Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Economics
Advisor
Núria Rodríguez-Planas
Committee Members
Miles Corak
Kevin Shih
Subject Categories
Economics
Keywords
education, policy, childcare, covid, grading, flexible
Abstract
This dissertation consists of two chapters that investigate the impact of two different educational policies. The first chapter is solely authored by me, whereas the second chapter was collaboratively written with my Ph.D. supervisor Núria Rodríguez-Planas. An earlier draft of Chapter 2 is distributed to public in IZA Discussion Paper Series (No.15887).
Chapter 1 In this paper, I investigate the causal effects of New York City's Universal Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) Program on public-private childcare enrollments for 4 -year-olds, their mothers' employment, and the well-being of both mothers and children. The program was introduced in 2014 and targeted 4 -year-old children. Before the program, there was no free full-time Pre-K for 4 -year-olds in public childcare centers or at Community-Based Early Childhood Centers (CBOs). Due to this, many parents in need of childcare enrolled their children in half-day programs and had to pay a certain fee if they wanted to retain childcare for the rest of the day. This placed a burden on parents-especially for mothers-who worked, or wanted to work, for full-time. By using the American Community Survey (ACS) for the years 2005-2019 and the Child Community Health Survey (2009), Child Health, Emotional Wellness and Development Survey (2015), and NYC Kids Survey (2017) from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, I employ a differences-in-differences (DD) approach. I find that, after the policy, 4 -year-olds are more likely to enroll in public childcare programs and less likely to enroll in private childcare programs compared to 3 -year-olds. 4-year-olds below 200% of the poverty threshold are more likely to enroll in public childcare than children above this threshold. I do not observe any differential impact of the policy based on other socio-demographic characteristics on public childcare. Furthermore, I do not observe improvements in children's cognitive skills. The policy increased working hours for poor and single mothers, albeit these results are only significant at a 10% significance level.
Chapter 2 Using an unbalanced panel of 23,007 academic records spanning from Spring 2019 to Spring 2022 representing one fourth of Queens College student population; and estimating event study analyses with individual fixed effects to control for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, we find unintended effects of the flexible grading policy (FGP), which allowed students to exercise the pass/fail option during the first academic year of the pandemic. Once the policy was no longer available, students who had used it underperformed relative to their own pre-pandemic performance relative to the change in performance of students who had never used the policy. FGP users earned 5.3% lower GPA in Spring 2021 and 4.7% lower GPA in Fall 2021 relative to Fall 2019 relative to the change observed among FGP non-users. This pattern is robust to sensitivity analysis and placebo tests. It also holds across tiers of the 2019 cumulative GPA distribution, as well as across various sociodemographic groups. Furthermore, these detrimental effects increased with the intensity of the policy use. Students' response to a survey rules out that these findings may be driven by pandemic-related health shocks, childcare disruptions, or challenges with online learning, financial aid, or job loss. We estimate that using the FGP is associated with an 11% lower likelihood of graduating and a 19% lower likelihood of graduating on-time by Spring 2022. No such negative effect is found using an earlier placebo period.
Recommended Citation
Ozsoy, Mehlika, "Essays on Educational Policies" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6216
