The edu­ca­tion­al mis­match hypoth­e­sis asserts that stu­dents are hurt by affir­ma­tive action poli­cies that place them in selec­tive schools for which they wouldn’t oth­er­wise qual­i­fy. We eval­u­ate mis­match in Chicago’s selec­tive pub­lic exam schools, which admit stu­dents using neigh­bor­hood based diver­si­ty cri­te­ria as well as test scores. Regression dis­con­ti­nu­ity esti­mates for appli­cants favored by affir­ma­tive […]

In a flipped class­room, an increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar ped­a­gog­i­cal mod­el, stu­dents view a video lec­ture at home and work on exer­cis­es with the instruc­tor dur­ing class time. Advocates of the flipped class­room claim the prac­tice not only improves stu­dent achieve­ment, but also ame­lio­rates the achieve­ment gap. We con­duct a ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al at West Point and find that the flipped class­room pro­duced short term gains in Math and no effect in Economics, but that the flipped mod­el broad­ened the achieve­ment gap: effects are dri­ven by white, male, and high­er achiev­ing stu­dents. We find no long term aver­age effects on stu­dent learn­ing, but the widened achieve­ment gap per­sists. Our find­ings demon­strate fea­si­bil­i­ty for the flipped class­room to induce short term gains in stu­dent learn­ing; how­ev­er, the exac­er­ba­tion of the achieve­ment gap, the effect fade-out, and the null effects in Economics sug­gest that edu­ca­tors should exer­cise cau­tion when con­sid­er­ing the mod­el.

This study presents evi­dence that a STEM-focused sum­mer pro­gram for high-achiev­ing, under­served high school stu­dents that is held annu­al­ly at a selec­tive, pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty increas­es appli­ca­tion and enroll­ment rates at selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties and per­sis­tence in STEM. The study uses records from the pro­gram admis­sion process to reduce selec­tion bias by focus­ing on appli­cants who advanced […]