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thank you so much uh for the invitation and overall for this like first uh very interesting like uh discussion in the the first part um of of the sessions so I'm going to share um my screen uh with
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like the presentation I'm going to uh give today that is is building on like what we discussed uh in the first part of this section like working on with like some data and some like information
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from the Italian context um this project is called like this paper is called goals and gaps educational careers of immigrant children and this C with Iana laferrara and um Paulo pinotti um so I
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feel like I don't need to spend much time on the mation given like all we have seen uh up to this point but even in Italian like more broadly like track choice is like a very crucial career decision for students that has very long
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and deep implication for uh the labor labor market outcomes of individuals because when you get track at a very early age these will create substantially um uh will affect the
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human capital accumulation and the opportunities that someone has in the labor market now like tracking is a potential detrimental for disadvantaged groups for people from lower social
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economic status because of like a different potential challs so the first one is information gaps so two from a disadvantaged background may have less information on their returns to
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different like um uh High School uh tracks and like the implication of like um uh um of like of the different like traps the second key component and is
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building um on some work that has been presented before like linked to some work presented before is thinking about the aspiration uh trapped um so related to the fact fact that you may have like
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too low aspiration and this may generate um substantially like low as a student to be like induced into uh lower tracks because they don't have for example like the engineering like uh uh the pars with
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an engineering background that are like willing to support them or that they look up uh to them and like want to achieve at least uh um the same level of
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Education um let me sorry I see like a message that you don't see my shares can you see my screen right okay perfect now I feel like um should be all
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set and finally the third potential channel is coming from like a potential like a frustration from too high exporation if like LS students like do not have enough like support but they
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attend like a two high track they may get like frustrated and may decide to drop out instead of like completely education so the issue I'm going to uh tackle today will be specifically thinking about this A specific group of
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disadvantaged student that is first and second generation immigrants uh in the Italian context where immigration is a pretty recent uh phenomenon uh today I will first show you like a couple of picture in
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documenting like educational segregation in terms of like the high school uh track choice of students um and I will then move on in uh discussing one of the
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uh project is like a randomized control trial where we offered like a career counseling intervention called equal opportunities for immigrant students um AED at helping like students that are
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top Achievers so student in the top of the ability distribution and helping them to make a decision congruent with their actual academic potential uh and finally I'm going to show you um some
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mechanism for which this EOP uh program um uh was actually working thinking about both like a cognitive aspect but also non-cognitive dimension in particular uh the role of aspiration but
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also the teacher track recommendation um a little bit of the context so the Italian context is like not too different from uh the French one so we have a different like um tracking
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system with like academically oriented High School that are mainly prepared student for college we have an intermediate like a truck that is called Technical High School that is preparing like a student both potentially for
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college so if they go to college they tend to go to engineering or economics given that this is the focus of the technical truck or like two white colar uh jobs and finally The Vocational track
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that is mainly for blue colar jobs but tend to have like a uh very low quality in terms of like uh the preparation that it gives uh to the students since not really comparable for example to the German system where the vocational track
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tend to be like extremely high quality and well um organized but it tend to be like a slightly on the lower side of like quality and trying to keep like a student in school a little bit longer
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without providing necessarily like enough like um support for their uh uh careers with like a very high unemployment rates after the vocational truck and the itan context we have
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standardized Tas score that are done from from all students in different point in time in grade six8 and 10 will be what we're going to use for this uh specific uh
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project so here like one first fact that documents educational segregation of uh immigrant children on the left graph you see the information for a male student on the right graph for female students
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and here I'm using colors with like the green color for Natives and the um red for like immigrants including both first and second generation uh immigrants in this graph you so you see like in the
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x-axis the quantile of the standardized test score at the beginning of Middle School in six in grade six with like the highest quantile meaning meaning that they are the student in the top 20% of
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the uh ability distribution in ter as measured by the standardized tester in the Y AIS you see the probability of enrolling in a high track uh which um I will uh consider for this presentation
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either an academic truck or a technical truck so one of the two top uh tier uh uh tracks and here you see that systematically for each level of ability
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immigrant student tend to have like a lower probability of enrolling in the high track and this is very clear for like boys that is is happening throughout the distribution well for
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girls what is very interesting and what it was initially surprising for us when we started like um to analyze the data um uh on for for this uh project is that
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you see this clear gap for girls that are in the middle and bottom of the ability distribution but this Gap is actually Clos in the top um of the ability distribution with girls that are
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taking like decision choices that are very close to natives with the same uh ability and this is actually has been like shown more recently in other context including like the US for example showing that boys from a
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disadvantaged background are the ones suffering the most in terms of like their educational choices with like this general idea building also on the sociology literature that uh boys are
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more allowed like to um uh slack off and this has implication for their like um perseverance in terms of like their educational careers well girls like are more supposed to like uh be well on
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track be the one that um are diligent and uh uh do all their homework but these may have like very positive implication especially for those coming from a disadvantaged background that have less like family uh necessary uh
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family support in terms of like achieving their uh educational goals now here you see a very similar picture but like here the outcome is not the um um track choice but is the um School
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failure rate and here see that systematically for boys with the same ability uh compared to natives if they are from an immigrant background they are systematically more likely to fail
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uh and so being retained one year uh in school uh compared to um to Native boys with the same standardized t score these are the two important outcomes that I'm going to show you as a result of uh of
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the experiment so this is why I wanted to give you some context and just like make sure that we understand a little bit the potential problem with boys being like induced like to uh attend like lower level high school tracks but
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also failing like a high school failing like Middle School more even with the same like standardized uh test score now let me give you a little bit more information about this specific program
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uh that we tested in the Italian context this was like a collaboration with the Ministry of Education and financed by free Bank foundation and was targeting to high performing student from a low socio economic um uh from from like
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coming from a low income countries uh which meant like a um income level uh so the country of origin was like a lower income compared to the Italian context um and the goal of the
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program was to align their High School Tru Choice with their actual academic potential without necessarily pushing them to the best uh to the academic track but just like understanding what was their goal and making sure that
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their Tru Choice was aligned with that um we selected among 145 schools with at least like uh 20 immigrant student um uh in five like provinces like in the
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North we selected randomly 70 schools that received this program well like 75 schools were in the control group so proceeded like with the usual like career counseling um The Standard
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Process like um done by all uh schools with like the coning being being like um taken care by like the parents and uh with like some collaboration from uh the teachers in the
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schools um the student to uh for this project were selected as like the 10 immigrant children in these schools with the highest standardized test score in grade
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six uh and we had like almost like 80% of the student that were selected to participate in the program that actually like attending the whole uh intervention the the intervention included two set of activities so the
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first one was a career choice consultancy that was a a psychological support based on the social cognitive career theory that included like some group meetings between the 10 students in the school that were participating in
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this program uh some individual meetings with like a psychologist and like some meetings with like the parents and also one meeting with the teacher so the overall was a very like holistic like broad approach thinking about about the
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whole like uh community that was surrounding the decision choice of the student in terms of like their High School truck the second component was an cognitive um academic language profic
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Prof proficiency course that was targeted actually to student that were below a certain level of a test score so this would be like very important because the design of our intervention
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will allow us both to compare students that were the top 10 student in treated schools with the top 10 student in the control schools but also on the other hand to compare students around this
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discontinuity cut off to understand the role of the career choice consultancy this psychological support compared to the um uh to this sort of like a tutoring program that was um but still
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like targeted at this like high achieving like student that were already in the top of the ability distribution and we use several data sources for this program including like uh administrative data from the Ministry
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of Education the national evaluation uh center with standardized testore but also first end data with like a questionnaire on psycholog uh psychological tradeit collected both from treated and controlled uh
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students this is just like an overview of like how our treated and controll students are compared to the average immigrant and the average like native student as you see the Blue Line shows that these student are doing much better
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compared to the average immigrants they are selected to be the top Achievers in their schools among the immigrants uh in the schools and they're doing like on average like very close to like the
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average native um average like top uh uh Native uh in terms of like their distribution so here are the results um I will show you like the results on our two key outcomes with like some very
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simple graphs so in each of this graph you're going to show you show you the mean of the outcome so in this case the probability of choosing the high track for the student in the Contra group so students that were high Achievers in
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those schools that were selected to not participate in our program um and so this is the blue bar so the red bar is going to show you the impact for those student that were the top Achievers in
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treated schools so selected to participate in our program well the white bar is going to show show you the Imp the uh comparable natives so we're going to pick some natives with the same ability at Baseline to have like a just
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like a standard of like how natives are behaving in terms of like their track choice so this will not be Cal but it will just give you like a sense of like how much we're closing the gaps uh compared to
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Naes so what you see here in the left graph for uh for males you see that student in the control group have a probability of attending like a high track even if they are in the top of the
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ability distribution that is around 67 uh percentage point and like while like natives with the same ability to start with in middle school they have a probability of attending like um uh this
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high school that is almost like uh 12 percentage Point higher so we this is like around like uh higher than 77 uh percentage uh points and so what we we
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find is that actually our intervention was extremely useful for boys closing all the gaps in terms of like the probability of choosing the high track U between the immigrants in the Contra
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group and the uh natives so this improved like their probability of choosing the high track of 13.5% uh compared to student in the Contra group what happened to GS well as
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you see here GS in the counter group had a very similar probability compared to Native girls are choosing the high track and our intervention had actually no effect so the student in the treatment group were still choosing the
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high track with the same share as a student in the Contra group so what do we find in terms of like a greater attention well here you see even if these student were top achiever in their
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school they still have like a more uh a higher than 8 percentage Point uh 8% probability in the counter group of failing a school year and being retained so losing one year repeating the same
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grade so this probability for natives with similar ability is like 4% uh less than half uh compared to immigrants uh in in our cont schools and what we find
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is that again with this intervention we were closing the whole Gap uh reducing the probability of failing uh failing of almost 50% 43.5 uh% for student in in the treatment
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group compared to student in the Contra group well there was actually no effect for uh females student that had already a very low probability uh of failing a school
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year now like our design allow us to understand something more we can like disentangle the role of the career um the tutoring part for these high achieving students compared to the
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career counseling part and we're going to use a different empirical methods that is called the regression discontinuity design comparing student in the treatment group for those just like above and those just below um these
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uh this threshold that was a set to assign them to the uh tutoring intervention or not what you see here in the top panel is that the number of career counceling meetings in the top
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right partel was very similar for those that were right above or right below uh this threshold however those that were right above the threshold they had like less um tutoring support compared to
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those that were below uh this threshold that were receiving way more tutoring meeting however at this margin and this is what you see in the Bottom t t panel both for the choice of the high track
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and the greater attention you see there is no impact so they are doing equally well these student were doing already extremely well so this like was a waste of resources in trying to invest in
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doing like a sort of like a tutoring and additional potential remedial education for these students they didn't need like these um tutoring intervention but they did benefit a lot especially boys from
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these from the intervention coming um in terms of like a psychological support and understanding better um their career uh choice now in the last few minutes I'm going to uh give you a little bit of
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background uh also on like potential channels of what was going on in terms of like our intervention uh in terms of like a channels like driving the results um so we first find very positive effect
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in terms of like their um performance in standardized Tas score especially for boys um as you see here uh boys in the Contra group even if they were starting with the same Tas score compared to the
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comparable natives they are lagging behind um in the Immigrant control group um if they don't get any additional support this could be because they don't get enough like family support they
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don't get have enough like other resources however this type of intervention even if it was providing mainly career counseling it was helping them keep up the motivation and work hard on their standardized test score
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performing performing equally well compared to natives this is like very clear in math but is also happening like in in Italian well like for um girls like um we do not have any treatment
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effect on the academic um in terms of like standardized testore the other key aspect I wanted to share was in terms of like a track recommendation here you see these like a striking up so these are boys that were
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very similar to compared to uh comparably Natives and natives get recommended almost 60% to the high truck well I can uh for immigrants the probability of being recommended to the
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high track is almost half like is like lower than 40 uh percentage point in the control group but students that receive our intervention close this Gap so their teachers recommend them like much more
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to the high level truck for curs you see that there is a little bit of gap between uh the um uh Natives and the um immigrant curse but it's actually very small it's like um less than 10
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percentage point and still like our intervention was able like to close uh this Gap but it wasn't like not very large to start with and finally here you see a bunch of Dimensions like in terms
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of like aspiration and perception of barriers that shows like a um overall like positive Improvement in uh the treatment group so the uh Red Line compared to the control group the uh
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blue line and if we put all of these in a uh the composition uh exercise to understand which channel was driving the fact actually we do find that the own academic motivation of students so this
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aspiration Channel and the um teacher Tru recommendation were the two driving channels that had the strongest impact in affecting the high school track choice for boys in our uh in our program
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so given that I'm running uh out of time let me conclude here and like tell um just like summarizing like the main results so what we do find is that this intervention was extremely effective in
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reducing educational segregation for boys that are those that suffer the most if they are from an immigrant background and they come and but they are still able like to get at the the top of the ability uh distribution they still
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suffer and they are pushed into the lower uh tracks but this program was able to close this Gap was able uh to also reduce their failure rate and the main uh challes that were driving this
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effect were the academic motivation uh so the aspiration of the student that improved a lot especially for boys and the teacher track recommendation that was like strongly affected by our
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intervention because of like these a systemic view of working with the entire Community are uh that was like helping uh to provide this track recommendation to the students and some results I
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didn't have time to cover but we also do find very positive effect on the Immigrant classmate of the treaty students suggesting that these um these type of intervention are very cost not
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only because they affect like the top Achievers but have like overall positive spillover for the entire immigrant Community thank you so much uh for for the time for this presentation and I
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look forward uh to to your [Applause] questions
End of transcript