Data set: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hRQq4aJZl2kAamzBnze41uJvcbYcETPaeKRFys8SVq8/edit?usp=sharing

Educational Economics 1.Educational economists strive to better understand the relationship between educational variables and other important factors operative in an economy. Observational data onn= 16 schools in the state of New York are available. Eight of these schools received a special school-wide intervention (named "Schools to Watch") designed to increase reading and mathematics achievement. The remaining eight schools in the sample did not receive the intervention. Unfortunately, researching economists were unable to assign which schools received the intervention and which ones did not using random means due to political and social reasons. As a result, the economists want to employee propensity score matching methods in order to estimate the true effect of the intervention on student achievement. The following variables are available:

ObservationAn identifier variableschoolSchool nametotSchool size (i.e., total number of students)minProportion of minority studentsdisProportion of students receiving free and/or reduced lunch (a measure of the amount of disadvantaged students at a school)stw"Schools to Watch", coded 1 = intervention school and 0 = non-intervention schoolachProportion of students meeting or exceeding reading and mathematics benchmarks

(a) Use the raw data in the worksheet entitled "New York 1" to complete the following table based on a simple comparison between intervention schools and noniintervention schools (i.e., before any kind of matching or propensity score methods are employed). Fill in the average value for each of the two types of schools for each of the variables below. Convert the proportions (ie. min, dis and ach) to percentages in your answer. (Enter all of your answers to two decimal places.) tot min dis ach NonIntervention Schools I649 I x I49 50 I J %I I %I I \"/0 Intervention Schools I I I I "/0 I I %I I \"/o Use the summary data in the table you completed above to answer the following questions. (b) On average, the intervention schools have X more students than the non-intervention schools. Therefore, the typical intervention school is Iargerthan v J the typical noniintervention school. (c) On average, the intervention schools have S " less minority students than the noniintervention schools. (d) On average, the intervention schools have E % less disadvantaged students than the nonintervention schools. (e) Based on these results, it appears that there J substantial differences between the intervention and none tervention_ schools on a number of important factors that have been shown to be linked to academic achievement. Therefore, anyone of these differences could serve as an alternative explanation o: collinear v I variable when attempting to assess the effect of the intervention on academic achievement using a simple comparison. ' 0') Nonetheless, on average, the intervention schools have I:I percentage points more students meeting or exceeding reading and mathematics benchmarks than the noniintervention schools. Therefore, based on the simple comparison, it appears that the intervention schools have a h 4 level of academic achievement than the nonintervention schools. Some would say that this implies that the intervention is 4 in increasing academic achievement. However, the validity of these findings is questionable due to the initial 4 among the covariates (i.e., tot, min, 81 dis). Under these circumstances (i.e., analysis of q data), it is possible that the differences in academic achievement are due to one or more of the covariates and not the intervention of interest