The Establishment Of Middle Schools And Socioeconomic Mobility

The establishment of middle schools in the early 1970s was one of the largest reforms in the Israeli education system. The main goal of the reform was to improve scholastic achievements, especially of pupils from weak socioeconomic backgrounds—mainly of Asian-African origin—to reduce their relative disparities in educational attainment and to increase their social and economic integration. All of this was by creating a schooling level for pupils in early adolescence, where integration between pupils from different backgrounds would occur, and by enhancing teaching quality. This study uses a unique database and the gradual rollout of middle schools over time and place to identify the reform’s effects on middle school pupils in the first decade of implementation and on their offspring. We find that the reform had no short- or long-term effects on educational attainment, employment, wages, marriage and childbirth patterns, or degree of religiosity of pupils who had access to middle school education compared to others. Nor did the reform affect the educational achievements of their offspring. This result is likely due to the limited integration generated by the reform