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Pantelis Solomon Ph.D. Candidate in Economics |
Contact Information
+1(401) 859-1967
pantelis_solomon@brown.edu
Welcome,
I
am a PhD Candidate in Economics at Brown University. I am currently on
the academic job market and will be available for interviews at the
ASSA meetings in San Diego in January 2013.
Research and Teaching Fields
Economics of Education, Public Economics, Applied MicroeconomicsJob Market Paper
"Do Schools Learn: Response to North Carolina¡¯s School Accountability Program"
This
paper tests the predictions of a Bayesian model of learning by doing in
North Carolina's school accountability program. The program aims to
provide incentives for higher performance by offering monetary rewards
if schools meet a specified test score target. Schools are assumed to
exert effort based on their expectations of reaching the target. At the
end of each year, they can observe how they performed relative to the
target and draw inference on the optimal level of effort needed to
reach the target. To test the model's predictions, I use test score
data from grades 3 and 4 from before the program started and exploit
the fact that, while schools were tested prior to the program, they
were not informed of their test score performance. The schools'
difference in performance before and after they receive the new
information is partially consistent with learning by doing. I find that
the highest gains in performance come from schools who performed poorly
the year before. However, I also find that schools which passed the
target the year before experience an additional gain in performance,
which rejects the predictions of the learning model. This finding
suggests that there may be an additional effect on incentives if
schools meet the target, consistent with a decrease in the disutility
of effort following a successful year. Finally, I test for the
differential effect of the program across different parts of the test
score distribution, and find that the schools' response benefited low
achieving students the most.
Working Paper
¡°How Mean Reversion Varies with Socioeconomic Status and the Implications for School Accountability Systems¡±Accountability
programs that base their assessments on the schools' growth rates,
expect all schools to be equally capable of meeting their target.
However, schools of low Socioeconomic Status have been less successful
in these programs than more affluent schools. Using data from North
Carolina's accountability program, I find that the mean reversion
pattern differs substantially between high and low poverty schools. In
particular, I find that schools of low Socioeconomic Status have on
average lower scores, conditional on the school's prior scores. This in
turn suggests that a linear target formula will tend to overestimate
the predicted scores for low Socioeconomic Status schools and
underestimate that for high Socioeconomic Status schools.
Professor Andrew D. Foster (Chair)
Department of Economics, Brown University
401-863-2537
Andrew_Foster@brown.edu
Professor John H. Tyler
Department of Education, Brown University
401-863-1036
John_Tyler@brown.edu
Professor Kenneth Y. Chay
Department of Economics, Brown University
401-863-6296
Kenneth_Chay@brown.edu
November 2012