Can the Elite Stream Improve the Academic Achievement of Senior Secondary School Students? A Study of High School Students from X City in western China based on Regression Discontinuity Analysis Jing Yang, 1, 3 Xiaomei Ye, 2 Yuhong Du 1 1. Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China 2. Peking University, Beijing, China 3. Tianquan Senior Secondary School of Sichuan Province, Ya’an, Sichuan, China Abstract: The fairness and efficacy of the elite stream in general senior secondary education have long been a contentious issue. Based on the longitudinal data of the students who were enrolled in five senior secondary schools in X City in western China in 2017 and 2018, this study examined the effects of elite class streaming in improving student academic performance, using regression discontinuity analysis. The research findings showed that: despite the significant differences in the grade-10 streaming examination results and the grade-12 academic achievement between the elite class and regular class students, the gap was not markedly widened after three years of senior secondary education; the elite stream did not exhibit distinct promotive effects on the advancement of students’ overall performance when the cutoff point of elite class admission was utilized as the exogenous variable to evaluate the effects of the elite stream on student performance; both the parameter estimation and non-parametric estimation results demonstrated that the elite stream had no marked effects in improving student performance and there was no gender difference or urban vs. rural difference in the impact of the elite stream on student academic achievement. Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2023; 14(1):1757-1761. Doi: 10.15354/bece.23.ar062 Yang et al. (Beijing & Sichuan, China). Elite Stream and Academic Achievement. BECE, Vol.14, No.1, 2023 1758 How to Cite: Yang, J., Ye, X., & Du, Y. (2023). Can the elite stream improve the academic achievement of senior secondary school students? A study of high school students from X city in western China based on regression discontinuity analysis. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 14(1):1757-1761. Keywords: Elite Class, Academic Performance, Regression Discontinuity Design About Authors: Jing Yang, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Tianquan Senior Secondary School of Sichuan Province, Ya’an, Sichuan, China. Yuhong Du, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. Correspondence to: Xiaomei Ye, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, Beijing, China. E-mail: 201523010066@mail.bnu.edu.cn Conflict of Interests: None. © 2023 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. mailto:201523010066@mail.bnu.edu.cn http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Yang et al. (Beijing & Sichuan, China). Elite Stream and Academic Achievement. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1759 Introduction Elite Classes deployed by general high schools have always been an attraction to par- ents of students of senior secondary level. With elite classes, schools put high achieving students into the fast stream, equipping them with experienced anchor teachers, and implementing more demanding instruction. Under the principle of equitable and effi- cient education, a scientific evaluation of the impact of the elite stream on student aca- demic advancement is crucial for students and their parents making evidence-based ed- ucational decisions and for schools reasonably allotting educational resources. Based on the academic achievement status of both elite class and regular class students from five county-level general high schools in a western city of China, this study focuses on ex- amining the effects of the elite stream, an intra-school education resource allocation strategy, on student performance, employing the quasi-experiment design and regres- sion discontinuity analysis. Research Methodology Data Sources Data in this article are derived from the longitudinal database of science students in X City in western China who were enrolled in senior secondary school in 2017 and 2018. The sample of the study consists of 3,397 students from county-level schools with 1,669 enrolled in 2017 and 1,728 enrolled in 2018. For the convenience of comparison, nor- malization was administered to the scores of science students in X City. Data shows that despite the significant differences in the sources of science students as well as the varia- tions in the number and size of elite classes and the student test results among various schools, the cutoff points for elite classes in all schools are similar, with standard devia- tions ranging from 0.64 to 0.96. Research Design The determination of the cutoff point of elite class admission in each school relies on the number and size of this type of classes prescribed before the admission examination and the performance of all students at the school in the uniform grade-10 final examina- tion in X City. Neither the school nor students can manipulate who will enter the elite classes. Elite class admission can be viewed as an exogenous change administered to sampled students. In principle, students will be accepted by elite classes as long as their examination results reach the cutoff point; otherwise, they will enter regular classes. Yet, in the actual streaming, some students may fail to enroll into elite classes despite having scores surpassing the cutoff point while those with scores below it have the chance to enter them. That may result in the discontinuity jump on the two sides of the cutoff point being neither 1 (denoting elite class admission) nor 0 (denoting non elite class admission). Therefore, the present study employed the fuzzy discontinuity design in the estimation and used the cutoff point as an instrumental variable to estimate the academic performance differences between students who complied with admission rules. Yang et al. (Beijing & Sichuan, China). Elite Stream and Academic Achievement. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1760 Both parametric estimation and non-parametric estimation were adopted to identify the influences of the elite stream on student academic achievement. Considering the differ- ences in the cutoff point of elite classes between schools and academic years, this study incorporated the fixed effect of school-academic year in the estimation model to control for factors that did not show time difference between schools and academic years but have an impact on student academic performance. Research Hypotheses Based on the relevant conclusions made by previous studies, the following hypotheses were proposed: H0: The elite stream cannot promote student academic progress. H1: The elite stream can significantly enhance student performance. Research Findings Descriptive statistics showed that there was a considerable difference in the grade-10 streaming examination results and the grade-12 academic achievement between elite class and regular class students, yet the gap did not undergo significant alteration after three school years. That indicated that despite the unbalanced distribution of education- al resources between elite and regular classes during this period, there was a limited effect of the elite stream in promoting student academic performance. To identify the causal relation between the elite stream and student academic progress, this study uti- lized the cutoff point of elite class admission as the exogenous variable to construct quasi-experiment design and employed fussy regression discontinuity design to evaluate the effects of the elite stream on students’ disciplinary results and their overall perfor- mance. The findings showed that the elite stream had no significant promotive effects on the advancement of students’ overall performance and disciplinary results. The ro- bustness check demonstrated that the driving variable and control variables verified the continuum hypothesis at the cut-point, and the estimation results are not affected by distinct bandwidth values or the make-up of the sample. No significant positive impact of the elite stream on students’ overall performance and disciplinary results were de- tected. Therefore, the research findings showed strong robustness. The results of the heterogeneity test indicated that the elite stream had no significant positive effect on the academic achievement of students of different genders and with different types of regis- tered residence. As a result, it was concluded that the elite stream in general high schools could not serve as an effective strategy for optimizing education resource allo- cation and encouraging student academic progress. Yang et al. (Beijing & Sichuan, China). Elite Stream and Academic Achievement. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1761 The Chinese version of this article has been published in China Economics of Education Review, 2022, 7(05):41-61. The English version has been authorized for being publication in BECE by the author(s) and the Chinese journal. 杨 靖, 叶晓梅, 杜育红. (2022). 重点班能否提升高中生的学业成绩?—基于西部某市普通高中的 断点回归设计研究. 教育经济评论, 2022, 7(5):41-61. Received: 30 March 2023 Revised: 11 April 2023 Accepted: 05May 2023 AR3-XiaomeiYe-BECE_TitleMay_2023 AR3-XiaomeiYe-BECE_MaintextMay2023