title: School Quality and the Development of Cognitive Skills between Age Four and Six.
abstract: This paper studies the extent to which young children develop their cognitive ability in high and low quality schools. We use a representative panel data set containing cognitive test scores of 4-6 year olds in Dutch schools. School quality is measured by the school's average achievement test score at age 12. Our results indicate that children in high-quality schools develop their skills substantially faster than those in low-quality schools. The results remain robust to the inclusion of initial ability, parental background, and neighborhood controls. Moreover, using proximity to higher-achieving schools as an instrument for school choice corroborates the results. The robustness of the results points toward a causal interpretation, although it is not possible to erase all doubt about unobserved confounding factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Lex
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Borghans
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bart H H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Golsteyn
authors.affiliation: IZA, Bonn, Germany and Department of Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ulf
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Zölitz
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012574:Schools / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*