AQRiE online seminar: Schools and Learning Inequalities

Abstract

Do schools reduce or amplify learning gaps by socioeconomic background? This talk, based on a paper co-authored with Richard Breen, contributes to this longstanding sociological debate in three ways. 

First, we develop a formal model that clarifies relevant theoretical estimands and counterfactuals. 

Second, our theoretical model synthesizes previously contradictory findings in the literature on schools and inequality by distinguishing between quantitative and qualitative school effects. 

Third, we empirically test a central hypothesis from our model: that the positive returns to improvements in school quality are concentrated among children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. 

To test this hypothesis, we use administrative register data from Denmark and a natural experiment design that relies on variation in school quality induced by unanticipated changes in school district boundaries over time. 

We show that children redistricted to higher-quality schools substantially improve their test score performance in reading and, crucially, these effects are strongest among children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These findings suggest that equalizing school quality can be an effective means of reducing learning inequalities.

Speaker 

Dr Said Hassan is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, where he completed his PhD in 2024. He studies social stratification with a focus on education. 

His current research examines the potential and limitations of school interventions in reducing inequalities in educational outcomes by socioeconomic and ethnic background. 

Methodologically, he specializes in causal inference and often employ quasi-experimental designs to answer questions related to school choice, teacher effectiveness, and racial/ethnic discrimination.