Schools routinely employ seating charts to influence educational outcomes. Dependable evidence for the causal effects of seating charts on students’ achievement levels and inequality, however, is scarce. We executed a large pre-registered field experiment to estimate causal peer effects on students’ test scores and grades by randomizing the seating charts of 195 classrooms (N=3,365 students). We found that neither sitting next to a deskmate with higher prior achievement nor sitting next to a female deskmate affected learning outcomes on average. However, we also found that sitting next to the highest-achieving deskmates improved the educational outcomes of the lowest-achieving students; and sitting next to the lowest-achieving deskmates lowered the educational outcomes of the highest-achieving students. Therefore, compared to random seating charts, achievement-discordant seating charts would decrease inequality; whereas achievement concordant seating charts would increase inequality. We discuss policy implications.

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学校通常使用座位表来影响教育成果。然而，关于座位表对学生成绩水平和不平等的因果影响的可靠证据却很少。我们进行了一项大型预先注册的现场实验，通过随机分配 195 个教室（N=3,365 名学生）的座位表来估计同伴对学生考试成绩和成绩的因果影响。我们发现，无论是坐在先前成绩较高的同桌旁边还是坐在女性同桌旁边，平均而言都不会影响学习成果。然而，我们还发现，坐在成绩最好的同桌旁边可以改善成绩最低的学生的教育成果；坐在成绩最低的同桌旁边会降低成绩最高的学生的教育成果。因此，与随机座位表相比，成就不一致的座位表会减少不平等；而成绩一致的座位表会增加不平等。我们讨论政策影响。

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