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Title: Education Policy and Mental Health
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Hyman, Joshua |
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Education Policy and Mental Health Presented: Chicago IL, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2017 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Keyword(s): Anxiety; Geocoded Data; Health, Mental/Psychological; Legislation; School Performance; Testing Requirements; Tests and Testing Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. To examine the effect of statewide testing on children's mental health, I create a dataset documenting which states required statewide testing in which grades from 1985 to 2012. I use mental health measures for 9,260 children in public elementary and secondary school during this period from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (CNLSY79). I conduct a difference-in-differences style analysis, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in student exposure to state-mandated testing across states, grades, and student cohorts. I find that cumulative exposure to testing, defined as the fraction of grades through the present in which a child was exposed to testing, increases anxiety and reduces children's satisfaction with school. However, I find no detectable effects of cumulative testing exposure on broader measures of overall mental health among children or adolescents, such as measures of behavioral issues, self-esteem or depression. The results confirm anecdotal evidence that testing has increased anxiety among children, but at the same time alleviates concerns that these increases led to meaningful deteriorations in children's mental health. |
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Bibliography Citation
Hyman, Joshua. "Education Policy and Mental Health." Presented: Chicago IL, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2017. |