- Students are affected by the achievement level of their peers: a credibly exogenous change of 1 point in peers’ reading scores raises a student’s own score between 0.15 and 0.4 points, depending on the specification.
- Evidence that peer effects are stronger intra-race and that some effects do not operate through peers’ achievement.
- Both females and males tend to perform better in reading when they are in more female classes. The effect is larger for higher grades.
- Black, Hispanic, and Anglo third graders all tend to perform worse in reading and math when they are in classes that have a larger share of Nlack students. For instance, for every 10% point change in the share of their class that is Black, Black students’ reading scores fall by 0.2501 points, Hispanic students’ reading scores fall by 0.0983 points, and Anglo students’ reading scores fall by 0.0620 points. For the same 10 percentage point change in the share of their class that is black, black students’ math scores fall by 0.1863, Hispanic students’ math scores fall by 0.0861 points, and Anglo students’ reading scores fall by 0.0427 points.
- Results suggest that the effect of mean peer achievement varies, and are greatest for peers within the racial group generating the change in achievement.
- The negative effect of the Black share on Black students is strongest in cohorts between 33 and 66 % black.
- The negative effect of the Black share on Anglo students is largest in cohorts that are at least 33 % Black.
- The negative effect of the Hispanic share on Hispanic students only appears in cohorts that are 0 to 33 % Hispanic. In fact, the Hispanic share has statistically significant, positive effect on the achievement of Hispanic students in cohorts that are 66 to 100 percent Hispanic.
- The idiosyncratic reading achievement of Black, Hispanic, and Anglo students is positively, statistically significantly correlated.