Excerpts from the project presentation:
- Large literature on how interventions such as better teacher quality or smaller classes affect achievement as measured by test scores
- Much less evidence on whether interventions that increase test scores improve outcomes such as earnings
- Problem: few datasets link information on early childhood test scores with data on adult outcomesWe link data from the STAR experiment to US tax records to evaluate the long-term impacts of education interventions
- Question: Are higher test scores a good proxy for improvements in adult outcomes? Do small classes and better teachers/peers improve adult outcomes to the extent they improve test scores?
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Conclusions
1. Early childhood class effects fade out in test scores but reappear in adult outcomes
2. Contemporaneous test scores are a valid proxy for the benefits of early childhood interventions
- 1 SD higher in test scores increases earnings by 14.8%
- Intervention-based estimates similar to OLS with controls