The impact of peer ability and heterogeneity on student achievement: Evidence from a natural experiment

David Kiss

No 02/2011, FAU Discussion Papers in Economics from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics

Abstract: This paper estimates the impact of peer achievement and variance on math achievement growth. It exploits exogenous variation in peer characteristics generated at the transition to upper-secondary school in a sample of Berlin fifth graders. Parents and schools are barely able to condition their decisions on peer characteristics since classes are newly built up from a large pool of elementary school pupils. I find positive peer effects on achievement growth and no effects for peer variance. Lower-achieving pupils benefit more from abler peers. Results from simulations suggest that pupils are slightly better off in comprehensive than in ability-tracked school systems.

Keywords: peer effects in secondary school; comparison between ability-tracked and comprehensive school; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:022011

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