EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The causal effects of increased learning intensity on student achievement: evidence from a natural experiment

Vincenzo Andrietti

UC3M Working papers. Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía

Abstract: I exploit a unique educational policy - implemented in most German states between 2001 and 2007 - that reduced high school duration by one year while keeping its curriculum unaltered to investigate how the resulting increase in learning intensity affected student achievement. Using 2000-2009 PISA data and a difference-in-differences approach, I find robust evidence that the reform significantly improved the reading, mathematics, and science literacy skills acquired by academic-track high school students upon treatment. A more direct estimate of the effects of the increased learning intensity - as measured by the cumulative weekly number of instructional hours delivered in high school grades - corroborates the latter finding. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the effects of the reform differ by gender and grade retention. Finally, I find no evidence of a significant average effect of the reform on high school grade retention, although I do find that the latter increased significantly for boys and for students with a migration background.

Keywords: G8; Learning; intensity; Instructional; hours; Student; achievement; Academic-track; high; school; Difference-in-Differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/rest/api/core/bitstreams ... 799651a454da/content (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cte:werepe:21136

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UC3M Working papers. Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ana Poveda ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:21136