Bedard, Kelly, and Chau Do. 2005. “Are Middle Schools More Effective? The Impact of School Structure on Student Outcomes.” Journal of Human Resources 40(3): 660-682.
While nearly half of all school districts have adopted middle schools, there is little quantitative evidence of the efficacy of this educational structure. We estimate the impact of moving from a junior high school system, where students stay in elementary school longer, to a middle school system for on-time high school completion. This is a particularly good outcome measure because middle school advocates argued that this new system would be especially helpful for lower achieving students. In contrast to the stated objective, we find that moving to a middle school system decreases on-time high school completion by approximately 1–3 percent.
Kelly Bedard is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Chau Do is an economist with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Risk Analysis Division, Financial Access and Compliance. The authors thank Olivier Deschênes, Peter Kuhn, Cathy Weinberger, and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2008 from Kelly Bedard, Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara CA 93106-9210, Kelly@econ.ucsb.edu.