The impact of school spending on student performance is an open question in the literature, with previous studies yielding mixed evidence and rarely differentiating between types of spending. We study an EU program that allocated, between 2014 and 2020, more than 2 billion euros of funding to Italian schools to be spent on a variety of educational projects.

We combine data on individual-level standardized test scores with detailed information on projects' ranking in tenders and rollout timing and evaluate different projects using RD design and staggered adoption DID. Both empirical strategies show that only projects aimed at improving basic and soft skills increase students' standardized scores in Italian, Math, and English.

Projects focused on the internalization of educational careers have zero to negative effects on Math and Italian, while they improve English skills.

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