Zero tolerance school discipline policies have garnered increasing attention from the public and policymakers as a source of racial disparities in school discipline. While the literature suggests that exclusionary discipline is harmful for students who experience it and documents racial discipline gaps, the body of evidence on zero tolerance policies is limited to only a few studies and focuses on a limited set of outcome measures. Furthermore, the use of the term zero tolerance varies across contexts. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide some of the first empirical evidence on zero tolerance policies by disambiguating the term and estimating the impact of such policies on a broad range of student outcomes. In the first essay, I explore the operationalization of zero tolerance and mandatory expulsion policies across the legal, district policy, and popular media domains. I find that explicit zero tolerance policies are rare. Furthermore, I find variation across domains in the use of zero tolerance and mandatory expulsion policies. In the second essay, I utilize longitudinal data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the impact of state mandated expulsion laws on suspension rates, dropout rates, and principal perceptions of problem behaviors and control over discipline. I find that state mandated expulsion laws predict increases in suspension rates and account for approximately 10% of the racial discipline gap between Black and White students. I also find that, in the view of principals, such laws do not predict decreases in student misbehavior. In my third study, I utilize student level data from the National Education Longitudinal Study to explore the relationship between principal reported responses to misconduct and student outcomes. I find a lack of significant relationships across various specifications. The results of this dissertation suggest that zero tolerance discipline policies may contribute to negative outcomes for students and may contribute to the racial discipline gap. To date, this work represents the first attempt to explore the relationship between zero tolerance policies and a variety of outcomes utilizing nationally representative data. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the public school choice provision of the federal 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a policy that widened the availability of public school choice options in the United States by permitting students who attended low-performing schools in need of improvement the option to move to a higher performing public school in the district. This dissertation uses seven years of longitudinal student-level data and school fixed-effects models to examine whether there was within school variation for schools that switched NCLB public school in student intra-district mobility, the characteristics of schools selected, and student performance. Findings from the three research questions suggest that the NCLB public school choice policy had the intended impact of increasing intra-district mobility and changing patterns in terms of the types of schools students selected. However, for schools in the sample, it does not appear that NCLB public school choice had the intended effect of increasing academic gains in math or reading for students who transferred when their schools offered federal school choice options. The results from this dissertation are consistent with previous research on the impact of NCLB public school choice. The federal school choice policy resulted in slightly more intra-district mobility and students selected higher performing schools, but the impact of NCLB public school choice on student performance gains was indiscernible.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the shifting trends in the provision and funding of non-government schools in developing countries over the past 20 years, with an emphasis on the rise of low-cost private schools. As a result of recent changes in governmental support to public schooling and increases in low-fee private enrollment rates, it is necessary to examine not only the cross-country factors that impact private enrollments but also the quality of the low-cost sector that has become so prominent in many developing countries. Accordingly, this dissertation addresses each of these issues via three distinct but related papers. The first paper provides an updated and expanded analysis of Estelle James' pioneering work on why countries have different mixes of public-private provision of primary and secondary education. Counter to James findings, I hypothesize that as a result of Education for All initiatives across the globe, public spending is no longer predictive of private enrollment rates. In addition, this paper finds differences across levels of development and therefore seeks to determine the level of economic development at which we begin to see changes in predictors of private enrollment rates. In order to illustrate the demand for quality in developing countries, the second paper provides an analysis of the quality of the private secondary education sector in Braziloverall, as well as by level of tuition. This paper uses data from the state of Sao Paulo in order to assess the impact of private schools by analyzing differences in academic outcomes (e.g. end of high school exams) between public-private transfers and public school stayers. The third paper examines the private school sector in Indonesia--a country that follows a less traditional model for private school financing and monitoring. By incorporating 2009 PISA results with findings from fieldwork conducted in Indonesia in 2010, this paper provides a new perspective on the impact of (low-cost) private schools in a country with large private secondary enrollments and a highly subsidized private education sector.

This dissertation examines effects of statewide merit-based aid on college prices and student success. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I examine whether four-year colleges in thirteen states that adopted a merit-based aid program changed their tuition and fees, the amount of institutional aid per student, and room and board charges more than four-year colleges in states without a merit-based aid program. I analyze data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System with the difference-in-differences method. Results show that colleges in many states with merit-based aid did not raise their student charges or reduce the amount of institutional aid per student. The third and fourth chapters of this dissertation examine the effect of merit-based aid on student success in the example of Tennessee. In the third chapter, using the regression discontinuity method, I find that receiving merit-based aid increases the probability of earning a bachelors degree in the fourth year. However, it does not change whether a student earns a bachelors degree in the fifth or sixth year. In the fourth chapter, I use both event history analysis and regression discontinuity models to examine whether losing merit-based aid affects college persistence and graduation. Results show that losing merit-based aid decreases the probability of re-enrolling in college and earning a bachelors degree compared to maintaining the aid. Even compared to never receiving one, losing merit-based aid increases the probability of re-enrolling and graduating from college only for a limited time.

Elementary school teacher certification is for generalists prepared to teach in self-contained classrooms, but those generalist teachers are not equally effective in teaching all core academic subjects. Prior studies have documented mixed school organization structures (i.e., both self-contained classrooms and departmentalized organizations) in upper elementary grades 4 through 6. Specialization becomes increasingly widespread as the grade level goes up. Previous research has provided evidence on the potential of using teacher value-added measures to make personnel decisions. Often, researchers assume that principals do not use teacher value added to decide who will teach and what grades and subjects those teachers will teach. Using a rich longitudinal student- and teacher-level statewide dataset from Tennessee over nine school years, this dissertation applies a variety of modeling techniques to analyze the following research inquiries. This first essay tests a hypothesis concerning whether a teachers value added predicts teacher assignments in elementary schools. At the same time, managing teacher assignments (i.e., self-contained versus subject-specific assignments), to some extent, may result in some structural changes in the school organizations. The literature is inconclusive about the effects of organizational structures on elementary school student achievement. The second essay then analyzes whether specialization has raised student achievement. Lastly, little research has focused on how to make decisions on teacher assignments if principals use teachers past value added. The third essay will answer what would be the maximum potential gains in mathematics achievement that can be achieved through specialization in elementary schools. Overall, this dissertation makes a strong and promising contribution to the research on (1) school organization in elementary schools, (2) the application of teachers value-added data in making school personnel decisions, and (3) the impact of managing teacher assignments on student test scores especially allowing teachers to teach their area of specialty.

Across US colleges and universities as a whole, commuter students account for the majority of undergraduate and graduate students. Despite their majority status, commuter students represent an overlooked majority in terms of empirical research. This study examined the impact of non-classroom interaction between faculty members and first-year commuter students on cognitive and affective outcomes. While the popular perception of interaction between faculty members and commuter students is that it tends to be confined to the classroom because these students spend relatively less time on campus, little is known about out-of-classroom contact and its related outcomes-effects. The analytical methods of hierarchical linear modeling and propensity score matching were applied to data drawn from a random sample of 9,000 first-year commuter students who completed the 2010 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) at 465 four-year colleges and universities. Findings indicate that communication via email is the most common form of interaction with faculty members. The more frequent the out-of classroom interaction, the greater are students levels of satisfaction with the college experience and intellectual skills development. The higher the rating these students give to the quality of their relationship with faculty members (that is, the more students consider faculty members to be helpful, available, and sympathetic), the greater are their levels of satisfaction with the college experience and intellectual skills development, and grade-point average. Furthermore, findings suggest that as compared to their peers who do not interact with faculty members outside the classroom, first-year commuter students who interact with faculty experience higher levels of satisfaction, and intellectual skills development. This study extends the body of knowledge on first-year commuter students and demonstrates how stronger inferences can be made when the endogenous student-faculty interaction variable is used in the estimation of student outcomes. Findings suggest both institutional action that enables increased contact between commuter students and faculty members, and additional research to advance what is known about student-faculty interaction among this student population.

In this dissertation, I examine the variation in 1992-1993 four-year college graduates ten year post-graduation earnings as a function of their parents socioeconomic status and colleges rank. I also compare variation in 1992-1993 and 2007-2008 graduates earnings one year after graduation in order to explore change over time in the relationship between class of origin and post-graduation earnings. I seek to explain the social class-based gaps in post-graduation earnings with institutional and individual student characteristics using data from the NCESs Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and the Barrons Admissions Competitiveness Index. Propensity score matching and hierarchical linear modeling reduce bias in the coefficients and the standard errors. Among the 1992-1993 cohort, graduates of elite socioeconomic origin out-earn all others by at least 12 percent ten years after graduation. Among graduates of least-selective, moderately-selective, and elite colleges, elite socioeconomic origin is associated with higher earnings even when accounting for GPA, major, and institutional expenditure on academic services, student services, and instruction. At the same time, low-SES origin students receive an earnings premium from attending an elite college, though the reasons remain unobserved. The findings suggest that when low-SES students attend an elite college, they gain capital and career opportunities that they would not at a lower-ranking institution, but not enough to level the playing field on the labor market with students from an elite socioeconomic background. Regarding change over time, the findings demonstrate that there is a class-based post-graduation earnings gap just one year after graduation among the 2007-2008 graduates, but not among the 1992-1993 graduates. This result indicates that having parents with a high socioeconomic status, or perhaps the resources associated with having such parents, was more important to getting ahead in regards to income in 2009 than it was 15 years earlier. I recommend that colleges implement programs and practices to help their low-SES students be more competitive on the labor market with high-SES students.

Federal, state and local policymakers have expanded the use of fiscal recruitment initiatives to recruit high quality teachers to districts with hard-to-staff subjects and locations. Yet, sparse empirical research has investigated the effects of fiscal recruitment incentives on the teacher labor market. This study uses data from four consecutive cycles of the Nation Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey to analyze how district fiscal incentives are impacting teacher recruitment. Results from regression analysis suggest districts recruit more nontraditional teachers when they offer fiscal recruitment incentives for subject shortage areas. Findings also predict when a district switches from not having a fiscal recruitment policy for shortage fields to having such a policy, the same district attracts more high quality teachers, with high quality teachers defined as having a major in the shortage field they instruct. Estimated teachers salary equations indicate no evidence of fiscal recruitment incentives in the salaries of shortage field teachers working in districts offering financial rewards to recruit teachers of subject shortage areas.

Falling state appropriations, rising tuition, and increasing student loan burdens have introduced new challenges for public higher education and raised questions of affordability, accessibility, and accountability. Policymakers have responded by introducing reforms such as performance funding and deregulation to measure efficiency and improve institutional performance. These reforms rely on competition and markets, treating higher education like a business and using a production function based framework to turn financial and student inputs into institutional outputs. This dissertation modifies and applies such a business model to higher education to evaluate the relationships between inputs and expenses, expenses and outputs, and the institutional efficiency in the production of key policy indicators. Using panel data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, University of Texas System, and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, I am able to examine these relationships at the institutional, school, and departmental levels using multivariate regressions, fixed effects, stochastic frontier analysis, and data envelopment analysis. These methods, and the various levels of analysis, are rarely seen in higher education research and they offer a comprehensive view of the higher education production function. The results reveal strong relationships between revenues and expenses, indicating a close alignment between the source of funding and how it is used. Expenditures, however, are not strongly related to outputs. This shows a lack of variation in institutional performance and suggests an optimal input-output mix rather than a linear relationship. Finally, in looking at institutional efficiencies in comparison to this optimal point, most institutions are relatively efficient when compared to their peers after controlling for their Carnegie classification and proxies for the quality of their inputs. While state reforms are built upon the premise of doing more with less, these findings challenge this assumption and show that students themselves are the drivers of performance in higher education and that most institutions are actually performing quite well. Indeed, cuts to higher education as a result of the Great Recession and state reform are pulling institutions away from this optimal point and hurting institutional educational processes.

Research provides strong evidence that teachers make a significant contribution to student achievement and that among in-school factors, teachers matters most. States have begun evaluating their teacher preparation programs based on their graduates contribution to raising student achievement, but such evaluations provide little guidance for program improvement. This dissertation improves on previous work around the relationship between teacher preparation and teacher effectiveness to isolate the contributions of the structural features of teacher preparation programs, coursework and fieldwork, to beginning teacher effectiveness as measured by student achievement gains. Using data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and University of North Carolina system institutions, I estimate HLM, school, and university fixed effects models to begin to mitigate against potential sources of bias. While there are few consistent patterns across subjects and grade levels, there is some evidence for the importance of requiring specific foundations courses for middle grade teachers and for requiring longer full time responsibility for the classroom during student teaching for high school teachers.