The War on Poverty’s Human Capital Programs: K-12 Education

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

2. 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

3. 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 1965-66 ($7b, 2009$) • Doubled federal aid for elementary/secondary education • Per-pupil grants to districts ↑ linearly in child poverty rate

4. * Title I Formula Amounts in real 2009 dollars

5. 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)

6. 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”

7. Proposed Outline • 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

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

9. 1965: $789 ($148) Difference: $660 (Less than expected) 1963: $129 ($61) * Federal revenue in real 2009 dollars. Weighted by 1963 enrollment.

10. 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.

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

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

14. 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 1953 - 1979 • Will focus on differences-in-differences models

15. Proposed Outline • Discuss indirect effect on resources via school desegregation • Title I x 1964 CRA: Cascio et al. (2010) • 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) • 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

16. Bonus Slides