The Achievement and Non-Achievement Effects of Repeating Another Year with a Teacher and Reversing Broken Windows Theory

Abstract

This research gives a multidimensional investigation into community policies that are becoming more prevalent in American society. In Chapter 1, I apply multiple Value-Added Models (VAM) of achievement to data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC) to determine the academic impacts of repeating a year (or more) with the same teacher on student achievement in math and reading. Given the growing trend in schools and teaching practices, like looping, that pair teachers and students for multiple years, this research finds contrasting results about the gains in academic achievement associated with repeating with a teacher. Specifically, while there is evidence that students on average have higher scores when repeating with a teacher, this effect is mitigated when one controls for teacher quality. Using limited probability models, I find students are 29\%-34\% and 42\%-46\% more likely to repeat with a teacher whose Value-Added estimate is in the top 20\% of teacher-quality compared to a teacher in the bottom 20\% in math and reading, respectively. This nonrandom assignment of students to teachers, creates upward bias in the estimated achievement effects of repeating with a teacher that have previously been unaccounted for. In chapters 1 and 2, I account for nonrandom assignment finding non-significant gains in achievement associated with repeating with a teacher. While Chapter 1 finds non-significant gains to student achievement, Chapter 2 investigates if there are any non-cognitive gains students experience when they repeat with a teacher for another year. Using the same longitudinal data from the NCERDC, Chapter 2’s results indicate increases in character-trait measures associated with teacher and student perceptions of academic success and effort. Using multiple partial persistence VAMs that include controls for student heterogeneity and for teacher quality, the estimated effects on a teacher's subjective scoring of a student's academic success, student's anticipated grade for the year, and student attendance are all significantly greater than zero. Taken together, the positive effects from students repeating with the same teacher reveal themselves prevalently on character-trait improvements rather than on contemporaneous achievement scores. In Chapter 3, I investigate the causal direction of a popular policing policy. Although there are a large number of studies testing Broken Windows Theory (BWT) (Wilson & Kelling, 1982), the reverse theoretical pathway has never been assessed (risk perceptions predicting incivilities perceptions). It is estimated in Chapter 3 using panel data from Baltimore. Results show lagged, multilevel impacts of risk perceptions on changes in incivilities perceptions. Further, results show the impact of risk perceptions on seeing later changes in neighborhood problems varies significantly across street blocks. Findings support Harcourt’s (2001) assertion that “disorder” is not a fixed and unambiguous label; rather, it is dependent upon a person defining his or her surroundings. People who feel a high degree of crime risk are “biased” (Hipp, 2010; Wallace, 2011) toward defining neighborhood features as more problematic than those who do not.