Targeted Acceleration in Middle School Math: Impacts on College Entry, Degree Completion, and STEM -- by David Card, Laura Giuliano

We are extremely grateful to Cynthia Park for assistance in accessing and interpreting the data used in this study, and to Tatiana Reyes for extraordinary research assistance. We also received helpful feedback from Sarah Cohodes, Thomas Dee, and participants at the 2025 AEA Annual Meeting, the Spring 2025 NBER Education Meeting, the Fall 2024 NBER Economics of Talent Meeting, the 2025 EALE/SOLE Meeting, and from seminar participants at Stanford University (CEPR), UC Berkeley (ILRE), UC Davis (Economics), and University of Maryland (AREC). The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305A190175 to the NBER. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education. In addition, Giuliano gratefully acknowledges support from the Polynera Fund. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.