The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, ushered in a new level of accountability to all public schools that accept federal funding under this Act. Inclusive of requiring that schools meet adequately yearly progress (AYP), there is a set of recommendations in the legislation for building the capacity of the community to assist in school reform and success. This qualitative study examined four school-communities in Maryland to ascertain the degree to which building civic capacity comprised a part of the schools' reform and academic success strategies. Schools were selected to match three AYP categories: Actively making AYP, rebounding from failing to make AYP, and actively failing to make AYP. Four schools in two counties in Maryland participated in the study. In addition to school staff, interviews were also conducted with parents and members of community groups. The findings suggest that schools with strong community resources are able to maintain adequately yearly progress or utilize those resources to meet it if they have failed to do so in the past. However, in a school that is failing to make AYP, building both internal and external capacity is very challenging without a strong civic capacity history. External resources were especially marshaled in the school that rebounded from failure to make AYP.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and its transition in the 1990s towards a democratic form of government, Mongolia was forced to embark upon a complete series of reforms within society, including within its education sector. Mongolia's higher education sector was significantly affected by this change. Private higher education institutions mushroomed and the number of university graduates increased significantly. At the same time, the rapid expansion of the sector had serious implications for the quality of education in the country. The declining quality of higher education in Mongolia has now become a major political issue and has caused much heated public debate. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study aims at understanding the gaps between Mongolia's educational needs and the policies the Mongolian government have implemented in response to the expansion of higher education. By analyzing the socio-political background of the expansion of higher education in Mongolia, it is hoped that some light may be shed on (1) the existence and magnitude of overeducation and its impact on individual earnings, (2) perceptions of overeducation among key stakeholders (e.g., government officials, employers and university deans) and (3) related policy interventions in Mongolia. It is also hoped that this study contributes to deepen understanding of overeducation from a policy borrowing/education transfer perspective. Quantitative analyses were conducted using datasets from the Living Standards Measurement Survey (2002/2003) and the Household Socio-Economic Survey (2007/2007). Qualitative analyses were conducted using information collected through 14 individual interviews with key stakeholders (senior officials, university personnel, private employers and staff from international organizations) as well as from key policy and project documents from the Government and development agencies.

This dissertation analyzes how immigrants' individual and home country characteristics affect and determine their labor market participation, returns to education and wages in both their country of origin (before migration occurs) and in the United States. The dissertation also estimates the extent to which immigrant skills are transferable to the American labor market. The research is carried out using data from the New Immigrant Survey, released in 2003, supplemented with the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure National Survey and other data sources. The New Immigrant Survey has two specific sets of questions that other surveys do not have. First, it has a detailed set of questions about the socioeconomic experience of the migrants before they left their home country. Secondly, the survey asked participants about their immigrant visa categories, allowing a separation of immigrants into economic migrants (those who came through employment preferences or other categories directly linked to economic objectives) and non-economic migrants (refugees, migrants entering through family preferences, etc., whose direct migration motive was political, family-related, and not directly economic in nature). The dissertation reveals that there exist significant differences between economic and non-economic migrants in the determinants of labor market participation, wages, migration selectivity and transferability of skills. Substantial differences are observed between men and women. Immigrants have low labor participation rates in their country of origin although they are highly educated compared to non-migrants at home. Those from English-speaking and high GDP countries are less likely to work but earn higher wages. Non-economic migrant men are more likely to be employed (than economic migrant men), but their wages do not differ. Among women, both economic and non-economic migrants are just as likely to be employed but non-economic migrant women earn less. Using Mexico as a case study to examine the selectivity of legal immigrants, it was found that documented migrants were less likely to have been employed before migration to the US, but their level of education and wages were significantly higher than those of non-migrants. The individual characteristics of these two groups affect their employment and wage determinants differently. Some of the literature has emphasized how immigrants may be positively selected because of greater motivation, willingness to undertake risks, etc. But, on this basis, most of the existing analysis of the determinants of immigrant wages in the U.S. suffers from omitted variable bias because there are no data for these unobserved characteristics or skills (motivation, persistence, etc.) and they are ignored in the statistical analysis. In an examination of immigrant wages in the U.S., this dissertation used wages earned abroad as a measure of the unobserved skills of the migrants and their level of transferability. An analysis of the determinants of immigrant wages was then carried out, examining rates of return to education, experience, differences in wages between economic and non-economic migrants, etc. The level of transferability of skills was found to be higher for economic migrants than for non-economic migrants.

Past research has shown poor implementation levels of a classroom-level curriculum strategy that forms the centerpiece of China's new national education reform policies, namely, Student-Centered Pedagogy (SCP). This dissertation set out to investigate the influences of selected school and teacher background characteristics, classroom-level SCP implementation variables, and a high stakes teacher evaluation policy variable, on SCP implementation levels reported by high school teachers in a selected school district in China. The overall aim of the research was to study relationships among a number of factors hypothesized to affect teachers' SCP implementation levels, guided by a theoretically-grounded, conceptual framework. The study particularly examined the potential adverse influence of an output-driven teacher evaluation policy on SCP implementation levels. The teacher evaluation policy is tied to secondary school students' performance on the high stakes, national college entrance examination in China, the Gaokao. Eight contextual and reform-related factors derived from a review of literature were tied together in the conceptual framework suggesting direct, mediating and moderating influences on SCP implementation. Based on the framework, paths by which the variables could affect SCP implementation levels directly or indirectly, were tested in stages. Data were collected and analyzed using survey research methodology. The first part of the analyses involved the design and validation of a bilingual teacher survey (English and Chinese), tapping the key variables. The second part of the analyses involved a series of hierarchical regression models to test hypothesized pathways and relationships among the measured variables. The theoretical premise of the study was that the large size and highly centralized structure of the Chinese educational system led it to adopt an output-control mechanism in the form of the high-stakes teacher evaluation policy tied to student performance on Gaokao. The adoption of such an output-control mechanism resulted in a mismatch between the philosophy underlying the newer SCP reforms and the pre-existing teacher evaluation policy, which in turn led to poor implementation levels of SCP in classrooms by teachers. Previously, researchers in China have overlooked the importance of policy incompatibility issues in examining effects of reforms at the classroom level. The study found that, consistent with the literature, teacher beliefs in SCP and teacher self-efficacy in practicing SCP had consistently positive, statistically significant influences on SCP implementation (for Beliefs in SCP, t(224)=3.745, p=.000, standardized β=. 22; for Self Efficacy, t(224)=3.387, p=.001, standardized β=.23). Also consistent with expectations, the influence of the survey measure tapping perceived control by the output-driven teacher evaluation policy on SCP implementation, was negative and statistically significant ( t(224)= -1.982, p=.049; standardized β=-.12). Perceived support for SCP implementation, including resources, professional development programs, support from principals and colleagues was a statistically significant predictor in initial models, but the factor was found to lose statistical significance when combined with the variable tapping perceived control by the output-driven teacher evaluation policy. With all the specified independent and mediating variables in the regression model, the cumulative variance explained on SCP Implementation levels was 20% ( = .199). The overall model was statistically significant (F[7,224)=7.935, p=.000). Together, these results confirmed the main hypotheses of the study.

Internal displacement in Colombia is a country-wide phenomenon that has affected almost five percent of the country's population or 14% of the country's rural population. Colombia's violent conflict has not reached yet a post-conflict stage since no peace agreement has been reached between the State and violent actors. This makes an analysis of the effects of displacement and of the state-led initiatives relating to it, such as the Familias en Accion para la poblacion desplazada , highly relevant to the current status of this humanitarian crisis. Using a unique data set from Colombia, the National Survey of Displaced Households (ENHD) performed in 2004, this thesis examines the educational situation of displaced children and studies the impact of various forces, including government policy, on the schooling of displaced children. The dissertation investigates the following questions: 1) What are the main factors determining the enrollment of internally displaced children at the destination municipalities? 2) What is the effect associated with the participation in the Familias en Accion for IDPs Program on enrollment? 3) What is the prevalence of school overage among internally displaced children and what are its main determinants? With respect to the first research question, the results show that children who are members of a female-headed household have a lower probability of being enrolled in school. Conversely, children whose head of household is literate have a higher probability of enrollment. The research is also able to examine the impact of how long families have been displaced. The results show that after a year, children's probability of enrollment increases significantly, bouncing upwards relative to the period immediately following displacement. Finally, the results show that higher household income is associated with greater enrollment, but in a nonlinear way: if a household belongs to the first three income quintiles the probability of enrollment does not increase significantly, but for the fourth and fifth income quintiles, the probability of enrollment increases by 10 and 12 percentage points evaluated at the mean. The second research question examines the effect of the Familias en Accion for IDPs Program on enrollment using a difference in differences (DID) model. The results obtained using the DID approach show that children whose families are aid beneficiaries are more likely to be enrolled in schools, holding other things constant. The third research question in the dissertation looks at the prevalence - and determinants - of school overage among internally displaced children. It is estimated that there are two years of overage after displacement which comes from the fact that this population is forced to leave their places of origin and resettle in other destinations, time during which children are not be able to enroll in school thus affecting their attainment.

As recently highlighted by the federal Race to the Top program, teacher policy is a growing focus of education policymakers and reform advocates, with much debate over how to train, motivate, and evaluate teachers, and increasing concern about teacher accountability. Yet while teacher workforce policy is increasingly recognized as an important dimension of public education policy, the complexity and contradictions that characterize teacher policy remain poorly understood by the public, policymakers, and scholars alike. This dissertation illuminates a problematic gap between the aspirations of new policy initiatives and the web of state and district laws and regulations that actually governs public school teachers and holds them accountable. Using New York City as a case study, the dissertation investigates the broad range of state and district policies that operate together to manage the teacher workforce of an urban school district. The dissertation builds a comprehensive typology of both supply- and demand-side teacher policies, employing an original analytical framework that integrates concepts drawn from strategic human resource management, legal studies, and the education literature on accountability. In particular, the study examines what teachers are held accountable for, and how minimum teaching competence is defined and enforced across the district workforce. The study shows that the district teacher policy system is composed of a disparate set of multiple, interacting state and district policy subsystems, and reveals the state's dominant role in teacher accountability. The state-controlled due process proceedings mandated by New York Education Law § 3020-a are found to be the cornerstone of teacher accountability in New York City. These precedent-driven proceedings define and enforce minimum teaching standards, and play a critical, under-recognized role in the district policy system. The state-sanctioned role of the district teachers union is also found to be central to the design and function of teacher workforce policies. Operating as a systemic whole, teacher policies hold New York City teachers strictly accountable for credentials, longevity, and ongoing training, while policies holding teachers accountable for their work are very weak, and operative mechanisms to ensure system-wide teaching competence do not exist. The study also identifies a significant degree of incoherence between accountability policies for teachers and those for other school stakeholders. Using new institutional theory as an analytical lens, the study explores ideological paradigms and alignments evident in these discrepant policies, focusing especially on growing tension between government and professional authority. New York education policy now appears to incorporate two contrary ideological paradigms: one aligned with an emerging government emphasis on efficiency, and the other with the professionalization model long promoted by the education profession. Study findings reveal the intricate nature of teacher workforce policy in New York City, and shed light on limitations of both federal and state influence in a highly fragmented education system. The dissertation concludes that locally-implemented policy systems for managing the teacher workforce merit closer attention as a crucial domain of education policy and school improvement.

This dissertation revisits the traditional educational production function, offering alternative strategies to model how achievement and socio-emotional skills enter the relationship and how they are affected during the schooling period. The proposed analyses use a combination of estimation methodologies (longitudinal, multilevel and simultaneous equations models) to empirically assess the importance of the different inputs in the educational process. These estimates can be compared to those obtained using traditional estimation methods to complement our understanding of what educational outcomes are generated in school and which school inputs are most important in producing certain outcomes. The analyses try to provide a broader understanding -both conceptually and statistically- of how education is produced and unbiased estimates of the relative importance of the determinants of academic and behavioral performance. Study design and methods: This dissertation is composed of three empirical questions about the conceptual and statistical structure of the educational production function, aimed at identifying what educational outcomes are generated and what determinants affect them. The empirical analyses use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99. 1. Estimation of cognitive achievement: an overview of the traditional educational production function. 2. Estimation of non-cognitive achievement: educational production function for non-cognitive skills. 3. A simultaneous equations model of the determinants of educational outcomes: achievement and behavioral skills. Question 1 involves the estimation of the production of cognitive skills, and educational achievement in reading and mathematics; Question 2 involves the estimation of the production of non-cognitive skills in school, and particular behavioral skills such as internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, and self-control (reported by the teacher). I use three different estimation methods for both questions: ordinary least squares; students' fixed effects; and multilevel students' fixed-effects. In Question 3 I model the production of simultaneous outcomes, using a cross-sectional and a dynamic simultaneous equation model of the production of education. This framework is an attempt to account for simultaneity and interdependence between outcomes and several educational inputs, leading to a more realistic formulation of how different educational ingredients can be interrelated over time, and acknowledging that educational components can be both inputs and outputs of the process, at different points in time. The estimation methods are three-stage least squares for the cross-sectional estimates; and within-three stages least squares for the longitudinal model. Findings: The findings obtained from the estimation of the three research questions indicate, in accordance with the existing literature, that the associations between teacher and schools characteristics and the production of cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills are small and mainly statistically insignificant. First, the results using students' fixed effects estimation suggest that the effects of teacher's educational attainment on the cognitive skills index; and experience on the non-cognitive skills index. Some effects of class size are also detected for the production of both skills. Secondly, the estimates using the multilevel students' fixed effects estimation, which controls for the clustered structure of the ECLS-K dataset, indicate that some the effects of certain school level characteristics are statistically significant for the production of reading achievement. These variables are type of school (Catholic school versus public) or class size (medium size versus small). Similarly, the effects of certain teacher characteristics, such as higher educational attainment are statistically significant for the production of mathematics achievement. Regarding the non-cognitive skills, teachers with more experience lead to better non-cognitive skills, while students in private schools, versus students in public schools, have lower non-cognitive skills, as reported by their teachers. Finally, the results using the cross-sectional simultaneous equations model confer a statistically significance importance to the associations between cognitive and non-cognitive skills in all the grade-levels. Compared to the teacher and school characteristics associations, the coefficients associated with the simultaneous relationships are educationally important. Policy implications: The design of a comprehensive model of educational outcomes and the study of their associations with the different school inputs are expected to uncover interesting features of the educational production process. Consequently, and building on all the existing knowledge on the production of education, these analyses can help to shed some light on fundamental knowledge for educational research: to better understand the educational process. The empirical findings arising from the study can be useful for informing policymakers and school practitioners and guiding decision making, by offering complementary frameworks that more accurately represent the educational process. Finally, the results may be useful for designing and evaluating educational interventions that are efficient and effective in producing higher quality and quantity of educational outcomes, by incorporating the assessment of non-cognitive skills into the interventions' expected outcomes. Indirectly, this could also stimulate the creation of newer theoretical frameworks, statistical methods and more comprehensive empirical sources for the study of education.

This dissertation analyzes the effects of schooling on earnings and employment in the informal private sector, compared with those in the public and formal private sectors, in South Africa. The estimations are conducted by race and gender as well to examine the difference between various subgroups. The research also examines the heterogeneity in returns to schooling. The returns to schooling are estimated using two-stage least squares with multinomial two-step selection corrections to control for both endogeneity of schooling and sector sample selection bias. Quantile regression and piecewise linear spline function methods were applied to deal with the heterogeneity of the returns to schooling. Moreover, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method was conducted to explore the contribution of returns to schooling and educational endowments to wage differentials between sectors. To analyze the effects of schooling on the probability of employment in different sectors of the economy, multinomial logit and probit models were estimated. The instrumental variable probit model was also used to control for the endogeneity of schooling. Even after controlling for both endogeneity of schooling and sample selection bias, a significant difference was found in returns to schooling between the formal and informal private sectors. Returns to schooling in the formal private sector are higher than those in the informal private sector in general. These findings apply across race and gender, except for Whites and Asians whose sample size in the informal sector was too small. They were robust even after controlling for district, industry, and occupation, and using different definitions of the informal sector. Therefore, the dissertation concludes that formal private and informal private labor markets are segmented in terms of returns to schooling in South Africa. The study also showed a positive effect of schooling on employment in the public and formal private sectors versus employment in the informal private sector. The effect of schooling on employment in the formal private sector - when compared to that in the informal sector - was much stronger for females than males, except for Whites and Asians. The findings were robust after controlling for district and using different definitions of the informal sector.

This dissertation defines early commitment scholarship programs and their theoretical impact on college enrollment and outcomes in general. In addition, it analyzes the effects of one state-wide early commitment program for low-income students, Oklahoma's Promise. The impact of the expansion of Oklahoma's Promise on college enrollment rates and college level educational outcomes will be reviewed. When compared with all US states, many of which were also implementing programs to increase college enrollment, Oklahoma's Promise was not found to have any significant effect. However using the preferred control group, results show the program increased college enrollment among low-income youth by 4.4 percentage points when compared to states with no scholarship program. In regards to college level educational outcomes, Oklahoma's Promise increased the probability of earning a college degree in five years or less, in not dropping out of college, and of earning a two-year college degree compared with students that signed the pledge and enrolled in college without the scholarship. The program was also found to have increased the state-wide, low-income, Associate's degree attainment rate by 4.5 percentage points. A benefit-cost analysis of the program shows that the net present value of the benefits to the taxpayer of the program for just the 2003 cohort was at least $88 million. Over the life of the program, the benefits are expected to be much more. The benefits of enrolling in college through the program far exceeded the costs to the students, regardless of whether or not they ultimately earned a degree.

New-teacher induction programs are widely used as non-monetary interventions, with the reduction of teacher turnover being one of their purposes. During the last three decades, states have been active in legislation to mandate induction programs for new teachers in public schools. Motivated by the discrepancy of the estimated program effects on teacher turnover in the existing literature, this study attempts to examine whether analytical methods used to address the endogeneity of induction-program participation matter in explaining this inconsistency in the estimation of the effect of new-teacher induction programs and how mandatory induction legislation and/or policy are linked with new-teacher induction programs and teacher turnover. Specifically, three key research questions are examined, including what are the determinants of new teachers' turnover, whether new-teacher induction programs have effects on teacher turnover, and whether state induction legislation and/or local mentoring policy have effects on teacher turnover. Two main sources of data are employed, including multiple cycles of Schools and Staffing Survey and Teacher Follow-up Survey, the largest nationally representative sample surveys on teachers and their schools in the United States, as well as New York City Department of Education administrative data, the longitudinal data concerning public school new teachers and their job status in the largest public education system in the United States. In order to address the potential endogeneity problem that may be associated with the induction program participation, this study employs identification strategies such as propensity-score matching, instrumental variable, and difference-in-difference methods. Particularly, in estimation, the difference-in-differences strategy is incorporated with the instrumental variable method as well as nonlinear models. The current study finds that, after addressing the endogeneity problem, new-teacher induction programs hardly have any effects on reducing teacher turnover, which is different from what most previous studies have found. It is also implied that if a mandatory induction/mentoring law/policy does not encourage new teachers' participation in a comprehensive induction/mentoring program, it may not work in terms of reducing teachers' exit turnover at best. This study contributes in literature on new-teacher induction programs and teacher turnover in terms of analytical methods, generalizability of findings, understanding of induction legislation and policy, and proper research design considerations for future studies.