Search Results
Title: Essays on Internal Labor Markets and Education
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Bond, Timothy N. |
|
Essays on Internal Labor Markets and Education Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 2013 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B, ECLS-K); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Racial Differences; School Progress; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Chapter two analyzes how the way we measure achievement affects estimates of the black-white test gap among young children. Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat test scores as interval scales, they are reported using ordinal scales. We use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey to examine the effect of order-preserving scale transformations on the evolution of the black-white reading test score gap from kindergarten entry through third grade. Plausible transformations reverse the growth of the gap in the CNLSY and greatly reduce it in the ECLS-K during the early school years. All growth from entry through first grade and a nontrivial proportion from first to third grade probably reflects scaling decisions. To address the measurement problems demonstrated in chapter two, in chapter three we relate test scores to adult outcomes. Using data from the CNLSY, we perform order-preserving scale transformations on reading and math test scores to maximize their ability to predict completed education. We find that the black-white achievement gap grows during the early years of education when measured in terms of test scores' economic value. Classical measurement error is ins ufficient to explain the growth in the gap. |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Bond, Timothy N. Essays on Internal Labor Markets and Education. Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 2013. |