The impact of alternative grade configurations on student outcomes through middle and high school

Abstract

We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. Based on an instrumental variable estimation strategy, we find that students moving from elementary to middle school suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the transition year. These achievement drops persist through grade 10. We also find that middle school entry increases student absences and is associated with higher grade 10 dropout rates. Transitions to high school in grade nine cause a smaller one-time drop in achievement but do not alter students' performance trajectories. JEL Codes: H52, I21, I28Keywords: Educational production, public schools, grade configuration, middle schools, high schools * We are grateful to the Florida Department of Education for providing the primary dataset for this study, to David Figlio for sharing survey data used in a portion of the analysis, and to John Bishop, Brian Jacob, Paul Peterson, Jonah Rockoff, Ludger Woessmann, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and CESifo for helpful comments. Any errors are our own. † Corresponding Author Grade Configuration and Student Outcomes 1 IntroductionAmong the most basic questions facing policymakers in any education system is how best to group students in different grades across schools. The choice of grade configuration at minimum determines the number of structural school transitions students make, the age at which they make these transitions, and the relative age of the peers to whom they are exposed at various ages. While all of these factors could plausibly influence student outcomes, the literature on differences in student achievement across countries (Hanushek and Woessmann 2011) has largely ignored the issue of grade configuration.In the U.S., a majority of students switch from elementary school to middle school in grade 6 or 7 before entering high school in grade 9. However, alternative paths through primary and secondary schooling were more common historically and remain available to students in many areas. Some students attend K-8 or even K-12 public schools, while others move after elementary school into schools covering both middle and high school grades. The extent of this variation makes the U.S. a valuable potential source of evidence on the role of grade configuration in education production.Recent findings from New York City (Rockoff and Lockwood 2010) indicate that entering a middle school causes a sharp drop in student achievement that persists through grade 8. However, it remains unclear whether this pattern is evident in other settings and whether the negative effect of middle school attendance persists into high school. The latter consideration is critical as a key rationale for the creation of middle schools was to ease students' transition to high school, and simply having experienced a prior school transition may make students more resilient ...

The effects of test-based retention on student outcomes over time: Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida

“…16 Schwerdt and West (2013) show that the modal Florida student enters middle school in grade six and experiences an increase in absences of roughly one day (relative to students attending K-8 schools) upon making this transition.…”

“…Alternatively, it could reflect true differences in the average rate of learning in Florida public schools across grades. For example, the small math gains in grade six likely reflect the fact that most Florida students transition into a middle school in grade six, which Schwerdt and West (2013) show has a negative impact on their achievement growth. To the extent that retention simply delays students from experiencing a grade in which their own achievement growth is likely to be smaller, policymakers arguably would want to incorporate this information into the metric used to compare their achievement to that of promoted students.…”

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“…These analyses assess the impact of grade configuration on student knowledge, measured by external tests (Rockoff and Lockwood, 2010;Schwerdt and West, 2013). The American education system, like the Polish one, has 12 years of school education and is divided into three types of schools: elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.…”

Education Research and Administrative Data

“…study the effects of a test-based promotion policy. Schwerdt and West (2013) evaluate the role of grade configuration on student outcomes. Burke and Sass (2013) identify classroom peer effect relationships.…”