School Quality and the Development of Cognitive Skills between Age Four and Six

Lex Borghans, Bart Golsteyn and Ulf Zölitz

No 9200, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper studies the extent to which young children develop their cognitive ability in high and low quality schools. We use a representative panel data set containing cognitive test scores of 4-6 year olds in Dutch schools. School quality is measured by the school's average achievement test score at age 12. Our results indicate that children in high-quality schools develop their skills substantially faster than those in low-quality schools. The results remain robust to the inclusion of initial ability, parental background, and neighborhood controls. Moreover, using proximity to higher-achieving schools as an instrument for school choice corroborates the results. The robustness of the results points toward a causal interpretation, although it is not possible to erase all doubt about unobserved confounding factors.

Keywords: child development; cognitive skills; school quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lma, nep-neu and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: PLOS ONE, 2015, 10(7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9200

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