TY - JOUR
T1 - Improving academic performance through conditional benefits
T2 - Open/closed campus policies in high school and student outcomes
AU - Lichtman-Sadot, Shirlee
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to Caroline Hoxby, Ran Abramitzky, Matthew Harding, Moshe Justman, Roy Mill, John Pencavel, Karine van der Beek, participants at Ben-Gurion’s Economics Department Brown Bag Seminar, the Hebrew University’s Applied Microeconomics Seminar, and the 2014 AEFP annual conference for their helpful advice and comments. Noah Khassis provided valuable research assistance. The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement no. 630714 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2016/10/1
Y1 - 2016/10/1
N2 - Open campus privileges in high schools can be conditional on students’ academic (GPA, test scores, etc.) or behavioral (absences, probation, etc.) performance. I evaluate the effectiveness of this incentive scheme in improving student academic outcomes using a dataset covering over 460 California high schools over a 10-year period and their open/closed campus policies, while distinguishing between conditional and unconditional open campus policies. The results show an increase of roughly 0.1 of a standard deviation in student test scores when a conditional open campus policy is in place, in comparison to an unconditional open campus policy, thus suggesting that the incentive scheme intended by the conditional open campus policy is effective as a means for improving student test score outcomes. While the incentive scheme seems to improve test outcomes both for high and low-performing students, the magnitude of the effect is greater for lower-performing students, which is consistent with the fact that the academic thresholds under the conditional open campus policies are generally very minimal. The evidence also suggests that the incentive scheme is more effective for 9th and 10th grade students than it is for 11th grade students.
AB - Open campus privileges in high schools can be conditional on students’ academic (GPA, test scores, etc.) or behavioral (absences, probation, etc.) performance. I evaluate the effectiveness of this incentive scheme in improving student academic outcomes using a dataset covering over 460 California high schools over a 10-year period and their open/closed campus policies, while distinguishing between conditional and unconditional open campus policies. The results show an increase of roughly 0.1 of a standard deviation in student test scores when a conditional open campus policy is in place, in comparison to an unconditional open campus policy, thus suggesting that the incentive scheme intended by the conditional open campus policy is effective as a means for improving student test score outcomes. While the incentive scheme seems to improve test outcomes both for high and low-performing students, the magnitude of the effect is greater for lower-performing students, which is consistent with the fact that the academic thresholds under the conditional open campus policies are generally very minimal. The evidence also suggests that the incentive scheme is more effective for 9th and 10th grade students than it is for 11th grade students.
KW - Dropout
KW - High school
KW - Incentives
KW - Test scores
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84979528645&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.07.001
DO - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.07.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84979528645
SN - 0272-7757
VL - 54
SP - 95
EP - 112
JO - Economics of Education Review
JF - Economics of Education Review
ER -