We measure beliefs about differences in high school performance by gender, parental background and previous (elementary school) performance, as well as the mental models underlying these beliefs. Based on a sample of Danish adolescents facing their choice of whether or not to enroll in upper secondary education, and their parents, we document a set of four findings. First, adolescents are qualitatively aware of the predictive power of past performance signals for high school success, but quantitatively underestimate their importance. Second, students are on average aware of the higher performance of girls and of children with more highly educated parents, conditional on past performance. Third, the perceived role of past performance, gender and parental education for high school success is highly predictive of the own perceived high school success prospects of adolescents with different backgrounds. Fourth, the described patterns apply to the parents as well, and parents' beliefs are strongly correlated with their children's. In ongoing work, we use text data from open-ended survey questions to study the perceived mechanisms underlying the relationship of past performance, gender and SES with future performance, and link these to quantitative beliefs as well as choices. |
