Does the Réseaux ambition réussite Program Improve Pupils’ Academic Achievement? : A Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Résumé 0

“Réseaux ambition réussite” (rar), or “ambition success networks,” are a compensatory education policy that took place in France between 2006 and 2011. To be eligible, a collège (equivalent to junior high school) had to enroll at least 67% of pupils from a disadvantaged background, and at least 10% of pupils having repeated twice or more when entering junior high school.About 3% of junior high school pupils were enrolled in a rar.Evaluating the impact of such a policy is complicated by two types of bias.First, the selection of schools into the program makes that the pupils enrolled in a rar school would have lower academic achievement than the other pupils on average, even in the absence of the program. Second, the school is not the good level of analysis, since pupils may select themselves into the program.To analyze the causal effect of the program on individual academic achievement at the end of junior high school, we use a regression discontinuity method and an original exhaustive data set.Overall, we do not find any significant effect of enrollment in a rar on individual educational outcomes at the end of junior high school.The absence of average effect may be due to differentiated effects according to pupils’ characteristics.Classification JEL : I24, I28, C21.