Working Longer Makes Students Stronger?

Abstract: Despite much discussion on the role of education policy on school and student performance, we know little about the effects of school spending at the margin on student cognitive achievement beyond the effects of class size. Thus this paper examines the effects of annual ninth grade classroom hours in literacy and maths on ninth grade (aged 16) student performance in writing and maths, respectively. Using population data for Denmark in 2003-2006, I exploit unique policy-induced variation in classroom hours.On average, the reform changed classroom hours by 2.2-3.3% in literacy and maths, with an impact on student achievement. For literacy I find no significant effects of classroom hours, but for maths I find stronger effects. One additional hour per year increases the maths score by 0.21% of a standard deviation.