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A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Although there are many possible explanations for this, East Asian teaching methods and curriculum design are two factors to have particularly caught policymakers’ attention. Yet there is currently little evidence as to whether any particular East Asian teaching method actually represents an improvement over the status quo in England, and whether such methods can be successfully introduced into Western education systems. This paper provides new evidence on this issue by presenting results from two clustered Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT's), where a Singaporean inspired ‘mastery’ approach to teaching mathematics was introduced into a selection of England's primary and secondary schools. We find evidence of a modest, positive treatment effect that comes at a relatively low per-pupil cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Failure in US high school courses is common, but little is known about its effects. This paper investigates the extent to which course repeaters in high school mathematics courses exert negative externalities on their course-mates. Using individual and school-specific course fixed effects to control for ability and course selection, it shows that increasing the share of repeaters in a given course results in a moderate, significant increase in the probability of course failure for first-time course-takers. Results suggest that the negative effect is only evident when the share of repeaters reaches a threshold of five to ten percent of the total number of course-takers. The possibility that grading to a curve generates the effect cannot be ruled out, but is not fully supported in the data. Evidence is also presented that course repetition externalities may be distinct from low-ability peer effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests whether barely obtaining a pass score in at least one of two midterm tests has an effect on subsequent achievement in a Math course. To estimate the effect, we created a novel dataset by linking administrative and survey data on students at a medium size Spanish university and used a regression discontinuity design in which the cutoff is 5, i.e., the pass score in the national grading system. Although obtaining a score just equal to or barely greater than 5 in midterm tests has no immediate consequence for students, it may have a psychological effect by acting as a (de)motivating signal to study and pass the course, with the sign of the effect being unclear ex-ante. We find that obtaining a pass score in at least one midterm has a positive effect on the final exam score. The result seems to be explained by higher students' motivation when jointly accounting for their effort. Overall, our results suggest that partly unexplored psychological mechanisms may help us deepen our understanding of the determinants of achievement in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Paper examines the determinants of mathematical achievement among children aged 9. [•] We find a significant maths gap in favour of boys at the upper end of the maths distribution. [•] We find no evidence that single-sex schooling reduces the gap. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using a sample of youth who graduated from high school in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this paper examines the impact of high school math curriculum on the decision to go to college. Results that control for unobserved differences between students and their families suggest that a more rigorous high school math curriculum is associated with a higher probability of attending college and of attending a 4-year college. The household fixed effect results imply that students who take an advanced academic math curriculum in high school (algebra II or precalculus, trigonometry, or calculus) are about 17 percentage points more likely to go to college and 20 percentage points more likely to start college at a 4-year school by age 21 compared to those students whose highest math class was algebra I or geometry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While some educators argue that teacher–student gender matching improves student performance, there is little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. This paper assesses the impact of teacher–student gender matching on academic achievement across fifteen OECD countries using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). One attractive feature of TIMSS is that it provides information on test scores and teacher characteristics, including gender, for both math and science thereby allowing for student fixed effects estimation. The results provide little support for the conjecture that students benefit from teacher–student gender matching. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the impact of stricter high school math requirements on the likelihood of completing a degree in STEM fields. Exploiting cross-state variation in the timing of math reforms, I find that stricter math curriculum requirements significantly increased the proportion of the college-educated population earning a STEM degree. Within STEM, the increases in degree completion are concentrated in math and science while there is little discernible impact in technology and engineering. Further analysis suggests that high school graduation, college attendance, and overall degree completion are largely unaffected by the implementation of math reforms. Instead, stricter math curriculum requirements appear to have shifted some students away from non-STEM fields into STEM fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how information (grades) from standardized tests in mathaffects human capital formation in early schooling. We use a regression discontinuity design to estimate how later outcomes of children scoring just below or above the threshold separating two grades are affected. Our results demonstrate that providing information to parents about their child's educational performance in math in third grade can improve their future educational outcomes, regardless of the child's ability level. We also investigate subjective well-being measures, such as academic confidence and intrinsic motivation, and find no evidence that low-performing students are particularly sensitive to negative feedback from tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines curricular acceleration in mathematics during elementary school using administrative data from a large, diverse school district that recently implemented a targeted, test-based acceleration policy. We first characterize access to advanced math and then estimate effects of acceleration in math on measures of short-run academic achievement as well as non-test-score measures of grit, engagement with schoolwork, future plans, and continued participation in the accelerated track. Experiences and effects of math acceleration differ markedly for girls and boys. Girls are less likely to be nominated for math acceleration and perform worse on the qualifying test, relative to boys with equivalent baseline performance. We find negative effects of acceleration on short-run retention of math knowledge for girls, but no such performance decay for boys. After initial exposure to accelerated math, girls are less likely than boys to appear in the accelerated track during late elementary school and at the start of middle school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]