Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/80674 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 7437
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the short term effects of a large scale intervention, funded by the European Social Fund, that provides additional instruction time to students in low achieving lower secondary schools of Southern Italy. We control for sorting across classes using the fact that freshman are divided into groups distinguished by letters, they remain in the same group across grades and the composition of teachers in the school assigned to each group is substantially stable over time. We implement a difference-in-differences strategy, and compare contiguous cohorts of freshman enrolled in the same group. We contrast groups with and without additional instruction time in participating schools, to groups in non-participating schools that we select to be similar with respect to a long list of pre-programme indicators. We find that the programme raised test scores in mathematics in schools characterised by students from less advantaged backgrounds. We also find that targeting the best students with extra activities in Italian language comes at the cost of lowering their performance in mathematics. We go beyond average effects, finding that the positive effect documented for mathematics is driven by larger effects for the best students in the group.
Subjects: 
education policies
instruction time
policy evaluation
quantile treatment effects
JEL: 
C31
I28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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