THREE ESSAYS IN LABOR ECONOMICS

CHAPTER 1: Do Mid-Career Teacher Trainees Enter and Persist Like Their Younger Peers? (with Jane Arnold Lincove)In the context of an ongoing national conversation about teacher shortages, we build on prior literature on the efficacy of teacher certification pathways by comparing entry and exit patterns based on age at the time of initial certification. All trainees who complete a state certification process have invested substantial time and resources into entering teaching, competing employment opportunities and expectations might vary by age. We use both linear regression and discrete-time hazard models to examine employment and subsequent exit of newly certified teacher trainees in Michigan from 2011 to 2022. We find that while mid-career entrants in their 30s and 40s compose a small share of new certificates, they are more likely to enter a public-school teaching position and no more likely to subsequently exit than counterparts who were certified in their early 20s. Mid-career pathways also contribute to teacher diversity by attracting more Black and male teachers who enter and persist. CHAPTER 2: Diminishing returns across the day: evidence from school schedules Cognitive fatigue – the decline in cognitive performance over time during sustained cognitive demand – is thought to be an important determinant of productivity. I analyze how cognitive fatigue and time of instruction affect student performance as measured by class marks and state standardized test scores. Further, I examine if there exist heterogeneous effects across courses and student subpopulations such that a readjustment of the school schedule may result in efficiency gains. I use panel data from 386 high schools in North Carolina containing over 1 million student level observations from 2000 – 2019 within a fixed effects framework. I find that having an English or math class in the last block of the day decreases a student’s GPA by 0.062 (0.007) and 0.064 (0.007), respectively. I further find having a math class in the first block of the day instead of the fourth improves standardized math test scores by as much as increasing teacher quality by one half of a standard deviation. CHAPTER 3: Spending & achievement effects of increased funding to rural school districts: Evidence from Wisconsin (with riley Acton & Cody Orr) We study the spending and achievement effects of increased state funding to rural American school districts by leveraging the introduction and subsequent expansion of Wisconsin’s Sparsity Aid Program. We find that the program, which provides additional state funding to small and isolated school districts, increased spending in eligible districts by 2% annually. Districts mostly allocate the funds toward non- instructional areas, such as hiring additional administrative staff and increasing spending on general operations and food service. As a result, we do not find consistent evidence that the increased funding improved standardized test scores or changed postsecondary enrollment and completion patterns. However, our confidence intervals do not exclude positive effects for rural schools as large as those found elsewhere in the literature.