Cognitive
skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic
performance might also improve cognitive skills. To investigate the impact
schools have on both academic performance and cognitive skills, an earlier
study http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/3/736.full.pdf+html related
standardized achievement-test scores to measures of cognitive skills in a large
sample (N = 1,367) of eighth-grade students attending traditional, exam,
and charter public schools.
Test
scores and gains in test scores over time correlated with measures of cognitive
skills.
Despite
wide variation in test scores across schools, differences in cognitive skills
across schools were negligible after we controlled for fourth-grade test
scores. Random offers of enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools resulted
in positive impacts of such school attendance on math achievement but had no
impact on cognitive skills.
These
findings suggest that schools that improve standardized achievement-test scores
do so primarily through channels other than improving cognitive skills.
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