State Exit Exams and Graduation Rates: A Hierarchical SLX Modelling Approach

Authors

Joshua Hall, West Virginia UniversityFollow
Donald Lacombe, Texas Tech UniversityFollow
Shree B. Pokharel, West Virginia LegislatureFollow

Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2020

College/Unit

Chambers College of Business and Economics

Document Number

20-05

Department/Program/Center

Economics

Abstract

The literature on high school exit exams has found both positive and negative effects of these high stake exams on high school graduation rates. To this point the literature has not taken into account the embedded nature of school districts within state education systems. We employ a Bayesian Hierarchical SLX model to account for the hierachical nature of education data in the United States. Our approach also allows us to account for spatial spillovers that influence graduation rates across districts and states. Using school district and state-level data for 45 states and 8194 school districts in the United States in 2015, we generally find no statistically significant effect of state exit exams on high school graduation rates. Random effect coefficients, however, point towards high school exit exams being negatively associated with graduation rates in a handful of states.

Digital Commons Citation

Hall, Joshua; Lacombe, Donald; and Pokharel, Shree B., "State Exit Exams and Graduation Rates: A Hierarchical SLX Modelling Approach" (2020). Economics Faculty Working Papers Series. 46.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/econ_working-papers/46