Question

Effect of class shift on the academic performance of grade 7 students

Answer 1

Answer:

Developing countries face serious budget constraints that hinder their ability to expand  

the  education  supply.  As  a  result,  policymakers  have  often  resorted  to  double‐shift  

schools (DSS) to increase the supply of school spaces: the school opens for a morning‐

shift  and  an  afternoon‐shift  effectively  doubling  the  amount  of  spaces  available in  a  

school without the need to build additional infrastructure. There are, however, some  

drawbacks  to  double‐shift  schools.  It is  argued  that  the  afternoon‐shifts  have lower  

quality  professors  and  lower  quality  students  due  to  negative  self‐selection.  In  

consequence,  students  attending  the  afternoon  shift  may  have  lower  school  

performance vis‐à‐vis the students in the morning shift. An analysis of the causal effect  

of  the  double‐shifts  on  school  performance  is  difficult  precisely  because  of  this  

selection.  In  this  paper,  we  aim  to  overcome  this  estimation  challenge  by  using  the  

exogenous assignment rule (based on middle school grade point average) of students  

to  the  morning  and  afternoon  shifts  in  Mexican  high  schools,  which  allows  us  to  

implement a regression discontinuity design.