Trade-offs of Attending Better Schools

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Raissa Fabregas discusses how better middle schools affect marginally admitted students' test scores, on-time graduation, socio-emotional skills, aspirations, and high school track selections.

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Institution: The University of Texas at Austin

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Raissa Fabregas discusses how better middle schools affect marginally admitted students’ test scores, on-time graduation, socio-emotional skills, aspirations, and high school track selections.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 6, 2024

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This video video describes a study exploring the impact of attending better middle schools on children's long-term success, particularly focusing on cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The study emphasizes that while cognitive abilities such as verbal and mathematical skills are important for success, factors like social and emotional development, aspirations, and self-perceptions are also critical.

The research investigates the effects of attending higher-achieving middle schools in Mexico City, where students are assigned to schools based on their placement exam scores and family preferences, creating a clear cutoff between those who attend better schools (morning shift) and those who do not (afternoon shift). The author uses a regression discontinuity design to analyze outcomes for students near this cutoff.

Initial findings indicate that moving to better schools yields modest improvements in standardized test scores but can also negatively affect other academic measures, such as GPAs, leading to a higher likelihood of failing courses or repeating grades. Students in better schools reported lower self-perceptions of academic ability and conscientiousness, which may adversely affect their aspirations and choices for further education.

Overall, the study concludes that peer comparisons and relative rankings in schools may significantly impact students’ academic experiences and self-beliefs, potentially overshadowing the benefits of higher academic inputs associated with better schools. The author suggests the need for further research on the long-term implications of such experiences and calls for interventions aimed at providing students with objective information about their abilities to help counter negative self-perceptions.

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Let me start by sort of explaining a little bit of,

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of the context of this study.

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So I think when we think about what factors, shape sort

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of like children's long-term success,

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and sort of like what can we affect?

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We think of things like, you know, verbal

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or mathematical ability, right?

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So the cognitive skills.

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And so these are very important,

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but I think there's also a range of other factors, like,

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you know, the social or emotional skills that you develop

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as you grow up, your attitudes, your aspirations,

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your preferences that are also gonna play a very important,

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role in your life.

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And so a question that I think is very important

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for social scientists, for policymakers, for parents is

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to try to understand to

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what extent schools shape these other attributes, right?

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And so there's already kind of this large body of work

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that asks, well, okay, if we send kids to a better school,

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and you know, we might define better schools as the schools

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where you have higher achieving peers,

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or where you have sort of like more educational inputs,

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what happens to, to these children in terms of learning?

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And something that's surprising is

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that actually we find very modest effects, on measures

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of learning from going to these better schools.

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But we act don't know much about sort of where it happens

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to these other attributes like self perceptions,

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like educational attainment,

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but like, aspirations, right?

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So what I'm gonna try to do in this paper is to study, okay,

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what is the impact of going to better, middle schools

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for students who are at that margin

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of admission in Mexico City?

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And I'm gonna be looking at things

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that other papers have already looked like,

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like standardized scores,

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but I'm also gonna be able to say things about grades,

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about graduation, about their socio-emotional skills

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and their aspirations

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and subsequent, educational, choices.

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To give you a bit of a like sense of like conceptually

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how we might think about different channels

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that might be at play in this paper.

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Uh, think about, a child that's deciding

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between two different schools, right?

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And they might end up placing that higher achieving school.

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So on the one hand, right?

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So you place in this better or preferred school

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and you might have access to more resources

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or your teachers might be more experienced

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and they encourage you more, right?

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And so that might make you more motivated.

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Uh, also you might have sort

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of like these higher achieving peers

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who are gonna be less disruptive in the classroom,

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or they're very motivated in school

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and perhaps become sort role models for you.

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Or they're very like, you know, engaged with schooling.

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Uh, and so all those factors we might think

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that might have like a positive impact on sort

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of like your aspirations

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and like, you know, what,

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how you shape all these attributes about sort

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of like education on the other hand, right?

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If you think about attending a better school,

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it often implies

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that you have like a worse position in the school

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ability distribution.

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And so that could actually negatively affect students

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because for instance, you might have teachers

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that only focus on the star students

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or that they're grading on relative terms, right?

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And so that might affect you if you have very

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high achieving peers.

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Uh, educational psychologists, I also emphasize existence

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of other types of effects like the big fish little pond

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effects, which basically predict

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that if you have these unfavorable, ability comparisons,

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that's gonna be very detrimental to your academic self image

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and to your effort in school, right?

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So there's, you know,

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all these different channels related to rank,

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and there's other literature already showing

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that within school, having a lower rank,

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that's gonna add negatively,

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impact your long-term outcomes as a student.

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So in the context of this study, we're gonna see to

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what extent, sort of like these type

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of run concerns might be sufficiently important

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to actually overwhelm other benefits from attending these

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higher achieving schools.

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I'm gonna look at this question by student experiences

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of middle school students in Mexico City.

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So in this setting, as in many other developing countries

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because of capacity constraints,

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school buildings have two shifts.

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So there's a morning shift that goes from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM

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and then there's an afternoon shift that goes from 2:00 PM

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to 8:00 PM and these operate as independent schools.

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They're just, sharing a school building.

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Now, how the, how students are assigned

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to schools in Mexico City is

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through the centralized process.

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And the allocation depends on tooth lakes.

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The first thing is families preferences for these schools.

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And the second thing is the, the score that,

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students get in a placement is exam

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that they take in the sixth grade.

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Now, what happens is that

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because almost everyone prefers

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to attend these morning shifts,

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within a school building,

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the morning shift is usually over subscribed.

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And so what the algorithm does is it gives priority

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with those to those students

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that have these higher placement scores.

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Um, but it leads to this situation

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where there's gonna be sort of like this clear cutoff

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for getting into the morning shift, right?

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If you don't get to the morning shift,

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the algorithm immediately places you to the afternoon shift

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with the same school building.

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And so you're gonna have this clear, sort

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of like this continuity in,

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school quality at this cutoff

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where if you ended up in this morning shift,

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you're gonna have higher achieving peers,

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you're gonna have principals that are more educated,

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you're gonna have teachers that are more likely

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to participate in incentive programs and

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otherwise, sort of like you placing that afternoon shift.

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So this is gonna allow me

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to implement a regression discontinuity design

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where basically I'm gonna be comparing students

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that are very, very similar in terms of ability, in terms

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of school preferences, but

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because of very small differences on

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that placement exam score, they ended up placing on one side

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of the cutoff or another side of the cutoff, right?

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So they go to the morning shift, they go

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to these higher achieving schools and

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otherwise, sort of like they place

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to these afternoon shifts.

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And so I'm gonna have data on,

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a standardized test scores for these students.

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I'm gonna be able to know their GPA,

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and at the end of middle school they apply for high school.

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And at that point they fill out this questionnaire

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that has all these information about their social emotional

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skills, their aspirations,

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and the types of, schools

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that they wanna attend when they go, to high school.

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So I'm gonna sort of like link that data to have,

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outcomes in line with the existing literature of

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what happens when you go to these higher achieving schools.

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I also find very modest impacts on

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objective measures of learning.

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So this is coming from like standardized test scores

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that are externally graded.

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Uh, so I construct this index,

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which I call the achievement index, which is a combination

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of these lowest tech standardized score

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that they take in the seventh grade

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and these high stakes, high school entrance exam

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that they take in the ninth grade.

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And, you know, I find these effects

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of like 0.03 standard deviation gains from these

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higher achieving schools.

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Uh, all the gains are on language.

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I don't find any gains in math.

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So, you know, surprising that they're not sort

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of like bigger benefits in terms of these learning,

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but we don't find negative effects in

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objective measures of learning.

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Now, when I start looking at effects on

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teachers' objective rating,

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I actually see negative impacts from placing in these

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higher achieving schools.

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So kids have lower GPAs, so

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they're about point 11 standard deviations lower,

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they're five percentage points more likely

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to fail at least one course in the ninth grade.

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And also they're more likely to repeat grades.

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And so the most concerning part

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that I've seen in the data is that consistent

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with all these measures, I see that when I try

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to measure kids at least one year

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after their predicted graduation, date, I see

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that they're one percentage point less likely

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to have a middle school certificate.

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So basically they're less likely to graduate,

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from middle school.

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And so one interpretation of this result is

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that the difference between these objective

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and subjective measures of academic performance is that

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teachers are basically implicitly assessing students

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in relative terms, right?

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Even though it's sort of like there's no policy

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that they should be doing that in schools, right?

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And so this is already concerning, right?

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Because these, you know, these,

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relative grading affects sort of like students' trajectories

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during middle schools, but there's these other channel which

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is that grades also serve as a feedback mechanism

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for students, right?

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And so if students have imperfect informations about their

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own ability, they might be using sort of these signals to,

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to think about like, well,

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how good I am at this academic stuff, right?

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And so I actually can use these data from the questionnaire

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to try to see how they think about themselves

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and what their self-perceptions are.

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And so I, I see that students actually report that they're,

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less academically inclined than their peers

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and they are scoring lower in measures of conscientiousness,

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which is sort of this tendency to be hardworking,

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to be responsible to be organized, right?

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And so sort of we see sort

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of like these negative effects on

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these self-reported measures.

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Now, you know, if these are real effects, that's very

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concerning because there's a lot

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of other work linking conscientiousness

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to long-term outcomes of children.

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But it's possible that when these self-reported measure is

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just self-perceptions and it's just reference bias, right?

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So I go to school, maybe I see other

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kids are very hardworking

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and I think, maybe I'm not that hardworking.

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But you know, maybe objectively you were like as hardwork

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as you were gonna be no matter

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what school you're placed in, right?

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So I cannot say much to that

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'cause I only have the self-reported data,

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but what I can say is that I, I have this evidence of a link

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that self perceptions actually also

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matter for other things, right?

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So I can link self-perceptions,

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or I can think about, you know, even if I think

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that I'm not good enough

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and it's not real, that might eventually affect

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how I think about where to apply or what I aspire to.

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And so I do see sort of like these negative effects on

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children's, aspirations to go to university.

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And they're also one percentage point less likely to apply

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to, academic programs instead choosing

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for vocational programs.

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There's a lot of work already in education, trying

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to understand sort of like how schools affect

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objective measures of learning.

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I think there's a lot less work done understanding, okay,

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how do schools affect other channels

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that could eventually have important implications

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for students' educational trajectory?

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So one implication is that we need

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to study a lot more about those potential channels.

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Now in this context, I think that something

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that's perhaps a little bit surprising is

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that these rank effects

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or these peer comparisons seem to be sufficiently important

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that they overwhelm other channels

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through which better schools might have

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helped students, right?

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So that's sort of like one, one conclusion of this study.

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Um, now, you know,

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I think things like not graduating from middle school,

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that's, you know,

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a very negative outcome for students.

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I think there's other types

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of outcomes like choosing more vocational programs

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that it's unclear sort of whether

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that's gonna have like positive

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or negative effects on, on student long-term outcomes.

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And so studying more sort of what are the long-term outcomes

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of attending these schools is also gonna be important.

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But I think in general, you know, it's gonna be und

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undesirable for students to

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form their self-perceptions about their own ability based on

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sort of like their relative comparisons, right?

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Because that could lead to distorted beliefs.

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And so thinking about what might be effective interventions

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That provide students with sort

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of like objective information about their own ability

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or perhaps, or reaffirm their sense

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of adequacy in school seems to be like a, a promising,

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policy to, to study.

Impact of School Quality on Student Outcomes

00:00:00 - Let me start by sort of explaining a little bit of, of the context of this study. So I think when we think about what factors, shape sort of like children's long-term success, and sort of like what can we affect? We think of things like, you know, verbal or mathematical ability, right? So the cognitive skills. And so these are very important, but I think there's also a range of other factors, like, you know, the social or emotional skills that you develop as you grow up, your attitudes, your aspirations, your preferences that are also gonna play a very important,
00:00:34 - And so a question that I think is very important for social scientists, for policymakers, for parents is to try to understand to what extent schools shape these other attributes, right? And so there's already kind of this large body of work that asks, well, okay, if we send kids to a better school, and you know, we might define better schools as the schools where you have higher achieving peers, or where you have sort of like more educational inputs, what happens to, to these children in terms of learning?
00:01:03 - that actually we find very modest effects, on measures of learning from going to these better schools. But we act don't know much about sort of where it happens to these other attributes like self perceptions, like educational attainment, but like, aspirations, right? So what I'm gonna try to do in this paper is to study, okay, what is the impact of going to better, middle schools for students who are at that margin of admission in Mexico City? And I'm gonna be looking at things
00:01:34 - like standardized scores, but I'm also gonna be able to say things about grades, about graduation, about their socio-emotional skills and their aspirations and subsequent, educational, choices. To give you a bit of a like sense of like conceptually how we might think about different channels that might be at play in this paper. think about, a child that's deciding between two different schools, right? And they might end up placing that higher achieving school.
00:02:04 - So you place in this better or preferred school and you might have access to more resources or your teachers might be more experienced and they encourage you more, right? And so that might make you more motivated. also you might have sort of like these higher achieving peers who are gonna be less disruptive in the classroom, or they're very motivated in school and perhaps become sort role models for you. Or they're very like, you know, engaged with schooling. and so all those factors we might think that might have like a positive impact on sort
00:02:35 - and like, you know, what, how you shape all these attributes about sort of like education on the other hand, right? If you think about attending a better school, it often implies that you have like a worse position in the school ability distribution. And so that could actually negatively affect students because for instance, you might have teachers that only focus on the star students or that they're grading on relative terms, right? And so that might affect you if you have very high achieving peers.

Impact of School Ranking on Student Outcomes

00:03:09 - of other types of effects like the big fish little pond effects, which basically predict that if you have these unfavorable, ability comparisons, that's gonna be very detrimental to your academic self image and to your effort in school, right? So there's, you know, all these different channels related to rank, and there's other literature already showing that within school, having a lower rank, that's gonna add negatively, impact your long-term outcomes as a student.
00:03:41 - what extent, sort of like these type of run concerns might be sufficiently important to actually overwhelm other benefits from attending these higher achieving schools. I'm gonna look at this question by student experiences of middle school students in Mexico City. So in this setting, as in many other developing countries because of capacity constraints, school buildings have two shifts. So there's a morning shift that goes from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM and then there's an afternoon shift that goes from 2:00 PM
00:04:14 - They're just, sharing a school building. Now, how the, how students are assigned to schools in Mexico City is through the centralized process. And the allocation depends on tooth lakes. The first thing is families preferences for these schools. And the second thing is the, the score that, students get in a placement is exam that they take in the sixth grade. Now, what happens is that because almost everyone prefers
00:04:43 - within a school building, the morning shift is usually over subscribed. And so what the algorithm does is it gives priority with those to those students that have these higher placement scores. but it leads to this situation where there's gonna be sort of like this clear cutoff for getting into the morning shift, right? If you don't get to the morning shift, the algorithm immediately places you to the afternoon shift with the same school building. And so you're gonna have this clear, sort
00:05:13 - school quality at this cutoff where if you ended up in this morning shift, you're gonna have higher achieving peers, you're gonna have principals that are more educated, you're gonna have teachers that are more likely to participate in incentive programs and otherwise, sort of like you placing that afternoon shift. So this is gonna allow me to implement a regression discontinuity design where basically I'm gonna be comparing students that are very, very similar in terms of ability, in terms of school preferences, but because of very small differences on
00:05:47 - of the cutoff or another side of the cutoff, right? So they go to the morning shift, they go to these higher achieving schools and otherwise, sort of like they place to these afternoon shifts. And so I'm gonna have data on, a standardized test scores for these students. I'm gonna be able to know their GPA, and at the end of middle school they apply for high school. And at that point they fill out this questionnaire that has all these information about their social emotional skills, their aspirations,

Impact of School Quality on Student Outcomes

00:06:17 - that they wanna attend when they go, to high school. So I'm gonna sort of like link that data to have, outcomes in line with the existing literature of what happens when you go to these higher achieving schools. I also find very modest impacts on objective measures of learning. So this is coming from like standardized test scores that are externally graded. so I construct this index, which I call the achievement index, which is a combination of these lowest tech standardized score that they take in the seventh grade
00:06:49 - that they take in the ninth grade. And, you know, I find these effects of like 0.03 standard deviation gains from these higher achieving schools. all the gains are on language. I don't find any gains in math. So, you know, surprising that they're not sort of like bigger benefits in terms of these learning, but we don't find negative effects in objective measures of learning. Now, when I start looking at effects on teachers' objective rating, I actually see negative impacts from placing in these
00:07:20 - So kids have lower GPAs, so they're about point 11 standard deviations lower, they're five percentage points more likely to fail at least one course in the ninth grade. And also they're more likely to repeat grades. And so the most concerning part that I've seen in the data is that consistent with all these measures, I see that when I try to measure kids at least one year after their predicted graduation, date, I see that they're one percentage point less likely
00:07:51 - So basically they're less likely to graduate, from middle school. And so one interpretation of this result is that the difference between these objective and subjective measures of academic performance is that teachers are basically implicitly assessing students in relative terms, right? Even though it's sort of like there's no policy that they should be doing that in schools, right? And so this is already concerning, right? Because these, you know, these,
00:08:22 - during middle schools, but there's these other channel which is that grades also serve as a feedback mechanism for students, right? And so if students have imperfect informations about their own ability, they might be using sort of these signals to, to think about like, well, how good I am at this academic stuff, right? And so I actually can use these data from the questionnaire to try to see how they think about themselves and what their self-perceptions are. And so I, I see that students actually report that they're,
00:08:55 - and they are scoring lower in measures of conscientiousness, which is sort of this tendency to be hardworking, to be responsible to be organized, right? And so sort of we see sort of like these negative effects on these self-reported measures. Now, you know, if these are real effects, that's very concerning because there's a lot of other work linking conscientiousness to long-term outcomes of children. But it's possible that when these self-reported measure is

Impact of Self-Perception on Student Aspirations

00:09:25 - So I go to school, maybe I see other kids are very hardworking and I think, maybe I'm not that hardworking. But you know, maybe objectively you were like as hardwork as you were gonna be no matter what school you're placed in, right? So I cannot say much to that 'cause I only have the self-reported data, but what I can say is that I, I have this evidence of a link that self perceptions actually also matter for other things, right? So I can link self-perceptions,
00:09:56 - that I'm not good enough and it's not real, that might eventually affect how I think about where to apply or what I aspire to. And so I do see sort of like these negative effects on children's, aspirations to go to university. And they're also one percentage point less likely to apply to, academic programs instead choosing for vocational programs. There's a lot of work already in education, trying
00:10:26 - objective measures of learning. I think there's a lot less work done understanding, okay, how do schools affect other channels that could eventually have important implications for students' educational trajectory? So one implication is that we need to study a lot more about those potential channels. Now in this context, I think that something that's perhaps a little bit surprising is that these rank effects or these peer comparisons seem to be sufficiently important
00:10:59 - through which better schools might have helped students, right? So that's sort of like one, one conclusion of this study. now, you know, I think things like not graduating from middle school, that's, you know, a very negative outcome for students. I think there's other types of outcomes like choosing more vocational programs that it's unclear sort of whether that's gonna have like positive or negative effects on, on student long-term outcomes.
00:11:31 - of attending these schools is also gonna be important. But I think in general, you know, it's gonna be und undesirable for students to form their self-perceptions about their own ability based on sort of like their relative comparisons, right? Because that could lead to distorted beliefs. And so thinking about what might be effective interventions That provide students with sort of like objective information about their own ability or perhaps, or reaffirm their sense
00:12:03 - policy to, to study.

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