The Effect of Central Exit Examinations on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Timss Germany

Abstract

This paper makes use of the regional variation in schooling legislation within the German secondary education system to estimate the causal effect of central exit examinations on student performance. We propose a difference-in-differences framework that exploits the quasi-experimental nature of the German TIMSS middle school sample and discuss its identifying assumptions. The estimates show that students in federal states with central exit examinations clearly outperform students in federal states without such examinations. However, only part of this difference can be attributed to the existence of the central exit examinations themselves. Our results suggest that central examinations increase student achievement by the equivalent of about one-third of a school year. (JEL: D02, H42, I28)