The Long-Run Educational Benefits of High-Achieving Classrooms

Serena Canaan, Pierre Mouganie and Peng Zhang ()
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Peng Zhang: Zhejiang University

No 15039, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Despite the prevalence of school tracking, evidence on whether it improves student success is mixed. This paper studies how tracking within high school impacts high-achieving students' short- and longer-term academic outcomes. Our setting is a large and selective Chinese high school, where first-year students are separated into high-achieving and regular classrooms based on their performance on a standardized exam. Classrooms differ in terms of peer ability, teacher quality, class size, as well as level and pace of instruction. Using newly collected administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, we show that high-achieving classrooms improve math test scores by 23 percent of a standard deviation, with effects persisting throughout the three years of high school. Effects on performance in Chinese and English language subjects are more muted. Importantly, we find that high-achieving classrooms substantially raise enrollment in elite universities, as they increase scores on the national college entrance exam—the sole determinant of university admission in China.

Keywords: classroom tracking; peer quality; teacher quality; regression discontinuity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-edu and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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