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The effect of peer group stability on achievements: Evidence from Poland
Abstract
This article reports on a study using data from nation‐wide standardised examinations in Poland. We analysed the extent to which grade 9 student achievements have depended on the stability of their peer group over the course of middle school. We controlled for the fixed effects of schools attended by the students, as well as for individual achievements prior to middle school enrolment. To mitigate the risk for endogeneity, analysis was informed by a consideration of the fact that middle schools operate in different institutional relations with nearby primary schools. This also allowed us to distinguish between the effect related to peer group stability and the one connected to the stability of the learning environment in general. The results of our analysis show that instability significantly reduces students' expected performance in mathematics and science. The impact of peer group stability on test achievements varies strongly across the student ability distribution. Very low‐performing students and top performers were most affected. The average students were largely unaffected. One category of students that seems to benefit from the change when moving to middle school are students from very competitive primary schools who have average skills.
In the past decade, numerous literature reviews have delved into understanding the factors influencing STEM achievement. While prior studies have concentrated on specific associations, a holistic synthesis of diverse factors is crucial for comprehensive comprehension. This review, guided by Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, offers an overview of factors associated with secondary school students' STEM achievement by scrutinising literature from 2019 to 2023 through content analysis. Within the myriad associations and subfactors, 15 factors across four ecological levels (i.e., individual characteristics, psychological factors, learning abilities, learning approaches and educational involvement at the self‐level; classroom characteristics and culture, teacher characteristics and instructional practices, family support and influence, and access to resources and technology at the microsystem level; teacher‐parent interaction at the mesosystem level; school characteristics and culture, school leadership and practices, school resources and technology, educational policies, and local environment at the exosystem level) emerged. Methodologically, the reviewed studies predominantly employed quantitative analyses, often utilising statistical and variable‐centred approaches, concentrating on science and mathematics domains of STEM, and employing achievement tests. This review sheds light on the current landscape and provides valuable insights for future policies, practices and research directions.
Context and implications
Rationale for this study
Numerous reviews have explored specific factors influencing STEM achievement, emphasising the need for a holistic synthesis of available factors to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the complex interaction between these influences and how they collectively impact student outcomes in STEM education.
Why the new findings matter
Students' achievement in STEM is influenced by various factors, suggesting that attributing success solely to minimal number of factors may oversimplify the complex nature of the factors that influence achievement.
Implications for policy makers, practitioners, the public and researchers
A thorough understanding of the factors influencing success in STEM achievement can inform the development of educational policies and investments across different levels, from local schools to national initiatives. Educators can use this knowledge to implement tailored early interventions that enhance student achievement and foster better prospects in STEM careers. Additionally, students and parents can benefit from valuable insights to make informed decisions about educational and career pathways. This review also sheds light on future research directions.
This paper uses matched survey and administrative data on first-year Economics students who were studying at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2015 in order to estimate peer effects on student grades. We employ the strategy proposed by De Giorgi, Pellizzari & Redaelli (2010) to identify and estimate these peer effects. Our results show that peer effects are economically significant in their context, that they result from the sharing of specific rather than general skills among peers, and that they flow mainly from peers with whom students interact frequently and who are considered to be leaders.
The authors of this timely book argue that a fundamentally complex problem--how to assess the knowledge of a child--cannot be reduced to a simple test score. Beyond Testing describes seven forms of assessment that are more effective than standardized test results: 1. student self-assessments, 2. direct teacher observations of students and their work, 3. descriptive reviews of the child, 4. reading and math interviews with children, 5. portfolios and public defense of student work, 6. school reviews and observations by outside professionals, and 7. school boards and town meetings. These assessments are more honest about what we can and cannot know about children's knowledge, skills, and dispositions, and are more adaptable to varying educational missions. Readers can compare and contrast each approach and make informed decisions about which is most appropriate for their school.
In 1999, as a result of reforms of the education system, a new type of lower secondary school, called gymnasium, was introduced in Poland. The main objectives of introducing the gymnasium were to equalize the educational opportunities of rural youth, improve the level of education and extend general education by one year. The reformers envisioned gymnasiums as an autonomous school, located in new, well-equipped buildings, or as schools functioning alongside existing secondary schools. After 16 years of operation, four structural models of gymnasiums evolved: autonomous gymnasium, aggregate gymnasium in a complex with a primary school, gymnasium in a complex with a primary school having the same catchment area, and gymnasium with upper secondary school. The article investigates the differences in the organisational characteristics for each model of gymnasium, educational outcomes from different types of school, and their geographic distribution. Results show that even though gymnasiums in a complex with an upper secondary school attain on average the best results on the gymnasium completion exam, the highest scores in teaching effectiveness are achieved by gymnasiums in complexes with a primary school having the same catchment area.
We (Marsh & Craven, 1997) have claimed that academic self-concept and achievement are mutually reinforcing, each leading to gains in the other. Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, and Vohs (2003) have claimed that self-esteem has no benefits beyond seductive pleasure and may even be detrimental to subsequent performance. Integrating these seemingly contradictory conclusions, we distinguish between (a) older, unidimensional perspectives that focus on global self-esteem and underpin the Baumeister et al. review and (b) more recent, multidimensional perspectives that focus on specific components of self-concept and are the basis of our claim. Supporting the construct validity of a multidimensional perspective, studies show that academic achievement is substantially related to academic self-concept, but nearly unrelated to self-esteem. Consistent with this distinction, research based on our reciprocal-effects model (REM) and a recent meta-analysis show that prior academic self-concept (as opposed to self-esteem) and achievement both have positive effects on subsequent self-concept and achievement. We provide an overview of new support for the generality of the REM for young children, cross-cultural research in non-Western countries, health (physical activity), and nonelite (gymnastics) and elite (international swimming championships) sport. We conclude that future reviews elucidating the significant implications of self-concept for theory, policy, and practice need to account for current research supporting the REM and a multidimensional perspective of self-concept.
© 2006 Association for Psychological Science.
Examined correlations of multiple dimensions of self-concepts in 305 6th graders from high- and low-SES schools with teacher ratings of student self-concepts and academic ability and with academic test scores. Ss were administered the Self-Description Questionnaire. The pattern of correlations demonstrated the clear separation between different areas of self-concept. Ss in low-SES/low-ability schools had higher self-concepts than in high-SES/high-ability schools, thus replicating the controversial findings by A. T. Soares and L. M. Coares (see record
1970-01244-001) and by N. Trowbridge (see record
1973-09316-001). This negative effect was substantially larger after controlling for the effect of individual SES and academic ability. It is suggested that because this is the appropriate index of the negative effect, the earlier studies seriously underestimated the size of the negative effect of school SES on self-concept. Path analytic models indicated that attendance at a high-SES school (as opposed to a low-SES school) was correlated not only with a lower level of academic self-concept but also with a somewhat higher level of academic ability/achievement. A variety of seemingly paradoxical findings are consistent with a frame of reference hypotheses, which was also used to derive the title of the present study. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
—Amid ongoing public speculation about the reasons for sex differences in careers in science and mathematics, we present a consensus statement that is based on the best available scientific evidence. Sex differ-ences in science and math achievement and ability are smaller for the mid-range of the abilities distribution than they are for those with the highest levels of achievement and ability. Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high-and low-ability extremes; the reasons why males are often more variable remain elusive. Successful careers in math and science require many types of cognitive abilities. Females tend to excel in verbal abilities, with large differences between females and males found when assessments include writing samples. High-level achievement in science and math requires the ability to communicate effectively and comprehend abstract ideas, so the female advantage in writing should be helpful in all academic domains. Males outperform females on most measures of visuospatial abilities, which have been implicated as contributing to sex differences on standardized exams in mathematics and science. An evolutionary account of sex differences in mathematics and science supports the conclusion that, although sex differences in math and science performance have not directly evolved, they could be indirectly related to differences in interests and specific brain and cognitive systems. We review the brain basis for sex differences in science and mathematics, describe consistent effects, and identify numerous possible correlates. Experience alters brain structures and functioning, so causal statements about brain differences and success in math and science are circular. A wide range of sociocultural forces contribute to sex differences in mathematics and science achievement and ability—including the effects of family, neighborhood, peer, and school influences; training and experience; and cultural practices. We conclude that early experience, biological factors, educational policy, and cultural context affect the number of women and men who pursue advanced study in science and math and that these effects add and interact in complex ways. There are no single or simple answers to the complex questions about sex differences in science and mathematics.
Peer effects have figured prominently in debates on school vouchers, desegregation, ability tracking, and antipoverty programs. Compelling evidence of their existence remains scarce for plaguing endogeneity issues such as selection bias and the reflection problem. This paper is among the first to firmly establish the link between peer performance and student achievement, using a unique data set from China. We find strong evidence that peer effects exist and operate in a positive and nonlinear manner; reducing the variation of peer performance increases achievement; and our semiparametric estimates clarify the trade-offs facing policymakers in exploiting positive peer effects to increase future achievement. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Peer effects are potentially important for understanding the optimal organization of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, but finding evidence is difficult because people are selected into peer groups based, in part, on their unobservable characteristics. I identify the effects of peers whom a child encounters in the classroom using sources of variation that are credibly idiosyncratic, such as changes in the gender and racial composition of a grade in a school in adjacent years. I use specification tests, including one based on randomizing the order of years, to confirm that the variation I use is not generated by time trends or other non-idiosyncratic forces. I find that students are affected by the achievement level of their peers: a credibly exogenous change of 1 point in peers' reading scores raises a student's own score between 0.15 and 0.4 points, depending on the specification. Although I find little evidence that peer effects are generally non-linear, I do find that peer effects are stronger intra-race and that some effects do not operate through peers' achievement. For instance, both males and females perform better in math in classrooms that are more female despite the fact that females' math performance is about the same as that of males.
To estimate peer effects in college achievement we exploit a unique dataset in which individuals have been exogenously assigned to peer groups of about 30 students with whom they are required to spend the majority of their time interacting. This feature enables us to estimate peer effects that are more comparable to changing the entire cohort of peers. Using this broad peer group, we find academic peer effects of much larger magnitude than found in previous studies that have measured peer effects among roommates alone. We find the peer effects persist at a diminishing rate into the sophomore, junior, and senior years, indicating social network peer effects may have long lasting effects on academic achievement. Our findings also suggest that peer effects may be working through study partnerships versus operating through establishment of a social norm of effort.
A large and growing literature has documented the importance of peer effects in education. However, there is relatively little evidence on the long-run educational and labor market consequences of childhood peers. We examine this question by linking administrative data on elementary school students to subsequent test scores, college attendance and completion, and earnings. To distinguish the effect of peers from confounding factors, we exploit the population variation in the proportion of children from families linked to domestic violence, who have been shown to disrupt contemporaneous behavior and learning. Results show that exposure to a disruptive peer in classes of 25 during elementary school reduces earnings at age 24 to 28 by 3 percent. We estimate that differential exposure to children linked to domestic violence explains 5 percent of the rich-poor earnings gap in our data, and that each year of exposure to a disruptive peer reduces the present discounted value of classmates' future earnings by $80,000.
We investigate the impacts of separating students in Israel from pre‐existing social relationships during the transition from elementary to middle school on their academic progress. We define several types of friendships using students’ self‐defined friendship nomination and rely for identification on the random assignment of students to classes within a given school. Our results suggest that the number of friends has positive or negative effects on students’ educational outcomes, depending on the type of and on friends’ socioeconomic background. These gains might be partly mediated through greater cooperation, reduction in violent behaviour and improvements in social satisfaction in class.
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We propose a theory of social interactions based on self-selection and comparative advantage. In our model, students choose peer groups based on their comparative advantage within a social environment. The effect of moving a student into a different environment with higher-achieving peers depends on where in the ability distribution she falls and the shadow prices that clear the social market. We show that the model’s key prediction—an individual’s ordinal rank predicts her behavior and test scores—is borne out in one randomized controlled trial in Kenya as well as administrative data from the United States. To test whether our selection mechanism can explain the effect of rank on outcomes, we conduct an experiment with nearly 600 public school students in Houston. The experimental results suggest that social interactions are mediated by self-selection based on comparative advantage. (JEL: I21, J24)
In the last and current decade, the W ake County school district reassigned numerous students to schools, moving up to five percent of the enrolled population in any given year. Before 2000, the explicit goal was balancing schools'racial composition; after 2000, it was balancing schools'income composition. Throughout, finding space for the area's rapidly expanding student population was the most important concern. The reassignments generate a very large number of natural experiments in which students experience new peers in the classroom. Using panel data on students before and after they experience policy-induced changes in peers, we explore which models of peer effects explain the data. We also review common models and econometric identification of peer effects. Our results reject the popular linear-in-means and single-crossing models as stand-alone models of peer effects. We find support for the Boutique and Focus models of peer effects, as well as for a monotonicity property by which a higher achieving peer is better for a student's own achievement all else equal. Our results indicate that, when we properly account for the effects of peers'achievement, peers'race, ethnicity, income, and parental education have no or at most very slight effects. W e compute that switching from race-based to income-based desegregation has at most very slight effects, so that W ake County's numerous reassignments mainly affected achievement through the redistribution of lower and higher-achieving peers.
We consider statistical inference for regression when data are grouped into clusters, with regression model errors independent across clusters but correlated within clusters. Examples include data on individuals with clustering on village or region or other category such as industry, and state- year differences- in- differences studies with clustering on state. In such settings, default standard errors can greatly overstate estimator precision. Instead, if the number of clusters is large, statistical inference after OLS should be based on cluster- robust standard errors. We outline the basic method as well as many complications that can arise in practice. These include cluster- specifi c fi xed effects, few clusters, multiway clustering, and estimators other than OLS. © 2015 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
The present study investigates links between early adolescents’ subjective experiences of stress associated with the middle school transition and their academic outcomes. Seventh and eighth grade students (N = 774) were surveyed about their experiences during their transition to middle school. Students answered questions about stress associated with the transition to middle school, the extent to which their friendships had changed over the course of the transition, and a variety of academic outcomes including academic performance, school bonding, and academic motivation. Results indicate that higher amounts of middle school transition stress predict lower grades, higher school anxiety, and lower school bonding. Moreover, transition stress predicted academic outcomes regardless of whether adolescents were in a stable friendship group across the transition to middle school. Results are discussed in light of implications for promoting positive social and academic development across the transition to middle school.
Individual outcomes are highly correlated with group average outcomes, a fact often interpreted as a causal peer effect. Without covariates, however, outcome-on-outcome peer effects are vacuous, either unity or, if the average is defined as a leave-out mean, determined by a generic intraclass correlation coefficient. When pre-determined peer characteristics are introduced as covariates in a model linking individual outcomes with group averages, the question of whether peer effects or social spillovers exist is econometrically identical to that of whether a 2SLS estimator using group dummies to instrument individual characteristics differs from OLS estimates of the effect of these characteristics. The interpretation of results from models that rely solely on chance variation in peer groups is therefore complicated by bias from weak instruments. With systematic variation in group composition, the weak IV issue falls away, but the resulting 2SLS estimates can be expected to exceed the corresponding OLS estimates as a result of measurement error and for other reasons unrelated to social effects. Research designs that manipulate peer characteristics in a manner unrelated to individual characteristics provide the most compelling evidence on the nature of social spillovers. As an empirical matter, designs of this sort have mostly uncovered little in the way of socially significant causal effects.
There has been extensive debate among scholars and practitioners concerning whether self-beliefs influence academic achievement. To address this question, findings of longitudinal studies investigating the relation between self-beliefs and achievement were synthesized using meta-analysis. Estimated effects are consistent with a small, favorable influence of positive self-beliefs on academic achievement, with an average standardized path or regression coefficient of .08 for self-beliefs as a predictor of later achievement, controlling for initial levels of achievement. Stronger effects of self-beliefs are evident when assessing self-beliefs specific to the academic domain and when measures of self-beliefs and achievement are matched by domain (e.g., same subject area). Under these conditions, the relation of self-beliefs to later achievement meets or exceeds Cohen's (1988) definition of a small effect size.
Does the grade-level configuration of a school affect academic achievement? This research examines the effect of attending a middle/junior high school on academic outcomes in British Columbia, Canada, relative to attending a school from kindergarten through grade 8. Using an OLS strategy, I find that attending a middle/junior high school reduces grades 4 to 7 achievement gains in math and reading by 0.125–0.187 and 0.055–0.108, respectively. Similar-sized estimates are found for math using a 2SLS strategy. Finally, large negative effects on grade 10 and grade 12 English exams are also found.
Collège ou stage intermédiaire entre primaire et secondaire? Comment ces configurations affectent les résultats scolaires. Est-ce que la configuration des programmes en niveaux primaire, collège, secondaire affecte les résultats scolaires? Ce texte examine les effets de l'introduction d'un segment intermédiaire entre primaire et secondaire sur les résultats scolaires en Colombie Britannique (Canada) par rapport à un cursus continu du jardin d'enfance à la 8ième année. A l'aide de la méthode des moindres carrés ordinaires, on montre le passage par ce stade intermédiaire entre la 4ième et la 7ième année réduit la performance scolaire en mathématiques et en lecture de 0.125 à 0.187, et de 0.055 à 0.108 respectivement. Ces résultats sont confirmés pour les mathématiques en utilisant la méthode des moindres carrés à deux étapes. Enfin, on découvre aussi de forts effets négatifs sur les notes en anglais en 10ième et 12ième années.
This chapter summarizes the recent literature on peer effects in student outcomes at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Linear-in-means models find modest sized and statistically significant peer effects in test scores. But the linear-in-means model masks considerable heterogeneity in the effects experienced by different types of students. Using nonlinear models, one prevalent finding is larger peer effects in which high ability students benefit from the presence of other high ability students. Studies that stratify students by race and ability often find that students are affected both by the racial composition of their peers and by the achievement of their same-race peers. At the university level, several studies find modest sized effects from dormmate and roommate background on own academic performance. For both university and high school students, the measured peer effects on "social" outcomes such as drinking are larger than the effects on academic outcomes. Many authors find substantial peer effects in drinking, drug use, and criminal behavior. This chapter suggest areas for future investigation and data collection.
Student mobility is a topic that frequently surfaces in discussions about the problems of urban schooling. Surprisingly, it tends to fade from the agenda as discussion turns toward reform initiatives and school restructuring. Student movement, however, penetrates the essential activity of schools--the interaction of teachers and students around learning. Using data from Chicago public elementary schools, I first describe the extent of urban school instability. Many schools, in fact, do not have a stable cohort of students whose progress they can track over time. Second, I explore the causes of this high level of instability, connected both to residential mobility and to more school-related reasons. Distinctive patterns emerge that reveal clusters of schools that are closely tied by the students they exchange from year to year. Third, given this context, I examine the impact of mobility on students, schools, and urban education more generally. Recent school reform efforts that center on promoting greater local school autonomy implicitly assume that students will attend a specific school consistently enough that the school can "make a difference" in their achievement. In the unstable urban context, however, even improving schools lose their accomplishments as students transfer, and mobile students forfeit the benefit of continuity of school services. Thus, not only does mobility impact individual students who are changing schools, it has deep (though often hidden) consequences for the schools these students attend and for the systemic changes intended by local school reform.
We take cohorts of entering freshmen at the United States Air Force Academy and assign half to peer groups designed to maximize the academic performance of the lowest ability students. Our assignment algorithm uses nonlinear peer effects estimates from the historical pre-treatment data, in which students were randomly assigned to peer groups. We find a negative and significant treatment effect for the students we intended to help. We provide evidence that within our “optimally” designed peer groups, students avoided the peers with whom we intended them to interact and instead formed more homogeneous subgroups. These results illustrate how policies that manipulate peer groups for a desired social outcome can be confounded by changes in the endogenous patterns of social interactions within the group.
We examine the implications of separating students of different grade levels across schools for the purposes of educational production. Specifically, we find that moving students from elementary to middle school in 6th or 7th grade causes significant drops in academic achievement. These effects are large (about 0.15 standard deviations), present for both math and English, and persist through grade 8, the last year for which we have achievement data. The effects are similar for boys and girls, but stronger for students with low levels of initial achievement. We instrument for middle school attendance using the grade range of the school students attended in grade 3, and employ specifications that control for student fixed effects. This leaves only one potential source of bias-correlation between grade range of a student's grade 3 school and unobservable characteristics that cause decreases in achievement precisely when students are due to switch schools-which we view as highly unlikely. We find little evidence that placing public school students into middle schools during adolescence is cost-effective.
To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may benefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from tracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test its implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with 121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of high-achieving peers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly by allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)
Most students change schools at some point in their academic careers, but some change very frequently and some schools experience a great deal of turnover. While many argue that mobility harms students, economists tend to emphasize Tiebout type moves to procure better school quality (SQ). This paper disentangles the disruption effects of moves from changes in SQ. Importantly, it identifies the negative externality movers impose on other students. Student turnover is shown to entail a substantial cost for movers and non-movers alike. This cost appears to be larger for lower income and minority students who typically attend much higher turnover schools.
In this paper we analyze a unique micro-level panel data set encompassing all publicschool students in grades 3-10 in the state of Florida for each of the years 1999/2000-2003/2004.We are able to directly link each student and teacher to a specific classroom and can thus identifyeach member of a student’s classroom peer group. The ability to track individual studentsthrough multiple classrooms over time and multiple classes for each teacher enables us to controlfor many sources of spurious peer effects such as fixed individual student characteristics andfixed teacher inputs, as well as to compare the strength of peer effects across different groupingsof peers, across grade levels, and to compare the effects of fixed versus time-varying peercharacteristics. We find mixed results on the importance of peers in the linear-in-means model,and resolve some of these apparent conflicts by considering non-linear specifications of peereffects. The results suggest that some grouping by ability may create Pareto improvements overuniformly mixed classrooms. In general we find that contemporaneous behavior wields strongerinfluence than peers’ fixed characteristics.
This paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population
tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group.
It is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference
groups. If this information is available, the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between
the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes. Inference is difficult to implossible if these
variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent. The prospects are better if the variables defining
reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population.
Inference methods that recognize the clustering of individual observations have been available for more than 25 years. Brent Moulton (1990) caught the attention of economists when he demonstrated the serious biases that can result in estimating the effects of aggregate explanatory variables on individual-specific response variables. The source of the downward bias in the usual OLS standard errors is the presence of an unobserved, state-level effect in the error term. More recently, John Pepper (2002) showed how accounting for multi-level clustering can have dramatic effects on t statistics. While adjusting for clustering is much more common than it was 10 years ago, inference methods robust to cluster correlation are not used routinely across all relevant settings. In this paper, I provide an overview of applications of cluster-sample methods, both to cluster samples and to panel data sets. Potential problems with inference in the presence of group effects when the number of groups is small have been highlighted in a recent paper by Stephen Donald and Kevin Lang (2001). I review different ways of handling the small number of groups case in Section III.
Inequity in a decentralised education system—Evidence from Poland
- Herbst M.
Hoxby, C. (2000). Peer effects in the classroom: Learning from gender and race variation. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No. 7867. <https://doi.org/10.3386/w7867>
Efekt rówieśników w nauczaniu szkolnym
- A. Pokropek
The self in social perspective
- H. W. Marsh
Handbook of the economics of education
- B. Sacerdote