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| Publications of Omari H. Swinton :chronological by type listing:%% @article{fds50015, Author = {Omari H. Swinton}, Title = {An "A" for Effort: Should College Dropouts Try Harder?}, Year = {2006}, Month = {October}, Abstract = {Recent decades have seen a steady increase in college enrollment rates, which has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in graduation rates. If this discrepancy is at least partly due to insufficient “effort” exerted by students, policies that aim at rewarding effort explicitly may succeed at increasing graduation rates. This paper uses a unique and rich administrative data set to analyze the impact of the introduction of a new grading policy on performance and retention rates at Benedict College, a Historically Black College in Columbia, South Carolina. According to the new grading policy, grades for freshmen and sophomore courses are determined in part by performance on tests and in part by measures of “effort” such as attendance and class participation. The policy was intended to inspire a sense of discipline in students’ attitudes towards academic work, in the hope of improving learning and graduation rates. However, the data show that the introduction of the new grading policy was actually followed by an increase in dropout rates, disproportionately due to students with pre-college GPAs above the mean. This paper describes a simple theoretical model that illustrates how this observed change can be a result of the interaction between the increased disutility caused by the larger effort required by the new policy, and the uncertainly that relates effort to knowledge grade, an uncertainly that only disappears after the final grades are assigned. Overall, students with lower SAT composite scores and lower high school GPAs respond better to incentivized effort than students with higher SAT composite scores and higher high school GPAs.}, Key = {fds50015} } @article{fds47874, Author = {Peter Arcidiacono and Alvin Murphy and Omari H. Swinton}, Title = {Explaining Cross-Racial Differences in Teenage Labor Force Participation: Results from a General Equilibrium Search Model}, Year = {2006}, Abstract = {White teenagers are substantially more likely to search for employment than their black counterparts. This occurs despite the fact that conditional on race individuals who come from poorer families are more likely to search and black teenagers come from poorer families. While differences in wages between white and black teenagers are small, the unemployment rate for black teenagers is over twice that of white teenagers. We develop a general equilibrium search model where firms are partially able to target their search based upon demographics. Differences in the labor market explain half of the gap in the search rates between black and white teenagers. Removing search targeting substantially closes the gap between black and white unemployment rates.}, Key = {fds47874} } @article{fds47873, Author = {Omari H. Swinton}, Title = {Grading for Effort: The Success Equals Effort Policy at Benedict College}, Year = {2006}, Month = {March}, Abstract = {In the Fall of 2004, Benedict College—a Historically Black College in Columbia (SC)–began enforcing a new grading policy called Success Equals Effort. Under this new policy, students taking freshman and sophomore level courses are assigned grades that explicitly reward not only content learning (“knowledge” grade) but also measures of effort (“effort” grade). This paper describes the details of the policy and the reasons for its adoption, and attempts a first evaluation of the impact of the grading policy thus far.}, Key = {fds47873} } @article{fds47872, Author = {Omari H. Swinton}, Title = {The Effects of Effort Grading on Learning}, Year = {2006}, Month = {June}, Abstract = {In the Fall of 2004, Benedict College—a Historically Black College in Columbia (SC)–began enforcing a new grading policy called Success Equals Effort. Under this new policy, students taking freshman and sophomore level courses are assigned grades that explicitly reward not only content learning (“knowledge” grade) but also measures of effort (“effort” grade). This paper examines the effects of effort grading through two stage least squares and fixed effect estimates. I find evidence of a strong positive correlation of “effort” grade and the “knowledge” grade. Under some restrictions this relationship can be interpreted as “effort” producing “knowledge”.}, Key = {fds47872} } | |
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