Massachusetts Test Score Data

The dataset contains data on test performance, school characteristics and student demographic backgrounds for school districts in Massachusetts.

Usage

data("MASchools")

Format

A data frame containing 220 observations on 16 variables.

district: character. District code.
municipality: character. Municipality name.
expreg: Expenditures per pupil, regular.
expspecial: Expenditures per pupil, special needs.
expbil: Expenditures per pupil, bilingual.
expocc: Expenditures per pupil, occupational.
exptot: Expenditures per pupil, total.
scratio: Students per computer.
special: Special education students (per cent).
lunch: Percent qualifying for reduced-price lunch.
stratio: Student-teacher ratio.
income: Per capita income.
score4: 4th grade score (math + English + science).
score8: 8th grade score (math + English + science).
salary: Average teacher salary.
english: Percent of English learners.

Details

The Massachusetts data are district-wide averages for public elementary school districts in 1998. The test score is taken from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test, administered to all fourth graders in Massachusetts public schools in the spring of 1998. The test is sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education and is mandatory for all public schools. The data analyzed here are the overall total score, which is the sum of the scores on the English, Math, and Science portions of the test. Data on the student-teacher ratio, the percent of students receiving a subsidized lunch and on the percent of students still learning english are averages for each elementary school district for the 1997–1998 school year and were obtained from the Massachusetts department of education. Data on average district income are from the 1990 US Census.

Source

Online complements to Stock and Watson (2007).

References

Stock, J. H. and Watson, M. W. (2007). Introduction to Econometrics, 2nd ed. Boston: Addison Wesley.

Examples

## Massachusetts
data("MASchools")

## compare with California
data("CASchools")
CASchools$stratio <- with(CASchools, students/teachers)
CASchools$score4 <- with(CASchools, (math + read)/2)

## Stock and Watson, parts of Table 9.1, p. 330
vars <- c("score4", "stratio", "english", "lunch", "income")
cbind(
  CA_mean = sapply(CASchools[, vars], mean),
  CA_sd   = sapply(CASchools[, vars], sd),
  MA_mean = sapply(MASchools[, vars], mean),
  MA_sd   = sapply(MASchools[, vars], sd))
#>           CA_mean     CA_sd    MA_mean     MA_sd
#> score4  654.15655 19.053347 709.827273 15.126474
#> stratio  19.64043  1.891812  17.344091  2.276666
#> english  15.76816 18.285927   1.117676  2.900940
#> lunch    44.70524 27.123381  15.315909 15.060068
#> income   15.31659  7.225890  18.746764  5.807637

## Stock and Watson, Table 9.2, p. 332, col. (1)
fm1 <- lm(score4 ~ stratio, data = MASchools)
coeftest(fm1, vcov = vcovHC(fm1, type = "HC1"))
#> 
#> t test of coefficients:
#> 
#>              Estimate Std. Error t value  Pr(>|t|)    
#> (Intercept) 739.62113    8.60727 85.9298 < 2.2e-16 ***
#> stratio      -1.71781    0.49906 -3.4421  0.000692 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
#> 

## More examples, notably the entire Table 9.2, can be found in:
## help("StockWatson2007")