Tower of Babel in the Classroom: Immigrants and Natives in Italian Schools

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. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in 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

The effect of immigrant peers in vocational schools

“…Duflo et al, (2011), for example, exploit the variation in peer composition generated by actual randomization, while Angrist and Lang (2004) leverage the substantial increase in the number of disadvantaged black or other minority students in the schools in Boston's affluent suburbs as a result of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity's (Metco) desegregation program. Gould et al (2009) similarly rely on the variation in number of immigrant students induced by the exogenous immigration waves to Israel in the early 1990s, while Ballatore et al (2018) use the exogenous variation in the number of natives and immigrants generated by the observations. All our results are robust to the choice of alternative thresholds as well as to the inclusion of all observations.…”

“…Two of these, relying on within-school variation in immigrant concentration, find that the proportion of immigrant students has a weak negative effect on child learning outcomes that is either slightly larger for children from low socio-economic background (Contini, 2013) or highly non-linear (Tonello, 2016). In contrast, Ballatore, Fort and Ichino (2018), by exploiting class formation rules to identify the causal impact on native test scores of increasing the number of immigrants in a classroom while keeping class size and student quality constant, find sizable negative effects on native performance in both literacy and maths at ages 7 and 10. To explain the magnitude of their findings, they argue that conventional estimates of immigrant peer effects are usually smaller because they are confounded by endogenous class size adjustments implemented by principals confronted with immigrant and native inflows.…”

Do migrant students affect local students’ academic achievements in urban China?

“…The underlying mechanism is that a higher proportion of female students might lower the level of classroom disruption, improve inter-student and studentteacher relationships, and lessen teachers' fatigue (Borjas, 2004). A subset of this literature investigating racial group and ability composition effects typically finds that increasing the fraction (number) of black, low-ability or delinquent students has a significant detrimental effect on academic outcomes (Ballatore et al, 2015;Betts, 1998;Horoi and Ost, 2015;Hoxby, 2000;Jensen and Rasmussen, 2011;Lavy et al, 2012a).…”

“…Existing studies present mixed evidence, finding that the concentration of immigrant students has a weak negative impact on natives' educational outcomes (Ballatore et al, 2015;Borjas, 2004;Contini, 2013;Jensen and Rasmussen, 2011), no sizeable effects (Geay et al, 2013;Ohinata and Van Ours, 2013), or even a positive impact on the likelihood of university enrolment and achievement (Fekjaer and Birkelund, 2007). Most studies have found small, but significant, negative spillover effects of immigrant students on test scores of natives in elementary and secondary schools and universities in developed countries (Brunello and Rocco, 2013;Contini, 2013;Jensen and Rasmussen, 2011;Tonello, 2016).…”

The Effect of Immigrant Peers in Vocational Schools

“…Two of these, relying on within-school variation in immigrant concentration, find that the proportion of immigrant students has a weak negative effect on child learning outcomes that is either slightly larger for children from low socio-economic background (Contini, 2013) or highly non-linear (Tonello, 2016). In contrast, Ballatore, Fort and Ichino (2015), by exploiting class formation rules to identify the causal impact on native test scores of increasing the number of immigrants in a classroom while keeping class size and student quality constant, find sizable negative effects on native performance in both literacy and maths at ages 7 and 10. To explain the magnitude of their findings, they argue that conventional estimates of immigrant peer effects are usually smaller because they are confounded by endogenous class size adjustments implemented by principals confronted with immigrant and native inflows.…”