School Effects on Socio-Emotional Development, School-Based Arrests, and Educational Attainment

Abstract

Using value-added models on data from Chicago Public Schools, we find that high schools impact students' self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on their test score impacts, schools that improve SED in ninth grade reduce school-based arrests and increase high school completion and college going. For most longer-run outcomes, using both SED and test score value added more than doubles the variance of the explained school effect relative to using test score value added alone. Results suggest that high school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. (JEL I21, J24, K42)