Working Paper: NBER ID: w26759
Authors: C. Kirabo Jackson; Shanette C. Porter; John Q. Easton; Alyssa Blanchard; Sebastin Kiguel
Abstract: Using value-added models, we find that high schools impact students’ self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on schools’ test score impacts, schools that improve SED reduce school-based arrests, and increase high-school completion, college-going, and college persistence. Schools that improve social well-being have larger effects on attendance and behavioral infractions in high school, while those that promote hard work have larger effects on GPA. Importantly, school SED value-added is more predictive of school impacts on longer-run outcomes than school test-score value-added. As such, for the longer-run outcomes, using both SED and test score value-added more than doubles the variance of the explained school effect relative to using test score value-added alone. Results suggest that adolescence can be a formative period for socioemotional growth, high-school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys, and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. These findings are robust to tests for plausible forms of selection.
Keywords: socioemotional development; school effects; educational attainment; value-added models; self-reported measures
JEL Codes: I20; J00
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| High schools that enhance students' self-reported SED (I23) | Improve attendance (I24) |
| High schools that enhance students' self-reported SED (I23) | Reduce school-based arrests (K40) |
| High schools that enhance students' self-reported SED (I23) | Increase high school completion rates (I21) |
| Schools improving SED (I24) | Larger effects on behavioral infractions and attendance (C92) |
| Schools with higher social wellbeing value-added (I24) | Improvements in social wellbeing (I31) |
| Work hard value-added schools (I23) | Improve self-reported work hard measures (J24) |
| Attending a school that improves SED (I23) | Subsequent educational attainment outcomes (I21) |
| Using both SED and test score value-added (C52) | Increases explained variance in school effects (I24) |