Is It Better to be "a Big Fish in a Little Pond" than "a Little Fish in a Big Pond"?A Study on the Influence of Elite High Schools on Students'Academic Performance under New Scheme of College Entrance Examination
Using large scale questionnaire survey data from high school graduates in a province that implements the new scheme of college entrance examination,this study examines the impact of elite high schools(including both Tier-1 and Tier-2 high schools)on students'academic performance,subject selection,and learning engagement in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design.We find that,overall,participating in elite high schools does not increase the academic performance for students around the cutoff.Students who barely enter Tier-1 high schools perform even worse than their counterparts in Tier-2 high schools.In terms of learning behavior,the differences in subject selection and learning engagement among students around the cutoff are small.Students in Tier-2 high schools tend to decide on their subjects later and spend less time studying on campus compared with their counterparts in non-elite high schools.Students in Tier-1 high schools spend more time studying on campus with lower learning efficiency than their counterparts in Tier-2 high schools.Our findings indirectly verify the necessity of the government supervision of school selection and the implementation of the policy of balancing educational resources.
academic performancenew scheme of college entrance examinationregression discontinuityschool selectioneducation resources equilibrium
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
