Elementary School Interventions

This study exploits a randomized trial of two light-touch elementary school interventions to estimate long-run impacts on postsecondary attendance and attainment. The first is a classroom management technique for developing behavioral skills in children. The second is a curricular intervention aimed at improving students’ core reading skills. We detect no average impact of either intervention on the likelihood of college enrollment or degree receipt, but find heterogeneous effects by student gender and initial level of academic achievement. Assignment to the behavioral intervention increases the likelihood of college attendance for females, especially at 2-year institutions, but has little impact on males. We find suggestive evidence that exposure to the behavioral intervention benefits low-performing students more than high-performers, whereas exposure to the curricular intervention influences college outcomes more for middle- to high-performing students.