TY  - JOUR
AB  - We identify 510 California public middle schools (and 753 school-years) that use a 7th grade achievement threshold to place students into 8th grade Algebra, and we use these schools to estimate fuzzy regression discontinuity effects of 8th grade Algebra placement. We find that enrolling in 8th grade Algebra boosts students’ chances of taking advanced math courses in high school by 30 percentage points in 9th grade and 16 percentage points in 11th grade, as well as boosting achievement on the 10th grade math California High School Exit Exam by .031sd (ITT) and .053sd (LATE). Eighth-grade algebra has a smaller, positive effect on student ELA achievement in grades 9 through 11. Importantly, we also find that the effects of 8th grade Algebra vary substantially across students and schools. Encouragingly, women, students of color, and English-Language Learners benefit disproportionately from access to accelerated coursework. However, school-level decisions about how to implement accelerated coursework in middle school appear to matter. In particular, we find that the benefits of 8th grade  algebra are substantially larger in schools that enroll students whose 7th grade math scores are at least “Proficient” (or grade level).
AU  - McEachin, Andrew
AU  - Domina, Thurston
AU  - Penner, Andrew M.
DA  - November 2019
PY  - 2019
ST  - One course, many outcomes: A multi-site regression discontinuity analysis of early Algebra across California middle schools
T2  - EdWorkingPapers.com
TI  - One course, many outcomes: A multi-site regression discontinuity analysis of early Algebra across California middle schools
UR  - http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai19-153
ER  -