Helping struggling students and benefiting all: Peer effects in primary education
利用哥伦比亚三年级补救教育项目的随机评估，发现帮助低分学生不仅提升其阅读成绩，还使未受干预的高分同学成绩提高0.108个标准差，表明补救教育能产生惠及全体的社会乘数效应。
We exploit the randomized evaluation of a remedial education intervention that improved the reading skills of low-performing third grade students in Colombia, to study whether providing educational support to low-achieving students affects the academic performance of their higher-achieving classmates. We find that the test scores of non-treated children in treatment schools increased by 0.108 of a standard deviation compared to similar children in control schools. We interpret the reduced-form effect on higher-achieving students as a spillover effect within treated schools. We then estimate a linear-in-means model of peer effects, finding that a one-standard-deviation increase in peers’ contemporaneous achievement increases individual test scores by 0.679 of a standard deviation. Our findings show that policies aimed at improving the bottom of the achievement distribution have the potential to generate social-multiplier effects that benefit all.