CMEI Colloquium
Larsen Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
November 9, 2010
In a recent survey, 96% of International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB) Coordinators at Title I schools reported that developing students' civic responsibility was an important or very important reason for choosing to implement the program. In this study, I use quantitative methods to estimate the relationship between eleventh grade Chicago Public Schools students' enrollment in IB and their civic engagement. While my observational data does not permit me to make causal inferences, I am able to conclude that IB students score about 0.4 standard deviations higher on a measure of civic engagement than observationally comparable non-IB students. This finding, however, is not robust to selection bias, suggesting that much of the difference is attributable to students' personal characteristics rather than to the IB program.
Speaker Biography: Anna Rosefsky Saavedra earned her Ed.D. from HGSE in 2011 and is now a research scientist with the University of Southern California Center for Economic and Social Research.