Working paper

Self-Management Skills and Student Achievement Gains

Evidence from California’s CORE Districts
Authors
Susana Claro
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Susanna Loeb
Stanford Graduate School of Education
Published

Summary

Existing research on self-management skills shows that measures of self-management predict student success. However, these conclusions are based on small samples or narrowly defined self-management measures. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh grade students, this paper describes self-management gaps across student groups, and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of self-management for achievement gains, even with unusually rich controls for students’ background, previous achievement, and measures of other social-emotional skills. Self-management is a better predictor of student learning than are other measures of socio-emotional skills. Average growth in English language arts due to changing from a low to a high level of self-management is between 0.091 and 0.112 standard deviations, equivalent to almost 80 days of learning.

Suggested citationClaro, S., & Loeb, S. (2019, September). Self-Management skills and student achievement gains: Evidence from California’s CORE Districts [Working paper]. Policy Analysis for California Education. https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/self-management-skills-and-student-achievement-gains-evidence-california-core-districts