Trade-offs of Attending Better Schools: Achievement, Self-Perceptions and Educational Trajectories

This paper estimates the impacts of attending better middle schools on the test scores, on-time graduation, self-reported socio-emotional skills, aspirations, and high school track choices of marginally admitted students. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the admission threshold to higher-achieving middle schools in Mexico shows some modest gains on externally graded tests, but adverse effects on GPA and on-time graduation. By the end of middle school, marginally admitted students feel academically inferior to their peers, obtain worse scores on measures of conscientiousness, and are more likely to shift their aspirations and subsequent schooling choices from academic to vocational programs. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that unfavourable peer comparisons, stemming from direct observation or subjective teacher assessments, can be sufficiently important to affect students’ educational trajectories.