Andrew McEachin

We identify 510 California public middle schools (and 753 school-years) that use a 7th grade achievement threshold to place students into 8th grade Algebra, and we use these schools to estimate fuzzy regression discontinuity effects of 8th grade Algebra placement. We find that enrolling in 8th grade Algebra boosts students’ chances of taking advanced math courses in high school by 30 percentage points in 9th grade and 16 percentage points in 11th grade, as well as boosting achievement on the 10th grade math California High School Exit Exam by .031sd (ITT) and .053sd (LATE). Eighth-grade algebra has a smaller, positive effect on student ELA achievement in grades 9 through 11. Importantly, we also find that the effects of 8th grade Algebra vary substantially across students and schools. Encouragingly, women, students of color, and English-Language Learners benefit disproportionately from access to accelerated coursework. However, school-level decisions about how to implement accelerated coursework in middle school appear to matter. In particular, we find that the benefits of 8th grade  algebra are substantially larger in schools that enroll students whose 7th grade math scores are at least “Proficient” (or grade level).

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Black and poor students are suspended from U.S. schools at higher rates than white and non-poor students. While the existence of these disparities has been clear, the causes of the disparities have not. We use a novel dataset to examine how and where discipline disparities arise. By comparing the punishments given to black and white (or poor and non-poor) students who fight one another, we address a selection challenge that has kept prior studies from identifying discrimination in student discipline. We find that black and poor students are, in fact, punished more harshly than the students with whom they fight.

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The vast majority of literature on school choice, and charter schools in particular, focus on attending an elementary or middle school and often focus on test scores or other proximal outcomes. Much less is known about the long-term effects of attending a charter high school. It is important to fill this information void for a few reasons. First, schools in general affect more than just students’ test scores. Second, high schools make up a larger share of the charter sector. Third, school choice depends on freely available information for parents and students to make informed decisions about where to attend, including potential long-term benefits. We add to the empirical research on charter school effects by using a doubly-robust regression-adjusted propensity score matching approach to evaluate the impacts of charter high school attendance on 9th grade behavioral outcomes and individuals propensity to commit crime and participate in elections as young adults in North Carolina, a state with a large and growing charter school sector.

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