What is essential is visible to the eye: Saliency in primary school ranking and its effect on academic achievements

Abstract

We propose a new strategy to identify the impact of class rank, exploiting a "visible" primary school rank from teachers' exam grades, and an "invisible" rank from unreported standardized test scores. Leveraging a unique panel dataset on Italian students, we show that the visible rank has a substantial impact on students' perceptions, which affects subsequent academic performance. However, the effect of being surrounded by higher-SES or higher-achieving peers remains positive even accounting for the decrease in rank. Higher-ranked students self-select into high schools with higher average student achievements. Finally, exploiting an extensive survey, we identify psychological mechanisms channeling the rank effect.