In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for black and white children were “inherently unequal.” This paper studies whether the desegregation plans of the next 30 years benefited black and white students in desegregated school districts. Data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses suggest desegregation plans of the 1970's reduced high school dropout rates of blacks by two to three percentage points during this decade. No significant change is observed among whites. The results are robust to controls for family income, parental education, and state- and region-specific trends, as well as to tests for selective migration.

School officials and legislators have long been concerned with the possibility of declining teacher quality (see e.g., Sean Corcoran et al., 2002). Beginning in the 1960's, states began testing prospective teachers in a direct effort to ensure that teachers meet minimum standards for basic skills and subject knowledge. By 1999, 41 states required applicants to pass some sort of standardized certification test. As a theoretical matter, however, the impact of such testing is ambiguous. Test requirements may establish a minimum achievement standard, as their proponents hope. On the other hand, testing and other certification requirements may deter some qualified applicants from teaching if these requirements are perceived as costly. This is the barriers-to-entry story first noted in the occupational licensing context by Milton F. Friedman and Simon Kuznets (1945). Another concern with job applicant testing is the possibility of an adverse impact on minority candidates, who usually do worse on tests (see David Autor and David Scarborough [2003] for a recent study). Paralleling increased state involvement in teacher certification is the increase in teachers' educational credentials, especially in public schools. For example, in 1971, over two-thirds of public-school teachers had a B.A., while only 27 percent had a master's or education specialist's degree. By 1991, however, over half of public school teachers (52.6 percent) had a master's or education specialist's degree. In contrast, the proportion of private-school teachers

We test the predictions from Becker's (1957) seminal work on employer prejudice and find that relative black wages (a) vary negatively with the prejudice of the "marginal" white in a state, (b) vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state, and (c) vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black. Our estimates suggest that one-quarter of the racial wage gap is due to prejudice, with nontrivial consequences for black lifetime earnings. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

In an effort to alleviate the perceived growth of a digital divide, the U.S. government enacted a major subsidy for Internet and communications investment in schools starting in 1998. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the subsidy—known as the E-Rate—on Internet investment in California public schools. The program subsidized spending by 20%–90%, depending on school characteristics. Using new data on school technology usage in every school in California from 1996 to 2000 as well as application data from the E-Rate program, the results indicate that the subsidy did succeed in significantly increasing Internet investment. The implied first-dollar price elasticity of demand for Internet investment is between −0.4 and −1.1 and the greatest sensitivity is seen among urban schools and schools with large black and Hispanic student populations. Rural and predominantly white and Asian schools show much less sensitivity. Overall, by the final year of the sample, there were approximately 68% more Internet-connected classrooms per teacher than there would have been without the subsidy. Using a variety of test score results, however, we do not find significant effects of the E-Rate program, at least so far, on student performance.

We show that the week after selling a large-prize Texas Lotto winning ticket, a retailer experiences a 12 to 38 percent relative increase in ticket sales. Some increase persists for up to 40 weeks. We document that the sales response increases with jackpot size and is larger in areas with more economically disadvantaged populations. Sales patterns across games and across retailers are not consistent with most advertising explanations. Furthermore, response patterns are not consistent with representativeness-based explanations for the hot hand or gambler's fallacy; we suggest an alternative explanation for the observed "lucky store" effect. (JEL H27, H71)

There is a growing consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activity will alter the earth’s climate, most notably by causing temperatures, precipitation levels, and weather variability to increase. The design of optimal climate change mitigation policies requires estimates of the health and other benefits of reductions in greenhouse gases; current evidence on the magnitude of the direct and indirect impacts, however, is considered insufficient for reliable conclusions (A. J. McMichael et al. 2003).

We make use of a new data resource--merged birth and school records for all children born in Florida from 1992 to 2002--to study the relationship between birth weight and cognitive development. Using singletons as well as twin and sibling fixed effects models, we find that the effects of early health on cognitive development are essentially constant through the school career; that these effects are similar across a wide range of family backgrounds; and that they are invariant to measures of school quality. We conclude that the effects of early health on adult outcomes are therefore set very early.

We present the results of three large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) carried out in Chicago, testing interventions to reduce crime and dropout by changing the decision making of economically disadvantaged youth. We study a program called Becoming a Man (BAM), developed by the nonprofit Youth Guidance, in two RCTs implemented in 2009–2010 and 2013–2015. In the two studies participation in the program reduced total arrests during the intervention period by 28–35%, reduced violent-crime arrests by 45–50%, improved school engagement, and in the first study where we have follow-up data, increased graduation rates by 12–19%. The third RCT tested a program with partially overlapping components carried out in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC), which reduced readmission rates to the facility by 21%. These large behavioral responses combined with modest program costs imply benefit-cost ratios for these interventions from 5-to-1 up to 30-to-1 or more. Our data on mechanisms are not ideal, but we find no positive evidence that these effects are due to changes in emotional intelligence or social skills, self-control or “grit,” or a generic mentoring effect. We find suggestive support for the hypothesis that the programs work by helping youth slow down and reflect on whether their automatic thoughts and behaviors are well suited to the situation they are in, or whether the situation could be construed differently.

Improving academic outcomes for economically disadvantaged students has proven challenging, particularly for children at older ages. We present two large-scale randomized controlled trials of a high-dosage tutoring program delivered to secondary school students in Chicago. One innovation is to use paraprofessional tutors to hold down cost, thereby increasing scalability. Participating in math tutoring increases math test scores by 0.18 to 0.40 standard deviations, and increases math and nonmath course grades. These effects persist into future years. The data are consistent with increased personalization of instruction as a mechanism. The benefit-cost ratio is comparable to many successful early childhood programs. (JEL H75, I21, I24, I26, I32, J13, J15)