How should schools assign students to more rigorous math courses so as best to help their academic outcomes? We identify several hundred California middle schools that used 7th‐grade test scores to place students into 8th‐grade algebra courses and use a regression discontinuity design to estimate average impacts and heterogeneity across schools. Enrolling in 8th‐grade algebra boosts students’ enrollment in advanced math in ninth grade by 30 percentage points and eleventh grade by 16 percentage points. Math scores in tenth grade rise by 0.05 standard deviations. Women, students of color, and English‐language learners benefit disproportionately from placement into early algebra. Importantly, the benefits of 8th‐grade algebra are substantially larger in schools that set their eligibility threshold higher in the baseline achievement distribution. This suggests a potential tradeoff between increased access and rates of subsequent math success.

中文翻译：

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加州中学早期代数的异质效应

学校应该如何为学生分配更严格的数学课程，以最好地帮助他们取得学业成绩？我们确定了数百所加州中学，它们使用 7 年级考试成绩将学生安排到 8 年级代数课程中，并使用回归不连续性设计来估计学校之间的平均影响和异质性。注册 8 年级代数可以将学生在 9 年级和 11 年级的高等数学课程中的入学率提高 30 个百分点。十年级的数学成绩提高了 0.05 个标准差。女性、有色人种学生和英语学习者从安置到早期代数中获益不成比例。重要的是，在基线成绩分布中将资格门槛设置得更高的学校，8 年级代数的好处要大得多。