The effects of accelerating the school curriculum on student outcomes

Roxanne Korthals

No 1, ROA Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to estimate the causal effects of an accelerated curriculum, in which students progress through the course material faster, on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. I employ two methods: First, I make use of the cohorts before and after the introduction of the possibility to accelerate and of classes which are and which are not considered for acceleration using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) strategy. However, it seems reasonable that the best students benefit from this policy, while it is less clear that the less able students would benefit. Therefore I also employ a second method in which I only look at the effects for the marginal student. For this, I use school grades to employ a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design (fRDD). Using both methods, I find that after one year the students who accelerated scored significantly higher on certain sub scores of the mathematics tests. I find no definitive results on non-cognitive skills: Using the DiD, I find that this positive cognitive effect is countered by lower scores on the teacher rated scores on perseverance, concentration, and conversation skills. For the marginal student, I find almost no effects on non-cognitive skills.

JEL-codes: I20 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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Working Paper: The effects of accelerating the school curriculum on student outcomes (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:umaror:2017001

DOI: 10.26481/umaror.2017001

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