Essays in the economics of education Ashley Schwanebeck

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Schwanebeck, Ashley, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Economics., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Educational administration.

Education.

0501.

0511.

0514.

0515.

Local Subjects:

Educational administration.

Education.

0501.

0511.

0514.

0515.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (124 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This dissertation consists of three chapters that evaluate the effects of school policies on students, teachers, and principals. The first two chapters analyze the effects of a state-wide principal performance pay policy implemented in North Carolina in the 2017-18 school year.1 Chapter 1 studies the effects of this policy from an empirical framework. School principals play a central role in managing teachers and shaping student learning, yet their compensation is typically based on experience rather than performance. This chapter studies the effects of principal incentive pay within schools, and its implications for principal effort, teacher effectiveness, and student test scores. To do so, I leverage statewide implementation of incentive pay for principals in North Carolina (NC). Using administrative panel data in NC and Georgia and several difference-in-differences techniques, I estimate the causal effects of principal incentive pay on student test scores. I find that this particular incentive pay design induced significant declines in student outcomes, reducing reading and math test scores by 0.12-0.15 and 0.13-0.16 standard deviations (SD), respectively. To understand these counterintuitive results, I first estimate latent principal effort along four dimensions using teacher survey responses to analyze the effect of incentive pay on principals. Second, I estimate teacher effectiveness measured as test score value-added pre- and post-salary reform, and then I relate teacher effectiveness to principal effort and characteristics.I find that principal effort toward administrative tasks and teacher professional development declines after the incentive pay scheme was introduced by 0.05-0.10 SD, with no effect on instructional support. Teacher effectiveness declines by 0.02 SD in math and 0.01 SD in reading, with reduced principal effort toward administration driving this decline. Finally, I build a policy exposure index based on pre- and post-reform salary schedules and implement a DID approach to understand which principals are responsive to pay incentives. Students of principals with high policy exposure have a 0.15-0.29 SD decline in test scores. My results suggest that incentive pay induced principals to reduce effort on margins to which teachers respond. Finally, I discuss how the design of the incentive scheme may have reduced its effectiveness through generating an income effect and providing insurance against low performing years.Chapter 2 seeks to explain the unintended consequences of North Carolina's principal performance pay reform by developing a conceptual framework to guide intuition. To do so, I develop a Stackelberg model of principal and teacher effort decisions, where principal effort reduces the cost of effort for teachers, and student test scores are realized following equilibrium effort allocations. My model allows teachers to heterogeneously respond to principal effort and for principals to potentially reduce effort in response to pay incentives. I find that the decline in principal effort, and thus student test scores, can be explained by the pay reform generating a large income effect for lower-experienced principals and for providing salary insurance for higher-experienced principals.Chapter 3, coauthored with Margaux Luflade and Maria Zhu, studies the effects of peer misbehavior and suspensions on subsequent student behavior. School suspensions are a widely debated disciplinary tool, yet evidence on their effectiveness remains mixed. While most discussion focuses on the suspended students themselves, suspensions may also generate spillover effects on peers' behavior. This chapter uses administrative data from North Carolina public schools, including detailed disciplinary records, to estimate the impact of peers' misbehavior and suspensions on a student's subsequent misbehavior. We construct peer networks based on shared disciplinary infractions in prior periods and estimate a fixed effects model that exploits temporal variation in peers' infractions to identify the causal effects of peer misbehavior and suspensions on future student behavior. We find that exposure to peer misbehavior not resulting in suspension increases a student's propensity of misbehaving in the subsequent two-week period by 8-9 percent, and that peer suspensions do not mitigate this effect, indicating no evidence of a deterrent effect of peer suspensions

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: A.

Advisors: Todd, Petra Committee members: Luflade, Margaux; Agostinelli, Francesco

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247973928

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license