TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ellison,Glenn
AU  - Swanson,Ashley
TI  - Heterogeneity in High Math Achievement Across Schools: Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18277
PY  - 2012
Y2  - August 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18277
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18277.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Glenn Ellison
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
50 Memorial Drive, E52-380A
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8702
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gellison@mit.edu

Ashley Swanson
Health Care Management Department
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
302 Colonial Penn Center
3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6218
E-Mail: aswans@wharton.upenn.edu
AB  - This paper explores differences in the frequency with which students from different schools reach high levels of math achievement. Data from the American Mathematics Competitions is used to produce counts of high-scoring students from more than two thousand public, coeducational, non-magnet, non-charter U.S. high schools. High-achieving students are found to be very far from evenly distributed. There are strong demographic predictors of high achievement. There are also large differences among seemingly similar schools. The unobserved heterogeneity across schools includes a thick tail of schools that produce many more high-achieving students than the average school. Gender-related differences and other breakdowns are also discussed.
ER  -