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An abstract of the article is provided below:

In the face of school crowding and fears about inequality-inducing summer learning loss, many schools have started to adopt multi-track year-round school calendars, which keep the same number of school days, but spread them more evenly across the calendar year. This change allows schools to support a larger student population by rotating which students are on break at any point in time. While year-round schooling can save money, the impact on academic achievement is uncertain and only recently have large-scale studies become available for policy makers. This brief examines research on the effects of multi-track year-round schooling, focusing on two rigorously executed case studies. This research gives little support for claims that year-round schooling will boost student achievement. Except as a remedy for highly over-crowded schools, year-round schooling seems to have little impact on achievement, and has even been shown to decrease achievement, especially among the most high-risk student populations.

An abstract of the paper is provided below:

In 2007, 22 Wake County, NC traditional-calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling.
 

An abstract is provided below:

This study exploits a unique policy environment and a large panel dataset to evaluate the impact of school crowding on student achievement in Wake County, NC. We also estimate the effects of two education policy initiatives that are often used to address crowding: multi-track year-round calendars and mobile classrooms. We estimate a multi-level fixed effects model to identify effects that are not confounded by other school, family, and individual characteristics. Results suggest that severely crowded schools have a negative impact on reading achievement but have no discernible impact on math achievement. Both mobile classrooms and year-round calendars are found to have a small negative impact on achievement in the absence of crowding, but a positive impact in crowded schools, though these policies are only able to partially offset the negative impact of crowding.
 

An abstract is provided below:

“Universities increasingly emphasize the importance of leadership skills, but budget shortfalls in public high schools threaten the availability of leadership opportunities for many youths. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of high school leadership experience on key economic outcomes. This study narrows this gap by estimating the causal impact of leadership in high school on educational attainment measured several years later. The paper uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study. To address selection bias, the effect of high school leadership is estimated using ordinary least squares, propensity score matching and instrumental variables models. Every estimation method and model specification examined implies that high school leadership has a large, positive impact on post-secondary educational attainment. This paper indicates the impact of high school leadership is, at a minimum, non-trivial. This result implies decisions regarding financial cutbacks for extracurricular activities should not be taken lightly.”

Swankoski was one of 12 students selected to present her work at the annual symposium. Selection to the symposium was determined through a formal process, where papers were reviewed by both Duke University’s economics faculty and students.

The prize is awarded to the top research presentation at the symposium and comes with a $500 cash gift. According to her acceptance email, selection to this conference “was a very competitive process.”

In her thesis, “The Influence of School on Childhood Weight Gain,” Swankoski uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-1998 Kindergarten Cohort and advanced econometric techniques to examine the relative impacts of time spent in school and out-of-school on BMI growth. Her findings suggest that BMI growth is greater when children are in school than when they are on summer break. This finding is encouraging given current debate about the nutritional value of school lunches.

Swankoski worked under the guidance of Katy Rouse, assistant professor of economics at Elon. Swankoski previously presented her paper at the Eastern Economics Association annual conference in New York, N.Y., on Feb. 26 and at Elon’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum on April 27.