McFarlin
March 2015
RESEARCH STATEMENT
Isaac McFarlin Jr.
I am Assistant Research Scientist at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of
Michigan. I study labor economics with an emphasis on U.S. education policy. My position entails
publishing academically rigorous research in the fields of the economics of education and applied
microeconomics. The position further demands securing stable streams of external support to sustain
research programs. Since starting the position, I have published multiple peer-reviewed economics
journal articles and served as principal investigator on major grants from several foundations and
the U.S. Department of Education, totaling nearly $6 million.
A common theme in my work is the use of high-quality data and modern quantitative methodology
to isolate causal effects of various educational interventions. Much of my research focuses on public
policies associated with postsecondary education that affect college going and labor market status.
Another area of my research examines how school resources, specifically school facility conditions,
affect student success. I am also interested in the question of whether disadvantaged children have
equal access to high-quality public schools of choice. I am conducting a field experiment to uncover
whether charter schools limit access to students with disabilities and those struggling academically.
Below, I expand upon these interests. Although much of my research is coauthored, for expositional
purposes, I use the first person singular to describe the work. Bibliographic information is available
in my curriculum vitae.
Policies That May Improve Academic Preparation
Many students arrive on campus lacking preparation to pursue postsecondary education. This deficit
is a key reason why large numbers of students drop out. Remediation is the most common approach
used by colleges to assist students who possess weak academic skills. I was awarded a major grant
from the U.S. Department of Education (R305B070581) to study the impact of college remediation
programs on college success.
The first article, “Help or Hindrance? The Effects of College Remediation on Academic and Labor
Market Outcomes” is published in the Review of Economics and Statistics (2011). We use Texas
education administrative data to isolate the causal effect of remedial programs on college and labor
market performance. For the study, students are assigned to remediation based on their performance
on a placement exam. This lends itself to the use of regression-discontinuity methods to estimate the
impact of college remediation. Our main finding is that there is little evidence that remediation has
an effect on college or labor market outcomes for students beginning in either a community college
or four-year college. If anything, I find some evidence that remediation may worsen performance.
The next article, “Does Failing a Placement Exam Discourage Underprepared Students from Going
to College?” is published in Education, Finance and Policy (2015). It uses a similar research design
as the above companion paper but is motivated by the fact that mandatory remediation generally
does not count towards receiving a college degree and thus raises the cost of a college education.
The focus of the paper is to investigate whether being assigned to mandatory remedial coursework
has a discouragement effect on those it is intended to help. I find that students barely failing the
placement exam are no less likely to enroll in college than those scoring just above the remediation
placement-passing cutoff. This strongly suggests the absence of a discouragement effect for underprepared students.
Affirmative Action Policies
The benefits of a college education are well known. These benefits can be especially large for those
attending elite colleges. Because selective colleges admit students on the basis of standardized test
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scores and high school grades, the poor and racial minorities are at a disadvantage in the admissions
process. Selective colleges have historically instituted affirmative action programs to preserve racial
diversity, but conventional affirmative action programs are controversial and have been subjected to
legal scrutiny. I was awarded a major research grant (R305A080620) from the U.S. Department of
Education to study the consequences of percent plans, a race-neutral affirmative action program.
In response to a court-ordered ban on the use of race in college admissions, the state of Texas passed
the “Top Ten Percent Law” in 1997 that guaranteed admission to any public university to students
in the top decile of their high school class. Its goal was to maintain racial, economic, and geographic
diversity at the state’s flagship universities without resorting to the explicit use of racial preferences.
One motivation for using such a policy is that it allows students to be compared to their peers based
on how well they have taken advantage of opportunities available to them at their local high school.
The first article I wrote is “Percent Plans, Automatic Admissions, and College Outcomes.” It was
accepted for publication in IZA Journal of Labor Economics (2014). The research grant allowed me
to collect student-level data from a large urban school district to assess the impact of eligibility for
the Texas Top 10 Percent program. The data allowed us compute the exact grade point average and
class rank percentile to estimate the effect of barely qualifying for the automatic college admissions
program. I find that students barely making the first decile are substantially more likely to attend a
Texas flagship university. The increase in flagship enrollments appears to displace enrollments in
private universities but has no effect on overall college enrollment or the quality of college attended.
The effects are concentrated in schools that have high college sending rates (relative to other schools
in the district), suggesting that automatic admissions may have little effect on students in the most
disadvantaged schools. I also published findings from this study in Education Next (2014).
In a related working paper, “Does Student Effort Respond to Incentives? Evidence from Automatic
Admissions,” I examine whether student effort, measured by senior year achievement, is influenced
by “early acceptance” to college. The idea is that students may put forth less effort in their final year
of high school – if it is known they have already been accepted to college. This type of shirking has
been dubbed senioritis. In this paper, I exploit the fact that students qualify for automatic admission
to any Texas public college based on their end of 11th grade class rank percentile. Because students
effectively learn of their first decile status and all but certain admission to a flagship, they may exert
less effort in senior year. This reduction in effort may be manifested through taking fewer courses or
earning lower grade point averages. We test for the presence of senioritis in the context of the Texas
Top 10 Percent plan, which guarantees admission to any state college. I find that high school seniors
who barely qualify for automatic admissions earn lower grades and take fewer courses in their final
year of high school, although the estimates are somewhat imprecise. We will also collect attendance
measures as another outcome to assess whether students are less likely to show up for school if they
qualify for automatic college admission.
Tuition Policy, College Affordability, and College Outcomes
Providing affordable access to postsecondary schooling is critical to developing a skilled workforce.
However, tuition costs have soared, leading to concerns that some able students are “priced out” of a
college education. I was awarded a major research grant (R305A100369) from the U.S. Department
of Education to examine the effects of community college tuition subsidies on college outcomes and
labor market performance.
For this project, I exploit a novel source of variation in tuition policy – namely, community college
taxing district residency – to isolate the causal effect of tuition subsidies on college going. In Texas
and other states, public two-year colleges are supported by local community college districts, a type
of special-purpose taxing district, which draws funds from the property tax base. In-district residents
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often receive reduced tuition compared to their out-of-district peers. Because every student does not
reside within college districts and thus face steeper tuition costs, this institutional feature allows one
to analyze the causal effect of tuition on college-going.
In the working paper, “Do Public Tuition Subsidies Promote College Enrollment? Evidence from
Community College Taxing Districts in Texas,” I use restricted-access data from both the Decennial
Census and American Community Surveys to estimate the effect of tuition subsidies on enrollment
behavior. A clear benefit to using these data is they allow one to pinpoint residential locations with
precision at the level of census block (about 100 persons live in a census block). I use difference-indifferences models to compare college enrollment for individuals who live in high tuition subsidy
college taxing districts to those in college districts offering lower tuition subsidies. The implicit
assumption is that individuals in high- and low-tuition subsidy college taxing districts might differ
from persons who do not reside in college districts on unobservables. I find that the estimated effect
of local tuition subsidies on college enrollment is positive and statistically significant. The findings
suggest the importance of two-year colleges for both traditional college-age youth and older adults.
We are currently refining these estimates.
We also intend to exploit another important source of variation. Many Texas school districts overlap
college taxing districts, implying that high school students who attend school within certain districts
can face different tuition prices. The geographic granularity of our census residential data and the
overlap of school district and college taxing district boundaries allows us the ability to estimate both
school district fixed effects and regression-discontinuity models of the impact of tuition on college
going. These estimates will be included in future drafts of the paper using U.S. Census Bureau data.
For a comprehensive overview of the study, see the following presentation link.
School Capital Campaigns, Facility Conditions, and Student Achievement
Many children attend schools severely in need of repair. Because property taxes typically support
and maintain school buildings, children from economically depressed regions are more likely to be
exposed to inadequate facilities. Bond-funded capital investments are the primary method school
districts use to finance large-scale improvements to physical infrastructure. An open question is how
much school facility conditions and investments affect student achievement. I was recently awarded
a major research grant (R305A140363) to examine this policy question.
In a recent working paper, “Investing in Schools: Capital Spending, Facility Conditions, and Student
Achievement,” I examine whether school facility investments affect student outcomes. I collect vote
share data on school bond referenda for Texas school districts between 1996 and 2010. I use random
variation in capital investments associated with bond passage in close elections to identify the causal
effect of these investments on several student outcomes. I find that school districts with successful
and unsuccessful bond measures in close elections are very similar in initial spending and other predetermined attributes but starkly different in capital investments post-elections. Bond passage leads
to modest tangible improvements in facility conditions. We find little evidence that capital spending
improves student achievement.
In related work, I am using a similar research design to examine whether school facility investments
generate spillovers to neighboring school districts. If spillover or external effects such as increased
school construction or technology adoption by neighboring districts are uncovered, then this would
suggest that jurisdictions compete in the provision of public services.
The next stage for this project is digitizing records for the 1991 Texas school facilities census. These
data are only available on microfiche and are being converted to electronic format. I will use these
data with later facility conditions to characterize how infrastructure conditions change in response to
increases in capital spending.