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on Education |
| By: | Araya, Roberto; Cristia, Julian P.; Escalante, Lisseth; Fabregas, Raissa; Méndez, Carolina; Ríos, Gera |
| Abstract: | Self-led educational technologies have the potential to improve student learning at scale, but sustaining student engagement with these platforms remains a challenge. We present results from an experimental evaluation implemented following the scale-up of a math platform in Peru, where primary school teachers received weekly WhatsApp messages summarizing their students platform activity and encouraging them to promote their students engagement. The messages increased the average weekly share of students using the platform by 5 percentage points (a 17% increase) and the average share of math exercises completed by 4 percentage points (a 16% increase). Effects dissipated once the messages stopped, suggesting that salience and simplified monitoring are likely mechanisms. We find little evidence of impact heterogeneity based on teacher characteristics or students prior platform use and achievement. Non-experimental evidence suggests that increased use of the student math platform improved math learning. Overall, our findings indicate that light-touch communication with teachers can cost-effectively strengthen engagement with EdTech platforms scaled through the education system. |
| Keywords: | Messages;Education;Math achievement;Online |
| JEL: | I21 I25 D91 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14371 |
| By: | Dadgar, Iman (Center for educational leadership and excellence, Stockholm School of Economics, Swedish institute for Social research (SOFI), Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the influence of students’ ordinal positions in the distribution of grades in their ninth-grade school cohort on subsequent educational and labor market outcomes using population-wide data for Sweden. The identification strategy uses differences between students’ ranks in their school and their ranks in the country-wide ability distribution after conditioning on school-cohort fixed effects and school-level grade distributions. The findings reveal an advantage of occupying a higher rank in school with respect to educational and labor market accomplishments in adulthood, whereas a lower rank yields adverse consequences. Contrary to findings from the United States, no effect is found for students situated in the middle of the rank distribution. This study also shows that ordinal rank effects are more pronounced for students with lower socio-economic status and for female students at the top of their school ability distribution. This study highlights the importance of students’ rank positions in determining their future academic and professional outcomes. |
| Keywords: | education; income; ordinal rank; peer effects |
| JEL: | I20 I23 I28 |
| Date: | 2025–11–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2025_021 |
| By: | Victor Lavy; Assaf Yancu |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of classroom exposure to peers with a history of violent behavior on academic achievement and the underlying mechanisms. This measure of peer violence departs significantly from earlier studies that measured potential peer violence based on the background characteristics of students. We exploit idiosyncratic treatment variations during the transition from primary to middle school for causal identification. We find that a higher proportion of violent peers negatively affects cognitive performance in tests in various subjects, particularly pronounced in mathematics and English, compared to Hebrew and science. These effects are more pronounced in girls than in boys. While boys’ performance is negatively influenced only by the presence of violent male peers, girls are adversely affected by both violent male and female peers. As for mechanisms, violent peers disrupt learning environments and lower teachers’ productivity, reflected in lower job satisfaction and perception of higher workloads. Violent peers also significantly increase the likelihood of other students engaging in physical fights, and reduce their homework time, especially for girls and students from low SES. |
| JEL: | I25 J0 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34482 |
| By: | Jesse Bruhn; Michael Gilraine; Jens Ludwig; Sendhil Mullainathan |
| Abstract: | Much of the data collected in education is effectively thrown away. Students answer individual test questions, but administrators and researchers only see aggregate performance. All the item-level data are lost. Ex ante it is not clear this destroys much useful information, since the aggregate might be a sufficient statistic. Using data from Texas for 5 million students and 1.31 billion student-item responses, we show that in fact aggregation does destroy a great deal of valuable information in education: (1) Even conditional on a summary test measure, there is additional information in the item-level data; (2) This additional information is relevant for the student outcomes that education decisions seek to optimize; and (3) This information can be made practically useful for schools. Given how inexpensive storing, transmitting and analyzing such data would be, large gains could be had in education by simply using all the data we currently collect. |
| JEL: | I20 I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34484 |