Departmentalized Instruction and Elementary School Effectiveness. Working Paper No. 298-0424

Departmentalized instruction, in which teachers specialize in one or more core subjects and instruct multiple groups of students in a day, has become increasingly prominent in elementary schools. Using 8 years of data from Massachusetts and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the effects of departmentalization on student achievement. We find that departmentalization has positive effects in English language arts (ELA) and science and mixed evidence of positive effects in math. These positive effects are not driven by teacher productivity improvements: Consistent with prior findings on teacher specialization, teachers are less effective when specializing in math and no more effective in ELA than when teaching self-contained classrooms. Rather, consistent with the theoretical underpinnings for specialization, departmentalized schools tend to assign teachers to their stronger subjects.