Gender Differences in High-Stakes Performance Among Early Adolescents: Evidence from a Middle-School Exit Exam Reform

Annalisa Loviglio (), Veronica Rattini () and Federico Stronati ()
Additional contact information
Annalisa Loviglio: University of Bologna, Department of Economics
Veronica Rattini: University of Bologna
Federico Stronati: University College Dublin, School of Economics

No 19017, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We study whether high-stakes testing affects the performance of female and male students differently in early adolescence. Existing evidence from high-school, university, and admission settings suggests that female students often perform relatively worse when stakes are high, but evidence from earlier stages of the educational career remains limited. We exploit a 2017 reform of Italy's lower-secondary exit exam that removed the score on a nationwide standardized test from the calculation of the final grade while preserving mandatory participation. Using administrative data covering the full population of students and a gender-by-reform difference-in-differences specification, we compare the female -male performance gap across the high- and low-stakes regimes. Girls outperform boys in both regimes, and their relative advantage is modestly larger, by about 0.03-0.05 standard deviations, when the test carries direct grade consequences.

Keywords: high-stakes testing; gender gaps; standardized exams; adolescence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp19017.pdf (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:iza:izadps:dp19017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().