Heterogeneous Effects of Lengthening the School Day on Students’ Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Study of Full Day School Reform in Chile

Ignacio Riveros, Dante Contreras & Ignacio Lepe · Working paper

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of a large and gradual increase in the Chilean school day over students’ academic achievement. We exploit a gradual and exogenous variation produced by the reform with an innovative measure of exposure to longer school day treatment. Using longitudinal data at an individual level and a fixed-effects strategy, we find that in the long run, this reform had no relevant effect on students’ standardized test scores nor higher education enrollment. However, this paper found heterogeneous response to additional instructional time by gender, type of school, and socioeconomic status. These results are robust to the inclusion of several covariates and insensible to the cohort selection.

Insights

Stacked bar chart showing the share of public schools (dark) and voucher schools (gray) participating in Chile's Full Day School reform rising gradually from roughly 20 to 36 percent in 1997 to 93 to 97 percent by 2015. — Chile did not flip a switch on the longer school day. It phased the reform in gradually from 1997 to 2015 (dark bars are public schools, gray are voucher schools), until nearly every school ran a full day. That slow, staggered rollout is exactly what makes a clean comparison possible: students who happened to get more years of full-day schooling versus fewer. And the headline is a surprise. On average, more exposure barely moved standardized test scores or college enrollment. But that flat average hides real variation underneath, with effects that differ by gender, socioeconomic group, and type of school.

Citation

Riveros, I., Contreras, D., & Lepe, I. (2024). Heterogeneous effects of lengthening the school day on students’ academic achievement: A longitudinal study of full day school reform in Chile [Working paper]. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=4734910

@techreport{riveros2024heterogeneous,
  author = {Riveros, Ignacio and Contreras, Dante and Lepe, Ignacio},
  title  = {Heterogeneous Effects of Lengthening the School Day on Students' Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Study of Full Day School Reform in Chile},
  year   = {2024},
  type   = {Working paper},
  note   = {SSRN 4734910}
}

Links

Working paper (SSRN)

JEL: I28; H43; H52 · Keywords: instructional time, full school day reform, student achievement, fixed effects