student performance.

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6. Implications

• If we wish to improve pupil scores we need to
• Pay teachers more further up income distn
• Reduce pupil/teacher ratios
• To reduce inequality of student performance we
  need
• Reduce pupil/teacher ratios
• NOT Increase teaching hours as ambiguous effect.