Compulsory Schooling buffers the Negative Effects of COVID-19

Compulsory Schooling buffers the Negative Effects of COVID-19 | (News and Research 368)

Free and compulsory education buffers the negative effects of COVID-19 shocks in Nigeria | Tiberti, Tiberti, Dessy, Gninafon

Recurrent and intensifying shocks—driven by extreme weather events, pandemics, and conflicts—have cast a long shadow over the timely realization of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. In research and policy circles, attention has been given almost exclusively to post-shock remedial interventions. However, interventions preceding shocks are increasingly seen as preferred alternatives to enhance societies’ ability to cope with and recover from shocks. In Free compulsory education can mitigate COVID-19 disruptions’ adverse effects on child schooling, the role of pre-existing policies, such as free compulsory education laws, is examined in terms of weathering the adverse effects of COVID-19 containment measures on children’s school attendance. Two intriguing pathways that can potentially steer long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 containment measures on the school attendance of young students are found.

The Best Way to Teach Reading Is Proven — What Mississippi, Colorado Get Right | Wicks & McKenzie | Mississippi’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act requires all students receive instruction based on the science of reading. Classrooms must use research-based instruction and materials. And aspiring elementary school teachers must pass a foundational reading test before receiving a state license.

What Impacts Can We Expect from School Spending Policy? Evidence from Evaluations in the United States | Jackson, Mackevicius | A meta-analysis on a comprehensive set of studies of the impacts of education spending on student outcomes shows, on average, a policy increasing spending by $1,000 per pupil for four years improves test scores and college-going. Effects are smaller for economically advantaged populations, marginal effects of capital spending are similar to noncapital, and effects are similar across baseline spending levels and geography. Confounding and publication biases are minimal.

The Marginal Returns to Distance Education: Evidence from Mexico’s Telesecundarias | Borghesan, Vasey | This paper analyzes a large-scale and long-running distance education program in Mexico known as telesecundarias relative to traditional Mexican secondary schools. The average student experiences significant improvements in both math and Spanish after just one year of attendance in telesecundarias. The existing policy reduces educational inequality and expanding telesecundarias would yield significant improvements in academic performance.

Estimating Returns to Schooling and Experience: A History of Thought | Chiswick | This paper is a review of the literature in economics up to the early 1980s on the issue of estimating the earnings return to schooling and labor market experience. It begins with a presentation of Adam Smith’s (1776) analysis of wage determination, with the second of his five points on compensating wage differentials being “the easiness or cheapness, or the difficulty and expense” of acquiring skills. It then proceeds to the analysis by Walsh (1935) estimating the net present value of investments at various levels of educational attainment. Friedman and Kuznets (1945) also used the net present value method to study the earnings in five independent professional practices. Based on the net present value technique, Becker (1964) estimates internal rates of return from high school and college/university schooling, primarily for native-born white men, but also for other demographic groups. The first regression-based approach is the development of the schooling-earnings function by Becker and Chiswick (1966), which relates the logarithm of earnings, as a linear function of years invested in human capital, with the application to years of schooling. This was expanded by Mincer (1974) to the human capital earnings function, which added years of post-school labor market experience.

COVID-19 and inequality in reading outcomes in South Africa: PIRLS 2016 and 2021 | Böhmer, Wills | Using the South African Grade 4 2016 PIRLS Literacy and 2021 PIRLS datasets, this paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on learning inequality. In the context of a large decrease in the average reading score from 320 in 2016 to 288 in 2021 (a decline of 31 PIRLS points representing 50% to 60% of year of learning), reading inequalities were exacerbated across various dimensions. The gap between top achieving and low achieving students grew, with the percentage of very low achieving students (<200 points) doubling from 13.4% to 26.5%. Disparities between richer and poorer schools increased. In 2021, a student in the wealthiest 10% of schools was 10 times more likely to learn to read with meaning by Grade 4 than a child in the poorest 70% of schools, compared to a fivefold difference in 2016. Boys in the poorest 70% of schools also experienced a more significant reading decline than girls (-53 vs. -44 points).

Economic Rates of Return on Higher Education in Greece, 1962-2022 | Magoula | This article investigates the trend of the rates of return on higher education in Greece for the period of 1962-2022. It attempts to show that the return on higher education is relatively low.

Attainment and Gender Equality in Higher Education: Evidence from a Large Scale Expansion | Caner, Derebasoglu, Okten | The large expansion of Turkish higher education increased attainment rates but did not significantly reduce the gender gap.

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State school in Malmesbury, UK state school refuses £6 million for a modest enrolment expansion from James Dyson. Reminds me of an episode of Yes, Prime Minister.