We examine the relationship between secondary school attainment and early-career graduate salaries in the UK. Based on literature on grade inflation, we hypothesise that there is uncertainty regarding the quality of the signal communicated by degree classifications, and that secondary school grades can be used as a tool to determine the veracity…

This dissertation uses three empirical papers to examine the relationship between student gender, student's income expectations for the future, and persistence in schooling. First, I use survey data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) to examine how both children's and parent's earnings expectations for students in 12th grade vary by…

The prevalence of data in every aspect of life in modern society makes it critical that students are given experiences investigating real issues with real data. Our research question was as follows: In what ways can mathematical action technology used with a real-world context involving the wage gap contribute to students' sense of identity and…

Results from two studies provided strong evidence for the validity of the HiSET® tests, thereby demonstrating that HiSET is a well-developed battery of tests with passing and college and career readiness (CCR) standards that, when met, provide a pathway to postsecondary education, better employment opportunities and wages, and a better quality of…

According to common indicators such as the prestige of vocational education and training (VET), enrolment rates in initial VET (IVET) programmes, or the involvement of private partners, the Swiss VET system enjoys a high standing. In this paper, we took a different approach and examined the effects of educational resources (educational degree) and…

This brief is the fourth in Baltimore Education Research Consortium's (BERC's) "Launching into Adulthood" series, which examines the trajectories of Baltimore graduates six years later. A partnership with Baltimore's Promise and the Maryland Longitudinal Data System made it possible to examine both college and earnings outcomes for…

This study examines how the "college earnings premium" (CEP)--the difference in average earnings between workers with and without college education--varies across the United States. Specifically, it compares across cities, states, and rural areas the mean earnings of workers with bachelor's degrees to those with associate degrees, with…

Conventional wisdom regards a college degree as necessary for a well-paying job and a good life. By focusing on average earnings, this conventional wisdom obscures the enormous variability in outcomes at each education level; in fact, the top half of high school graduates earn in the same range as the bottom half of college graduates. However the…

States should graduate students from high school prepared for the challenges they will face in college and their careers. Many states are working toward this goal by improving the quality of career and technical education (CTE) programs, and have looked to industry-recognized credentials as one component of this improvement. However, there is…

Card and Krueger (1992a,b) used labor market outcomes to study the productivity of school spending. Following their lead, we examine effects of post-1990 school finance reforms on students' educational attainment and labor market outcomes. Using a state-by-cohort panel design, we find that reforms increased high school completion and…

Students who attend different colleges in the U.S. end up with vastly different economic outcomes. We study the role of relative value-added across colleges within student choice sets in producing these outcome disparities. Linking high school, college, and earnings registries spanning the state of Texas, we identify relative college value-added…

Comparisons between CTE and non-CTE instructors and between CTE endorsements were examined in the context of PPfT and CTE's overlapping goals of quality instruction and professional learning. CTE instructors had significantly higher summative scores than did non-CTE instructors. Almost twice as many CTE as non-CTE instructors earned a…

Since their inception in 1992, the number of charter schools has grown to more than 6,800 nationally, serving nearly three million students. Various studies have examined charter schools' impacts on test scores, and a few have begun to examine longer-term outcomes including graduation and college attendance. This paper is the first to estimate…

In this report, the authors have recently discovered that the increase in lifetime earnings from having a bachelor's degree, relative to having just a high school diploma, is much smaller for people who grew up poor than it is for people who grew up wealthier. This finding that has not been uncovered by any previous research, in part because until…

This paper builds a model of human capital accumulation driven by increasing specialization of the workforce. Individuals increase the efficiency of time dedicated to human capital acquisition by focusing investments on narrower sets of skills. The evolution of secondary and post-secondary curricula in the United States from 1870-2000 confirms the…