Year: 2008
Type: report
Abstract: Recent work shows that peers affect student achievement, but the mechanisms are not well understood.I show that peer behavior is an important mechanism, perhaps more so than ability, by exploiting exogenous timing in diagnosis/treatment of ADD among peers that improves peer behavior while holding peer achievement constant.Improvements in peer behavior increase student achievement.Moreover, resources mitigate the negative effects of peer behavior.These findings imply that the optimal response in the presence of peer effects is not necessarily to reorganize classrooms.Rather, existing institutions can modify peer effects by improving behavior and/or mitigating the impact of poor behavior.
DOI: 10.3386/w14354
Author: Anna Aizer
Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Brown University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1510717939