The War on Poverty’s Human Capital Programs: K-12 Education Elizabeth Cascio, Dartmouth Sarah Reber, UCLA Preconference Presentation November 18, 2011

Education and The War on Poverty - LBJ in Special Congressional Address Jan. 12, 1965 Exposed poverty of those with low levels of education Proposed federal intervention in education at all levels

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 Signed April 11, 1965 Title I: Federal aid to fund programs for educationally deprived children – Directed to poor school districts – $1 billion in ($7b, 2009$) – Doubled federal aid for elementary/secondary education Per-pupil grants to districts ↑ linearly in child poverty rate

* Title I Formula Amounts in real 2009 dollars

What have been the effects? Coleman Report (1966) cast doubt on very premise – School resources explain little variation in student performance – Supported by much empirical education research post-1965 (Hanushek 1986, 1997) Early reports on Title I not promising – Comparisons of participants to non-participants suggested little improvement in test scores (HEW 1967, Glass 1970) – Title I funds widely misused (Martin and McClure 1969)

Key Issues Selection into nominal program participation – Participants tend to be the most disadvantaged students – No experimental evaluations to date Title I grants were fungible – With other sources of revenue: may have displaced local or state tax dollars (  income subsidy) – Address different educational activities: If spent on education, may have benefited students who were not “educationally deprived”

Proposed Outline 1.Estimate direct effect of Title I on school resources using state-level data – Approach: test for change in poverty gradient of outcomes in 1965 (Cascio, Gordon, and Reber, 2011) – Outcomes: per-pupil federal revenue, per-pupil current spending, pupil-teacher ratio, average salary of instructional staff

* Title I Formula Amounts in real 2009 dollars Slope: $787 ($44) [unweighted] $729 ($62) [weighted by 1963 enrollment]

1965: $789 ($148) 1963: $129 ($61) Difference: $660 (Less than expected) * Federal revenue in real 2009 dollars. Weighted by 1963 enrollment.

Estimates for 1963 and 1965 very close But poorer states on a different spending trajectory pre-ESEA. Why? Could be a region effect * Current expenditure in real 2009 dollars. Weighted by 1963 enrollment.

* Federal revenue in real 2009 dollars. Weighted by 1963 enrollment.

* Current expenditure in real 2009 dollars. Weighted by 1963 enrollment.

Implications Analysis will be descriptive Don’t want it to be overly complex, but: – Will need to account for pre-existing trends in poverty gradients – Will need to account for region effects – Will also control for state x year policy changes that could affect outcomes of interest (e.g., school finance equalization) Power may be an issue: – Final data set will use all available years of data from – Will focus on differences-in-differences models

Proposed Outline 2.Discuss indirect effect on resources via school desegregation – Title I x 1964 CRA: Cascio et al. (2010) 3.Discuss possible effects of Title I on educational attainment – Studies using state x year variation in school inputs, cohorts largely educated prior to War on Poverty era (e.g., Card and Krueger 1992) – Studies looking at effects of school desegregation, cohorts educated during War on Poverty era (e.g., Reber 2010, Johnson 2011) 4.Discuss Title I in modern era and related research – No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB): new conditions on Title I receipt – Title I today: complex regulatory environment reflects early failings

Bonus Slides