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D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 8732 December 2014
ABSTRACTThe Tower of Babel in the Classroom: Immigrants and Natives in Italian Schools * We exploit rules of class formation to identify the causal effect of increasing the number of immigrants in a classroom on natives test scores, keeping class size constant (Pure Composition Effect). We explain why this is a relevant policy parameter although it has been neglected so far. We show that the PCE is sizeable and negative at age 7 (-1.6% for language and math) and does not vanish when children grow up to age 10. Conventional estimates are instead smaller because they are confounded by endogenous class size adjustments implemented by principals when confronted with immigrant and native inflows.
JEL Classification:C36, I20, I24, J15
In this study we investigate the relationship between student achievement and a crucial aspect of teaching: curriculum implementation strategies. More specifically, we consider three strategies representing teachers' approach in dealing with heterogeneous classes: i) spending time on the same topic until everyone understands, ii) moving on to another topic even if part of the class does not understand the previous one, and iii) spending time to revise concepts and topics already studied in the previous year. We exploit the within-student between-subjects variation in the frequency with which different teachers adopt each of the three strategies to control for constant student and class traits and for the possibility that teachers may adapt their strategies to class composition. Our findings show that spending time on the same topic until everyone understands is not associated with a better performance of less able students. On the contrary, it produces substantial achievement losses for the most able ones. Spending time revising topics studied in the previous year increases the achievement of less able students without lowering the performance of the most able ones.
Differences in human capital endowment between the standard partition of Italy (North-South) are pronounced. The divide between urban and rural areas is even more remarkable, with the former showing also faster accumulation rate. Using data from civil registries and survey on graduates, we show that mobility plays a crucial role in explaining this accumulation gap. Urban areas of the North drain human capital from rural and urban locations of the South, but they lose graduates in favor of foreign countries. Urban movers are positively selected according to familiar background and secondary school grades. Moreover, in comparison to stayers, they are more likely to hold a university degree associated with better labour market prospects. Migrations of graduates are responsive to labour market conditions, to university supply, to house prices and-most importantly-to local human capital endowment.
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