Ian Callen

Ian Callen

Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Please contact me at kcm2nb@virginia.edu if you would like a free copy of any article. Alternatively, you may read pre-print versions of most of my articles for free using the links below.

Publications

Callen, I. & Stoddard. C. (2024). Putting the “A” in AP: The Effect of Advanced Placement State Policies on Student Participation and Performance. Economics of Education Review, 102.

Abstract Advanced courses prepare high school students for college material and the associated exams provide a low cost way to earn college credit. The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program is the most common in the United States, with about 40 percent of graduating seniors taking at least one AP exam in recent years. However, these opportunities are not equal across high school students due to variation in school offerings and potentially limiting exam fees. We examine the effects of two state-level policies designed to provide greater access to this program: the first mandates a minimum number of AP courses to be offered in each high school and the second waives exam fees for all students for at least one exam. Our event study and two-way fixed effect estimates suggest that that mandating the provision of AP courses raises the percent of high school graduates taking AP exams by 4 to 5 percentage points, while exam fee waivers increase participation by about 1.5 percentage points. At the same time, pass rates fell after implementation of the two policies, indicating that marginal exam takers are less proficient on the exams. We find both policies have minimal effects on the percent of graduates who passed at least one AP exam or on the number of passing exams per high school student.

Callen, I., Goldhaber, D., & Morton., E. (forthcoming). Evidence on the Large Negative and Heterogenous Effects of the Pandemic on Student Achievement. in Handbook of Inequality and COVID-19. Edward Elgar.

Working Papers

Callen, I., Carbonari, M. V., DeArmond, M., Dewey, D., Dizon-Ross, E., Goldhaber, D., Isaacs, J., Kane, T. J., Kuhfeld, M., McDonald, A., McEachin, A., Morton, E., Muroga, A., & Staiger, D. O. (2023). Summer School as a Learning Loss Recovery Strategy after COVID-19: Evidence from Summer 2022. CALDER Working Paper No. 291-0823.

Media mentions: Future Ed, 74m, Chalkbeat

Abstract To make up for pandemic-related learning losses, many U.S. public school districts have increased enrollment in their summer school programs. We assess summer school as a strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery by tracking the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight districts serving 400,000 students. Based on students’ spring to fall progress, we find a positive impact for summer school on math test achievement (0.03 standard deviation, SD), but not on reading tests. These effects are predominantly driven by students in upper elementary grades. To put the results into perspective, if we assume that these districts have losses similar to those present at the end of the 2022–23 school year (i.e., approximately -0.2 SD), we estimate summer programming closed approximately 2% to 3% of the districts’ total learning losses in math, but none in reading

Callen, I., Goldhaber, D., Kane, T. J., McDonald, A., McEachin, A., & Morton, E. (2024). Pandemic Learning Loss by Student Baseline Achievement: Extent and Sources of Heterogeneity. CALDER Working Paper No. 292-0224.

Abstract It is now well established that the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating and unequal impact on student achievement. Test score declines were disproportionately large for historically marginalized students, exacerbating preexisting achievement gaps and threatening educational and economic inequality. In this paper, we use longitudinal student-level NWEA MAP Growth test data to estimate differences in test score declines for students at different points on the prepandemic test distribution. We also test the extent to which students' schools and districts accounted for these differences in declines. We find significant differences in learning loss by baseline achievement, with lower-achieving student's scores dropping 0.100 SD more in math and 0.113 SD more in reading than higher-achieving students' scores. We additionally show that the school a student attended accounts for about three-quarters of this widening gap in math achievement and about one-third in reading. The findings suggest school and district-level policies may have mattered more for learning loss than individual students' experiences within schools and districts. Such nuanced information regarding the variation in the pandemic's impacts on students is critical for policymakers and practitioners designing targeted academic interventions and for tracking disparities in academic recovery

Works in Progress

with Elise Dizon-Ross, Dan Goldhaber, Thomas J. Kane, Andrew McEachin, and Emily Morton.

with Christiana Stoddard.

with Dan Goldhaber, Thomas J. Kane, Andrew McEachin, and Emily Morton.