%0 Report
        %A Canaan, Serena
%A Mouganie, Pierre
%A Zhang, Peng
        %T The Long-Run Educational Benefits of High-Achieving Classrooms
        %D 2022
        %8 2022 Jan
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 15039
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15039
        %X Despite the prevalence of school tracking, evidence on whether it improves student success is mixed. This paper studies how tracking within high school impacts high-achieving students' short- and longer-term academic outcomes. Our setting is a large and selective Chinese high school, where first-year students are separated into high-achieving and regular classrooms based on their performance on a standardized exam. Classrooms differ in terms of peer ability, teacher quality, class size, as well as level and pace of instruction. 
Using newly collected administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, we show that high-achieving classrooms improve math test scores by 23 percent of a standard deviation, with effects persisting throughout the three years of high school. Effects on performance in Chinese and English language subjects are more muted. Importantly, we find that high-achieving classrooms substantially raise enrollment in elite universities, as they increase scores on the national college entrance exam—the sole determinant of university admission in China. 
        %K teacher quality
%K peer quality
%K classroom tracking
%K regression discontinuity
%K China