Essays on the municipal education system of Rio de Janeiro

• Ano de defesa: 2025
• Autor(a) principal: Costa, Roberta Mendes e
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Grade retention; Peer effects; Racial gap; Primary education; Rio de Janeiro municipal education system; Educação básica; Ensino público; Rendimento escolar
• Link de acesso: https://app.uff.br/riuff/handle/1/37342

This dissertation, composed by three empirical essays, investigates grade retention, peer effects, and the racial test score gap. We use a unique database, which has administrative records of the second largest municipal education system in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. This longitudinal database covers all students enrolled in primary education between 2012 and 2017 and contains the scores of an exam applied every two months by the Municipal Education Department. The first chapter examines the impact of grade retention on students’ academic achievement. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that retention has a positive impact on students’ short-term academic future. These results persist in several robustness checks. We find evidence suggesting part of the effect of retention on academic outcomes might be driven by the fear of repeating a grade because the threat of retention itself impacts students. We find no indication that the placement of retained students across classrooms in the repeated year is responsible for the positive effects we find. The second chapter studies the role of peer effects on academic outcomes. We use the school entry cut-off rule as an instrument: children who turn 6 years-old before March 31st are allowed to enroll in school in that same year. Being in a classroom with a higher peer ability increases performance for all students, specially for students below the median. Higher peer heterogeneity in a classroom and being far from the classroom average, however, are worse for student performance. Our results also indicate that very high ability peers lower student average performance and that very low ability students raise student average performance. The third chapter explores racial inequalities in test scores. Even accounting for important predictors of academic outcomes, we still find a racial gap and an unexplained component in the difference between test scores. There is suggestive evidence that teachers could be biased against Black students, but this result should be interpreted with reservation given it needs to be studied in a more robust way. The findings from these three chapters contribute to the literature by shedding light into the underlying processes that drive academic performance and providing important insights for education policymakers.