One quarter of all schoolchildren in Latvia go to the publicly funded minority (predominantly Russian) schools. In 2004, the language of instruction in minority schools was changed from essentially minority language to a composite of 60% Latvian and 40% minority. This paper studies the effects...

International students, who are also often from non-English language speaking backgrounds (NESB students), are an important source of revenue for Australian universities. Yet little large-scale evidence exists about their performance once they arrive. Do these students perform worse than other...

Using a unique and very rich PISA dataset from Denmark, we show that the immigrant concentration in the school influences reading and math skills for both immigrant children and native children. Overall, children in schools with a high immigrant concentration score lower on reading and math test...

Our study analyzes the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, a college-preparatory educational program designed for higher-achieving students, on high school academic achievement in Chicago Public Schools. We exploit exogenous variation in the offering of the program...

This paper investigates the relationship between attendance at pre-school school and children's outcomes into early adulthood. In particular, we are interested in: child cognitive development at ages 11, 14 and 16; intentions towards tertiary education; economic activity in early adulthood; a group...

The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity increased dramatically in the United States during the past three decades. This increase has adverse public health implications, but its implication for children's academic outcomes is less clear. This paper uses data from five waves of the...

This paper analyzes whether there exists a causal relationship between parental employment and children's educational attainment. We address potential endogeneity problems due to (i) selection of parents in the labor market by estimating a model on sibling differences and (ii) reverse causality...

This paper estimates the effects of statewide affirmative action bans on graduation rates within colleges and on the fraction of college entrants who become graduates of selective institutions. On net, affirmative action bans lead to fewer underrepresented minorities becoming graduates of...

This paper contributes to research on affirmative action by examining issues of equity in the context of racial quotas in Brazil. We study the experience of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who...

We use aggregate PISA data for 19 countries over the period 2000–2009 to study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling...