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High schools
Interscholastic Policy Debate Promotes Critical Thinking and College-going: Evidence From Boston Public Schools
Few interventions reduce inequality in reading achievement, let alone higher order thinking skills, among adolescents. We study “policy debate”—an extracurricular activity focused on improving middle and high schoolers’ critical thinking, argumentation, and policy analysis skills—in Boston… more →
The Effects of At-Scale Career Pathway Investments on the Transition from High School to College
In this study, we examine an at-scale effort to encourage the formation of career pathways in California, with the goal of estimating the initiative’s causal effects on community college enrollment. We leverage a discontinuous assignment rule used to award grant funds to obtain credibly causal… more →
The Advanced Placement Program and Educational Inequality
Tags: Equity, High schoolsThe Advanced Placement (AP) program is nearly ubiquitous in American high schools and is often touted as a way to close racial and socioeconomic gaps in educational outcomes. Using administrative data from Michigan, I exploit variation within high schools across time in AP course offerings to… more →
Measuring grading standards at high schools: a methodology and an example
At schools with low grading standards, students receive higher school-awarded grades across multiple courses than students with the same skills receive at schools with high grading standards. A new methodology shows grading standards vary substantially, certainly enough to affect post-secondary… more →
Understanding High Schools’ Effects on Longer-Term Outcomes
Topics: Student LearningImproving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of low-income students, using detailed longitudinal data. We estimate… more →
Driving, Dropouts, and Drive-Throughs: Mobility Restrictions and Teen Human Capital
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe provide evidence that graduated driver licensing (GDL) laws, originally intended to improve public safety, impact human capital accumulation. Many teens use automobiles to access both school and employment. Because school and work decisions are interrelated, the effects of automobile-specific… more →
When Girls Outperform Boys: The Gender Gap in High School Math Grades
Topics: Student LearningAcross an array of educational outcomes, evidence suggests that girls outperform boys on average. For example, in Chicago, ninth-grade girls earn math GPAs that are 0.29 points higher than boys on average. This paper examines explanations for this gap, such as girl-boy differences in academic… more →
Do Early Warning Systems Help High School Students Stay on Track for College? Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Ninth Grade Success Initiative
As the transition point between middle school and high school, ninth grade can either set a student up for long-term success or diminish a student’s likelihood of graduating high school altogether. Interventions that can help educators better meet the needs of students during this critical… more →
Teacher Retention in Early College High Schools and Texas STEM Academies: Understanding the Positive Impacts of College and Career Readiness School Models
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentA stable learning environment is critical to high school reforms aimed at promoting postsecondary educational success. High teacher attrition can disrupt stable learning environments by uprooting student-teacher relationships and harming school climate. Educational leaders need greater… more →
Does High School Size Affect Rates of Risky Health Behaviors and Poor Mental Health Among Low-Income Teenagers? Evidence from New York City
Topics: Student Well-BeingThere is increasing concern about risky behaviors and poor mental health among school-aged youth. A critical factor in youth well-being is school attendance. This study evaluates how school organization and structure affect health outcomes by examining the impacts of a popular urban high school… more →
On the Threshold: Impacts of Barely Passing High-School Exit Exams on Post-Secondary Enrollment and Completion
Many states use high-school exit examinations to assess students’ career and college readiness in core subjects. We find meaningful consequences of barely passing the mathematics examination in Massachusetts, as opposed to just failing it. However, these impacts operate at different educational… more →
Linkage Between Fields of Concentration in High School Career-Technical Education and College Majors
In this descriptive study, we use longitudinal student-level administrative records from 4 cohorts of high school graduates in Kentucky to examine the extent to which students persist and attain post-secondary credentials in the CTE fields of concentration they choose in high school. To our… more →
Beyond Chronic Absenteeism: The Dynamics and Disparities of Class Absences in Secondary School
Topics: Student Well-BeingStudent absenteeism is often conceptualized and quantified in a static, uniform manner, providing an incomplete understanding of this important phenomenon. Applying growth curve models to detailed class-attendance data, we document that secondary school students' unexcused absences grow steadily… more →
A Bridge to Graduation: Post-Secondary Effects of an Alternative Pathway for Students Who Fail High School Exit Exams
Tags: High schools, AssessmentHigh school exit exams are meant to standardize the quality of public high schools and to ensure that students graduate with a set of basic skills and knowledge. Evidence suggests that a common perverse effect of exit exams is an increase in dropout for students who have difficulty passing tests… more →
When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice
Topics: School ChoiceTags: High schoolsThis paper reports the results of a large, school-level randomized controlled trial evaluating a set of three informational interventions for young people choosing high schools in 473 middle schools, serving over 115,000 8th graders. The interventions differed in their level of customization to… more →
The Long-Run Educational Benefits of High-Achieving Classrooms
Topics: Student LearningDespite 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… more →
Characterizing Cross-Site Variation in Local Average Treatment Effects in Multisite Regression Discontinuity Design Contexts with an Application to Massachusetts High School Exit Exam
Topics: MethodsTags: Assessment, High schoolsIn multisite experiments, we can quantify treatment effect variation with the cross-site treatment effect variance. However, there is no standard method for estimating cross-site treatment effect variance in multisite regression discontinuity designs (RDD). This research rectifies this gap in… more →
Effects of Four-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School
Topics: Student LearningFour-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching over 650 public school districts in 24 states as of 2019, but little is known about their implementation and there is no consensus on their effects on students. This study uses district level panel data… more →
Choosing Alone? Peer Similarity in High School Choices
Topics: School ChoiceWe provide a descriptive analysis of within-school and neighborhood similarity in high school applications in New York City. We depart from prior work by examining similarity in applications to specific schools rather than preferences for school characteristics. We find surprisingly low… more →
An Evaluation of Credit Recovery as an Intervention for High School Students Who Fail Courses
Credit recovery (CR) refers to online courses that high school students take after previously failing the course. Many have suggested that CR courses are helping students to graduate from high school without corresponding increases in academic skills. This study analyzes administrative data from… more →