| Thomas DiPrete
Columbia University
Teacher effects on academic and social outcomes in elementary school
FIINAL REPORT
Though many studies have suggested that non-cognitive skills play a central role in gender stratification processes, we know little about the extent to which these skills affect gender gaps in academic achievement. In this project, we estimated the impact of social/behavioral skills on academic achievement in elementary school. We found that the effect of social/behavioral skills on reading and math achievement is gender neutral. Boys get the same return to social/behavioral skills as their female peers, but girls retain an advantage because they begin school with more advanced social/behavioral skills and their skill advantage grows over time. We further determined that social/behavioral skills directly affect academic achievement in early elementary school. In contrast to a recent study by Duncan et al. (2007), we found the subsequent effects are largely indirect and are mediated by social/behavioral skills' early effects on the development of reading and math skills, which have persistent effects on subsequent achievement. Taken together, the two pathways through which social/behavioral skills affect academic skills have significant consequences for gender gaps in academic achievement. While girls begin school with an advantage in reading and a negligible disadvantage in math, the female reading advantage shrinks by fifth grade and turns substantially negative in the case of math. We concluded that eliminating the gender gap in social/behavioral skills would decrease the female reading advantage by 36 percent, and increase the male math advantage by 14 percent.
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