Time to Learn? The Organizational Structure of Schools and Student Achievement

Utilizing parametric and nonparametric techniques, we asses the impact of a heretofore relatively unexplored ‘input ’in the educational process, time allocation, on the distribution of academic acheivement. Our results indicate that school year length and the number and average duration of classes are salient determinants of student performance. However, the effects are not homogeneous — in terms of both direction and magnitude — across the distribution. We find that students below the median benefit from a shorter school year, while a longer school year benefits students above the median. Furthermore, low-achieving students benefit from fewer, shorter classes per day, while high-achieving students benefit from more and longer classes per day.Length: 30 pages