Adjusting Your Dreams? High School Plans and Dropout Behavior

Last registered on September 05, 2014

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Adjusting Your Dreams? High School Plans and Dropout Behavior
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000308
Initial registration date
September 05, 2014

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 05, 2014, 10:19 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
J-PAL Europe/PSE

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
CREST
PI Affiliation
PSE

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2010-09-01
End date
2013-06-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
At the end of middle school, many low-achieving students have to abandon hope of getting into selective high-school programs, which may be a source of disengagement and eventually lead them to drop out of high school. Based on a randomized controlled trial, this paper shows that low-achievers can be helped to formulate educational objectives that fit better with their academic aptitudes, through a series of meetings facilitated by the school principals. By affecting high school plans of the less realistic fraction of students, the intervention is able to reduce grade repetition and high-school dropout by 25% to 40%.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Goux, Dominique, Marc Gurgand and Eric Maurin. 2014. "Adjusting Your Dreams? High School Plans and Dropout Behavior." AEA RCT Registry. September 05. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.308-1.0
Former Citation
Goux, Dominique, Marc Gurgand and Eric Maurin. 2014. "Adjusting Your Dreams? High School Plans and Dropout Behavior." AEA RCT Registry. September 05. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/308/history/2692
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention consists of two parent meetings facilitated by school principals and targeted at low-achieving students that aim to induce students and their families to adopt more realistic expectations and to improve the information level of families regarding the track choice set and related outcomes after 9th grade. It also aims at involving parents from low social background into the decision, and not let their children alone in face of those difficult decisions.

The cost of this program is mostly related to the conception and the production of guidelines and DVDs. These are mostly fixed costs that hardly increase with the scope of the program. The schools did not receive a specific budget for this program. As the intervention consists of two collective two-hour meetings, the opportunity cost of the school principal’s time is limited to a few hours, plus the time to contact parents.
Intervention Start Date
2010-12-01
Intervention End Date
2011-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Dropout, track choices and status one and two years after treatment, repetition, peer network, absenteism, discipline, school results.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Each student's friend network (within his/her classroom) was constructed from a sports teacher questionnaire. For each student, the teacher was asked to give four of his/her closest friend.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Partial randomization design in which a group of low achieving students were identified by the principals within each class before randomization. Then the classes were randomized and only families of pre-selected students were invited to the meetings.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Classes
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
179 classes in 37 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
4,291 Students, of which 1,130 pre-selected
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
97 in treatment, 82 in control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
18.5% standard deviation.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Comité d'éthique de J-PAL Europe
IRB Approval Date
2011-05-06
IRB Approval Number
none

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
April 30, 2011, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
December 31, 2012, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
179 classes in 37 middle schools
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
4,291 students, of which 1,130 pre-selected
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
97 in treatment, 82 in control
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
No
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
At the end of middle school, many low-achieving students have to abandon hope of getting into selective high-school programs, which may be a source of disappointment and eventually lead them to drop out of education. Based on a randomized controlled trial, this paper shows that low-achieving students’ aspirations can be made more realistic through a series of meetings facilitated by the school principals, and that more realistic aspirations are followed by a significant reduction in grade repetition and high-school dropout. Building on detailed information on friendship networks within classes, we also find evidence that treatment outcomes include improved social interactions between low-achieving students and their high-achieving classmates.
Citation
Adjusting Your Dreams? The Effect of School and Peers on Dropout Behaviour, D. Goux, M. Gurgand, E. Maurin, IZA Working paper 7948, 2014.

Reports & Other Materials