Learning with Differing-Ability Peers: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in South Korea
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Seungwoo Chin
and
Eunjee Kwon
Abstract
Whether to group students based on their prior academic achievements has been at the center of policy and research debate. This article explores a quasi-experimental setting in South Korea where the “Equalization Policy” replaced ability-tracking in high school students’ allocation. The policy abolished high school entrance exams and began assigning students to high schools without considering students’ prior academic performance, which exposed students to an ability-mixing learning environment. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that ability-mixing considerably reduces the number of low-performers in a national college entrance test. At the same time, high-performers are hardly affected by the policy changes. We document that the behavioral changes of low-performing students may drive the main results. In contrast, we find no evidence that grouping mechanisms affect teacher-pupil interaction and teacher quality.
Funding source: University of Southern California
Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Professor Matthew E. Kahn for his guidance. This paper has benefited substantially from feedback provided by Hyungsik Moon, John Strauss, Jeffrey Nugent, Sandra Rozo, Christian Redfearn, Youngchul Kim, and seminar participants at the University of Southern California, Western Economic Association International Annual Meeting (San Diego, 2017), International Association for Applied Econometrics (Montreal, 2018) and the Center for Economic and Social Research. We thank the Ministry of Education in South Korea for providing us with data. All errors are our own.
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Research funding: This work was supported by University of Southern California.
Implementation year of the equalization policy.
| Cities | Ulsan | Seoul | Busan | Daegu | Gwangju | Incheon | Daejeon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (treated) | (control) | (control) | (control) | (control) | (control) | (control) | |
| Year | 2000 | 1974 | 1974 | 1975 | 1975 | 1975 | 1979 |
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Before the E.P. policy, all the cities’ high school admission was based on the tracking system. As the policy was implemented at the city-level, there was no across school district heterogeneity in the timing of the policy adaptation.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Default Behavior and Risk Aversion in Defined Contribution Retirement Systems: Evidence from Chile
- Linking Employment and Death: Measuring the Structural Disparity in COVID-19 Deaths for Non-telework Essential Workers
- Estimating the Effect of Distance on the Migration of Higher Education Candidates
- Do Female Politicians Lead to Better Learning Outcomes?
- Understanding Household Consumption Behaviour: What do we Learn from a Developing Country?
- Learning with Differing-Ability Peers: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in South Korea
- Is Bilingual Education Desirable in Multilingual countries?
- Letter
- Is the Non-disclosure Policy of Audit Intensity Always Effective? A Theoretical Exploration
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Default Behavior and Risk Aversion in Defined Contribution Retirement Systems: Evidence from Chile
- Linking Employment and Death: Measuring the Structural Disparity in COVID-19 Deaths for Non-telework Essential Workers
- Estimating the Effect of Distance on the Migration of Higher Education Candidates
- Do Female Politicians Lead to Better Learning Outcomes?
- Understanding Household Consumption Behaviour: What do we Learn from a Developing Country?
- Learning with Differing-Ability Peers: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in South Korea
- Is Bilingual Education Desirable in Multilingual countries?
- Letter
- Is the Non-disclosure Policy of Audit Intensity Always Effective? A Theoretical Exploration
