The long-run educational benefits of high-achieving classrooms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Canaan, Serena; Mouganie, Pierre; Zhang, Peng
• 署名单位: Simon Fraser University; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1520-7174
• DOI: 10.1002/pam.22636
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 1347-1373
• 关键词: regression discontinuity designs; schools evidence; test-scores; tracking; college; achievement; PROGRAMS; placement; impacts; QUALITY

摘要

This paper examines how placement in high-achieving classrooms within high school impacts 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, and 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% of a standard deviation, with effects persisting throughout the 3 years of high school. Impacts on performance in Chinese and English language subjects are more muted. Importantly, we find that high-achieving classrooms raise enrollment in elite universities by 17 percentage points, as they substantially increase scores on the national college entrance exam-the sole determinant of university admission in China. We provide suggestive evidence that the most likely mechanism driving our results is exposure to higher-quality teachers.