A groundbreaking study co-authored by a Western Carolina University professor of economics indicates that increased school choice may result in improvements in student mental health, with fewer incidents of adolescent suicide and a lower likelihood of mental health issues later in life.
The study, titled “The Effects of School Choice on Mental Health” and published in the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement, was the brainchild of Angela Dills, the Gimelstob-Landry Distinguished Professor of Regional Economic Development at WCU, and colleague Corey A. DeAngelis, education policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
For the study, Dills and DeAngelis collected data from 49 states covering a 40-year span (1976 to 2016), along with nationally representative data from more than 4,300 students who took part in the 1997-1998 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Using the two datasets, they explored the question of whether school choice has an impact on the frequency of teen suicides and adult mental health problems.
School choice gives parents the opportunity to send their children to schools that may be better suited for their individual needs, personalities and learning styles, Dills said. In addition to performance in the classroom, the ability to choose a child’s school may also affect other outcomes, including mental health, she said.
Dills and DeAngelis used their compiled data to compare the changes in outcome over time among populations of students from different school settings, including public schools, charter schools, and private schools in states with voucher laws that provide parents with some or all of the public funding allocated to their children’s education and allows them to apply it to the cost of attending a private schools.
“What we found is that states that have passed charter school laws are seeing a drop in the number of adolescent suicides,” Dills said, estimating that the study found a 10 percent decrease in the rate of suicide among 15- to 19-year-olds. “In addition, in states that have adopted private school voucher laws, we saw a decline in teen suicides, but it was not a statistically significant change.”
The study also used survey data to examine the potential link between attending private schools and the prospect of mental health problems later in life, while taking into account an array of personal characteristics that individuals may have, including age, race, gender and socioeconomic factors.
“When controlling for these factors, our estimates suggest that private schooling reduces the likelihood that those students will go on to report having mental health issues as adults,” Dills said.
Submitted February 18, 2024 at 02:15PM by Dependent_Wafer3866 https://ift.tt/ZjSsf7b
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