Heterogeneity and Endogenous Compliance: Implications for Scaling Class Size Interventions

Karun Adusumilli (), Francesco Agostinelli () and Emilio Borghesan ()
Additional contact information
Karun Adusumilli: University of Pennsylvania
Francesco Agostinelli: University of Pennsylvania
Emilio Borghesan: Princeton University

No 2024-007, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper examines the scalability of the results from the Tennessee Student- Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project, a prominent educational experiment. We explore how the misalignment between the experimental design and the econometric model affects researchers’ ability to learn about the intervention’s scalability. We document heterogeneity in compliance with class-size reduction that is more extensive than previously acknowledged and discuss its consequences for the evaluation of the experiment. Guided by this finding, we implement a new econometric framework incorporating heterogeneous treatment effects and endogenous class size determination. We find that the effect of class size on test scores differs considerably across schools, with only a small fraction of schools having significant benefits from reduced class sizes. We discuss the challenges this poses for the intervention’s scalability and conclude by analyzing targeted class-size interventions.

Keywords: scalability; treatment effects; heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 H52 I20 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ure
Note: ECI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Adusum ... ance-imp-scaling.pdf First version, April 2024 (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:hka:wpaper:2024-007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().