1. Tiebout model. Find the school district where you attended high school at: http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/. (The easiest way to find the district is with the zip code field. If you went to private school, use the school district where you lived; if you did not attend high school in the United States, use Davis Joint Unified).
a. Write the name and NCES district ID of your school district.
b. Now go to http://nces.ed.gov/edfin/search/search_intro.asp and enter your district name as written in part a.
i. What shares of revenue in your district come from federal, state, and local revenues?
ii. How much were instructional expenditures per pupil in your district?
c. Using same search engine as in b, look up SCARSDALE UNION FREE SCHOOL DISTRICT, NY t in New York state (NCES ID 3625950).
i. What shares of revenue in Scarsdale come from federal, state, and local revenues?
ii. How much were instructional expenditures per pupil in Scarsdale in 2003-04?
d. In which district (yours or Scarsdale) does the funding of education more closely resemble the Tiebout model? Why?
e. Give two arguments against Tiebout-style school funding.
f. Give two arguments for Tiebout-style school funding.
2. Understanding changes in teacher aptitude using the Roy Model. Using the Roy Model, describe what might happen to average teacher aptitude or skill under each of the following scenarios. In arriving at your answers, assume that there are two professions-teaching and other- and that the wage-skill relationship is initially the same in both. Show your answers graphically and describe in words.
a. Clerical workers unionize.
b. Teachers unions are outlawed.
c. There is an increase in the return to skill outside of the teaching profession.
3. School Accountability. Find your elementary school at http://www.greatschools.net by typing the name of your school and city in the search field. If you did not attend elementary school in California, use Birch Lane Elementary School, Davis, CA.
4.
a. Click on the "Test Scores" link.
i. What was your school's API for 2013? Did your school meet the growth target?
ii. What subgroups were tested? How many met the state goal of 800?
iii. From a statistical standpoint, why are subgroups and smaller schools less likely to meet their target? Explain.
b. Now click on the link. "Students & teachers" link.
i. What percent of the school was: white, Hispanic, Asian, and African American?
ii. What percent are on free or reduced lunch and are English learners?
c. Given the information you have obtained above, do you think API and API growth accurately reflects the quality of your elementary school? Why or why not?
d. In ranking school quality, how could the state of California improve these rankings (Hint: see Kane and Staiger).
e. If you were going to decide which elementary school to send your child, brother, or sister, how would you choose? Hint: Think about how you could use the empirical tools (i.e., regression analysis) to help make this decision.