What we learn in school: Cognitive and non-cognitive skills in the educational production function

Abstract

WHAT WE LEARN IN SCHOOL: COGNITIVE AND NON-COGNITIVE SKILLS IN THE EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTION FUNCTION Emma Garcia This dissertation revisits the traditional educational production function, offering alternative strategies to model how achievement and socio-emotional skills enter the relationship and how they are affected during the schooling period. The proposed analyses use a combination of estimation methodologies (longitudinal, multilevel and simultaneous equations models) to empirically assess the importance of the different inputs in the educational process. These estimates can be compared to those obtained using traditional estimation methods to complement our understanding of what educational outcomes are generated in school and which school inputs are most important in producing certain outcomes. The analyses try to provide a broader understanding –both conceptually and statisticallyof how education is produced and unbiased estimates of the relative importance of the determinants of academic and behavioral performance. Study design and methods This dissertation is composed of three empirical questions about the conceptual and statistical structure of the educational production function, aimed at identifying what educational outcomes are generated and what determinants affect them. The empirical analyses use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99. 1. Estimation of cognitive achievement: an overview of the traditional educational production function 2. Estimation of non-cognitive achievement: educational production function for non-cognitive skills 3. A simultaneous equations model of the determinants of educational outcomes: achievement and behavioral skills Question 1 involves the estimation of the production of cognitive skills, and educational achievement in reading and mathematics; Question 2 involves the estimation of the production of non-cognitive skills in school, and particular behavioral skills such as internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, and self-control (reported by the teacher). I use three different estimation methods for both questions: ordinary least squares; students’ fixed effects; and multilevel students’ fixed-effects. In Question 3 I model the production of simultaneous outcomes, using a cross-sectional and a dynamic simultaneous equation model of the production of education. This framework is an attempt to account for simultaneity and interdependence between outcomes and several educational inputs, leading to a more realistic formulation of how different educational ingredients can be interrelated over time, and acknowledging that educational components can be both inputs and outputs of the process, at different points in time. The estimation methods are three-stage least squares for the cross-sectional estimates; and within-three stages least squares for the longitudinal model.