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(共33张PPT)
11
11.1 Why Should the Government Be Involved in Education
11.2 How Is the Government Involved in Education
11.3 Evidence on Competition in Education Markets
11.4 Measuring the Returns to Education
11.5 The Role of the Government in Higher Education
11.6 Conclusion
Education
11
Education is a hotly debated topic in public policy.
Education is the single largest expenditure item for state and local governments.
The United States spends more on education than most countries…
…but lags behind leading countries, and even much less wealthy ones, on standardized test scores.
Education
11
Education
The United States spends more money per pupil than nearly every country on Earth, but its educational outcomes are only average.
11.1
There are a number of public benefits (positive externalities) to education that might justify a government role in its provision.
Productivity
Society can benefit from the higher standard of living that comes with increased productivity.
Citizenship
Education may make citizens more informed and active voters, improving the quality of the democratic process.
Why Should the Government Be Involved in Education
11.1
Educational credit market failure: The failure of the credit market to make loans that would raise total social surplus by financing productive education.
Without public education, many families would borrow money for their children’s education.
This market likely would not function well.
Why Should the Government Be Involved in Education
11.1
Failure to maximize family utility
Parents may not choose an appropriate level of education for their children.
Redistribution
As long as education is a normal good, higher-income families would provide more education.
Income mobility has long been a stated goal for most democratic societies, and public education supports this goal.
Why Should the Government Be Involved in Education
11.2
Most public education is provided through free public schools.
This system may crowd out private education provision.
Absent free public schools, some parents would send their children to expensive, high-quality schools.
With free public schools, parents can reduce quality by a small amount but save a lot.
Free Public Education and Crowding Out
Other goods spending
Education spending
Free Public Education and Crowding Out
11.2
A
B
C
D
X
Y
Z
E1
E2
E3
EF
G1
G2
G3
G4
EF
11.2
One solution to the crowd-out problem is educational vouchers.
Educational vouchers: A fixed amount of money given by the government to families with school-age children, who can spend it at any type of school, public or private.
Vouchers put private schools and public schools on equal footing.
Solving the Crowd-Out Problem: Vouchers
G2
Other goods spending
Education
spending
11.2
A
B
C
X1
Y1
Z1
E1
E2
E3
EF
G1
G3
G4
Solving the Crowd-Out Problem: Vouchers
EF
G5
G6
E4
E5
EF
Y2
Z2
11.2
Voucher proponents make two arguments for them:
Consumer sovereignty
Vouchers allow individuals to more closely match their educational choices with their tastes.
Competition
Vouchers allow the education market to benefit from the competitive pressures that make private markets function efficiently.
Solving the Crowd-Out Problem: Vouchers
11.2
Critics make several arguments against vouchers.
Vouchers may lead to excessive school specialization.
By focusing on particular market segments, schools give less focus to the key elements of education.
Vouchers will lead to segregation.
Critics of voucher systems argue that vouchers have the potential to reintroduce segregation along many dimensions, such as race, income, or child ability.
Problems with Educational Vouchers
11.2
Vouchers are an inefficient and inequitable use of
public resources.
With vouchers, total public-sector costs would rise, as the government would pay part of the private school costs that families currently pay.
The education market may not be competitive.
The education market is described more closely by a model of natural monopoly, with efficiency gains to having only one monopoly provider of the good.
Problems with Educational Vouchers
11.2
The costs of special education
Special education: Programs to educate disabled children.
Each child would be worth a voucher amount that represents the average cost of educating a child in that town in that grade, but all children do not cost the same to educate.
Students with disabilities cost about twice as much to educate as students without.
Problems with Educational Vouchers
11.3
Direct comparison of voucher users and nonusers misleading.
Rouse (1998): Oversubscribed schools randomly admit students.
Vouchers increased test scores by 1 to 2% points.
Angrist et al. (2002): Columbian vouchers distributed by lottery.
Voucher winners 10% more likely to finish 8th grade, scored higher on standardized tests.
EVIDENCE: Estimating the Effects of Voucher Programs
11.3
Neilson (2013): Examined voucher program in Chile.
Vouchers reduced the achievement gap between poor and nonpoor students by about one-third.
Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2013): Studied lottery-based allocation of students to private schools in India.
Found modest improvements in test scores at much lower education cost.
EVIDENCE: Estimating the Effects of Voucher Programs
11.3
Some school districts have not offered vouchers for private schools but have instead allowed students to choose freely among public schools.
Magnet schools: Special public schools set up to attract talented students or students interested in a particular subject or teaching style.
Charter schools: Schools financed with public funds that are not usually under the direct supervision of local school boards or subject to all state regulations for schools.
Experience with Public School Choice
11.3
The United States has implemented many programs making schools accountable for student performance.
Accountability encourages schools to increase quality.
Many states laws, and No Child Left Behind passed in 2001, create accountability measures.
These laws appear to improve math scores, although the effect on reading is unclear.
Experience with Public School Incentives
11.3
Accountability programs have unintended effects.
They encourage “teaching to the test,” possibly improving test scores without learning.
Schools can manipulate the pool of test takers and the conditions under which they take tests to maximize success.
They may encourage schools or teachers to cheat.
Experience with Public School Incentives
11.3
Evidence is mixed.
Generally suggests that vouchers improve educational outcomes.
They come at the cost of potentially increasing inequality in educational achievement.
Some sort of guarantee of access must be provided to ensure all students have an education.
Bottom Line on Vouchers and School Choice
11.4
Measuring the returns to education is a key, but difficult, empirical question.
Returns to education: The benefits that accrue to society when students get more schooling or when they get schooling from a higher-quality environment.
More education clearly leads to higher wages.
Interpretation of this correlation is controversial.
Measuring the Returns to Education
11.4
There are two main interpretations:
Education as human capital accumulation
Human capital: A person’s stock of skills, which may be increased by further education.
Education as a screening device
Screening: A model that suggests that education provides only a means of separating high-ability individuals from low-ability individuals and does not actually improve skills.
Effects of Education Levels on Productivity
11.4
Policy implications
Human capital: Government would want to support education to raise their productivity.
Screening: Education does not raise productivity, so there is no reason to support it.
Differentiating the theories
Most of the returns to education reflect accumulation of human capital.
Some screening value to obtaining a high school or higher education degree.
Effects of Education Levels on Productivity
11.4
Comparing wages of people with more and less education suffers from ability bias.
More education may reflect intelligence or motivation, biasing comparison.
Duflo (2004): Look at school construction, comparing cohorts and regions with more schools.
Use laws that force people to stay in school longer.
Most approaches suggest that each extra year of schooling increases wages 7 to 10%.
EVIDENCE: Estimating the Return to Education
11.4
Better-educated people…
Participate more politically
Perform fewer criminal acts
Have better health and healthier children
Have better educated children
Have more productive coworkers
Effect of Education Levels on Other Outcomes
11.5
Some randomized experiments assign students to small or large classes.
Project STAR randomly assigned students to small classes, regular classes, or regular classes with teacher’s aides.
Small class size produced test score gains that persisted well into the future.
Overall rate of return to small classes: 5.5%.
EVIDENCE: Estimating the Effects of School Quality
11.5
An alternative approach is a quasi-experimental analysis of changes in school resources:
Mid-1990s California had the largest class sizes in the nation, 29 students per class on average.
The state government in 1996 paid schools to reduce their class size to 20 students per class.
Schools that implemented this quickly produced little gain, relative to schools that took longer.
EVIDENCE: Estimating the Effects of School Quality
11.5
The Role of the Government in Higher Education
Much of the discussion is on primary and secondary education.
In fact, about 43% of spending is for higher education.
Higher education in the United States is viewed as an enormous success.
Receives three sources of government financing:
$242 billion from state and local funding
$32 billion in Pell grants
$19.5 billion in tax breaks
11.5
State provision
The primary form of government financing of higher education is direct provision of higher education through locally and state-supported colleges and universities.
Pell Grants
The Pell Grant program is a subsidy to higher education administered by the federal government that provides grants to low-income families to pay for their educational expenditures.
Current Government Role
11.5
The federal government also provides support with loans.
Direct student loans: Loans taken directly from the U.S. Department of Education.
Guaranteed student loans: Loans taken from private banks for which the banks are guaranteed repayment by the government.
Means-tested subsidies:
Low interest rate guarantee
Defer repayment of the loan until graduation
Loans
11.5
The final way in which the government finances higher education is through a series of tax breaks for college-goers and their families.
Tax credits for families that send their children to college
Alternatively, deductions for educational expenses
These tax breaks add up to about $19.5 billion per year in forgone government revenue.
Tax Relief
11.5
The major motivation for government intervention in higher education is not to produce positive externalities but rather to correct the failure in the credit market for student loans.
Given that the major market failure for higher education is in credit markets, shifting state resources away from direct provision and toward loans would likely improve efficiency.
What Is the Market Failure, and How Should It Be Addressed
11.6
The provision of education, an impure public good, is one of the most important governmental functions in the United States and around the world.
The optimal amount of government intervention in education markets depends on the extent of market failures in private provision of education and on the public returns to education.
Conclusion

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