High School Choices by Immigrant Students in Italy: Evidence from Administrative Data

Abstract

We investigate the educational choices of first- and second-generation immigrant students at the transition between lower-secondary school and high school by exploiting a large longitudinal dataset of about 50,000 students in Italy. We find that immigrant students are less likely to choose challenging academic track high schools compared with their Italian counterparts, after controlling for household characteristics, school fixed effects, and students’ performance. We show that systematic differences in teachers’ feedback received by the two groups of students are an important driver of the observed differences in educational choices by immigrant and native students. In addition, after controlling for observable characteristics, we find that immigrant students are more likely to be formally advised by their teachers to choose vocational or technical high schools rather than academic tracks, especially in the case of female students, reflecting a discrimination bias that has not previously been emphasized in the literature. This suggests the role for a new dimension of policy intervention aimed at reducing the possibility of teachers’ induced discrimination based on implicit stereotypes.

Poor air at school and educational inequalities by family socioeconomic status

“…Since our outcomes are test scores in low stakes tests, we cannot show whether the negative impact of air pollution has an impact on educational attainment and on later socioeconomic outcomes. We know, however, the results of the tests we have investigated in our study are strongly correlated to later educational transition (Aktaş et al 2022). Consequently, we can assume that air pollution is a determinant of SES inequalities in educational attainment.…”