The External Validity of College Remediation Effects: Caveats about Compliers in Fuzzy-discontinuity Designs

Lucy Cordes (), Patrick McEwan and Akila Weerapana ()
Additional contact information
Lucy Cordes: Federal Reserve Board of Governors Washington, DC 20418
Akila Weerapana: Department of Economics Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02481

Education Finance and Policy, 2025, vol. 20, issue 2, 286-311

Abstract: Fuzzy regression-discontinuity evaluations of college remediation often find negative and null estimates of local average treatments effects (LATEs), but with substantial heterogeneity. We find that a remedial quantitative skills course at Wellesley College has a modestly positive LATE on participation in mathematically intensive fields of study—including the sciences, mathematics, and economics courses. Yet, LATEs are a weighted average of average causal effects (at the passing cutoff) in two principal strata: students who voluntarily comply with remediation, and those who are coerced to comply after scoring below the cutoff on an optional retest. In the retest sample, we show that average causal effects are close to zero among (1) coerced compliers, and (2) never-takers. By implication, there are even larger effects among a smaller group of voluntary compliers at the cutoff. The results help interpret the mixed findings in the literature, in which compliance varies widely, and demonstrate methods for assessing external validity in fuzzy-discontinuity designs.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00426

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:tpr:edfpol:v:20:y:2025:i:2:p:286-311

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().