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Over the years from 2009 to 2017, the people of Arizona witnessed the state consistently defunding the schools, its students academically underperforming, and as a result, the poverty achievement gap widening. Even with the efforts in recent years to re-invest in education, Arizona’s education funding falls below its level at

Over the years from 2009 to 2017, the people of Arizona witnessed the state consistently defunding the schools, its students academically underperforming, and as a result, the poverty achievement gap widening. Even with the efforts in recent years to re-invest in education, Arizona’s education funding falls below its level at 2008 and the national average. Among Arizona’s funding sources is the Public School Tax Credit, a unique legislation for the state that allows for taxpayers to donate money to certain programs at Arizona public schools and reduce their state income tax liability dollar-for-dollar. Because of the already severe achievement gap in Arizona, this funding source which relies on surrounding neighborhoods’ income raises the concern that, instead of helping Arizona students, it is exacerbating the existing achievement gap. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between income and donations received by schools to determine the validity of this concern. To ensure a comprehensive examination of the relationship between income and donations received, regression tests are run on both the aggregate level and individual level. The tests find that, although income does have a statistically significant correlation with the donations received, it is only positive for the effect of total income on total donations, negative for the effect of average income per return on average donation per donor, and negative for average income per return on total donations. The results imply that to garner high donations, it matters less to be located in a high-earning neighborhood and more important to be located in a moderate-earning neighborhood with a lot of people donating using this credit. Therefore, the concern of income’s effect on donations is valid, but perhaps not in the straightforward way that we would expect.
ContributorsChen, Vivian Young (Author) / Kenchington, David (Thesis director) / Brown, Jenny (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
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Description
Textbooks are crucial in classrooms when it comes to developing lesson plans and curriculum for the classroom. They serve as a way for students to learn more about a certain topic in depth and can improve reading comprehension skills. However, as past studies have shown (Grever and van der Vlies),

Textbooks are crucial in classrooms when it comes to developing lesson plans and curriculum for the classroom. They serve as a way for students to learn more about a certain topic in depth and can improve reading comprehension skills. However, as past studies have shown (Grever and van der Vlies), textbooks can be one-sided and leave out stories and perspectives from marginalized groups, such as African Americans and Indigenous peoples. Multiple perspectives in textbooks allow students to use historical consciousness to reflect how these historical events have an impact on modern society. Arizona has been in a unique political position over the past decade. In 2011, the state legislature passed a bill banning ethnic studies to be taught in schools. This was eventually reversed by the Court in 2017. Recently, the Governor signed two bills regarding education, which are improving curriculum on the Holocaust and banning critical race theory from being taught in schools. Because of Arizona’s geographic diversity, textbook content might vary since Arizona holds the most federally recognized tribes and borders Mexico. To analyze those differences, the 15 counties of Arizona are grouped into five regions, and from each region, one textbook will be analyzed. The textbooks will be coded for each racial community, which will be Asian American, Hispanic American, Black American, and Indigenous American. It is concluded that there is a direct relationship between the textbooks chosen and the racial groups that are covered in these books. Counties that had a larger Indigenous population tended to have a textbook that would cover more Indigenous history.
Created2022-05
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Description

Using a dataset of ASU students from the 2016-2017 cohort, we interact gender and parent education level to observe gaps in academic achievement. We see a statistically insignificant achievement gap for males across parent education level, but a statistically significant achievement gap for females across parent education level. We also

Using a dataset of ASU students from the 2016-2017 cohort, we interact gender and parent education level to observe gaps in academic achievement. We see a statistically insignificant achievement gap for males across parent education level, but a statistically significant achievement gap for females across parent education level. We also observe dropout gaps among these interaction groups. We see the widest dropout gap being between males across parent education level, with the smallest dropout gap being between females across parent education level. So with males we see an insignificant achievement gap but the widest dropout gap across parent education level, and with females we see a significant achievement gap but the smallest dropout gap across parent education level. What is driving these gaps and causing more similarly performing students to drop out at wider rates? At the aggregate level, we see larger gaps in grade- associated dropout probability across parent education level for males which may be able to explain the larger difference in overall proportions of dropouts between males. However, when predicting dropout probability of the semester with the most first generation and non-first generation dropouts, we see that females have the largest differences across parent education level in grade-associated dropout probability. This suggests that our model may be best suited in using college achievement data to predict overall dropout probabilities, not next-semester dropout probabilities using current semester data. Our findings also suggest that first generation students’ dropout probability is more sensitive to the grades they receive than non-first generation students.

ContributorsHartman, Ryan (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis director) / Larroucau, Tomas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor)
Created2022-05
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Description
A growing body of research suggests that there is more to course assessment than homework scores and test performance. This paper contributes to the empirical literature in economics and education by evaluating the impact of racial and gender congruency on the performance of ASU students. Expanding on previous research which

A growing body of research suggests that there is more to course assessment than homework scores and test performance. This paper contributes to the empirical literature in economics and education by evaluating the impact of racial and gender congruency on the performance of ASU students. Expanding on previous research which only covered elementary and high school, we are able to draw conclusions and policy recommendations to solve the racial achievement gap in the USA.
ContributorsAlmeida, Alexander (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis director) / Larroucau, Tomas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Since their inception in 1997, Arizona policymakers have debated the merits of Arizona’s income tax credits for contributions to certified school tuition organizations (STOs), though the programs have grown year over year. This study aims to answer lingering questions about the beneficiaries of STO scholarships. First, using publicly available reports

Since their inception in 1997, Arizona policymakers have debated the merits of Arizona’s income tax credits for contributions to certified school tuition organizations (STOs), though the programs have grown year over year. This study aims to answer lingering questions about the beneficiaries of STO scholarships. First, using publicly available reports from the Arizona Department of Revenue, the Arizona Board of Education, and American Community Survey 5-year estimates, multiple regression analysis indicates a weakly negative relationship between scholarship dollars and family income but no statistically significant effect of public-school quality on scholarship dollars. Second, using data from a survey of parents whose students’ attend Arizona private schools, logistic regression suggests a weakly negative relationship between scholarship utilization and family income, with public school quality having no statistically significant effect on STO scholarship utilization. Moreover, multiple regression analysis again shows a weakly negative relationship between scholarship dollars and family income but no statistically significant relationship between public school quality and scholarship dollars. This paper concludes by offering policy suggestions to improve the accountability of these programs.
ContributorsBurruel, Fausto (Author) / Kuminoff, Nicolai (Thesis director) / Lennon, Tara (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2022-12