The Effect of Central Exit Examinations on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Timss Germany

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper makes use of the regional variation in schooling legislation within the German secondary education system to estimate the causal effect of central exit examinations on student performance. We propose a difference-in-differences framework that exploits the quasi-experimental nature of the German TIMSS middle-school sample. The estimates show that students in federal states with central exit examinations clearly outperform students in other federal states, but that only part of the difference can be attributed to central exit examinations. Our results suggest that central examinations increase student achievement by about one third school year equivalent. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL Code: I28.

The effects of early tracking on student performance: Evidence from a school reform in Bavaria

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Moving Up a Gear: The Impact of Compressing Instructional Time into Fewer Years of Schooling

“…Central exit examinations change the incentive structure for teachers and students, thus impacting education outcomes (e.g. Brahm, 1997;Jürges et al, 2005). Additionally, the age at which students are tracked changed in two treatment states during the sampling period.…”

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“…Thus students in states with external standards outperform their peers in states without external standards. It turns out, that the differences in test scores are much smaller than those found in Jürges et al (2003) for the German TIMSS middle school sample (where the raw difference in mathematics scores was 0.433 standard deviations). Moreover, the raw difference in test scores is most likely not an unbiased estimate of the causal effect of external standards.…”