scholarly journals Do Parents Value School Effectiveness?

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (5) ◽  
pp. 1502-1539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atila Abdulkadiroğlu ◽  
Parag A. Pathak ◽  
Jonathan Schellenberg ◽  
Christopher R. Walters
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Effective Schools ◽  
School Effectiveness ◽  
College Attendance ◽  
Long Run ◽  
School Graduation ◽  
Academic Match ◽  
School Assignment

School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents’ choices reward effective schools and punish ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics. We study relationships among parent preferences, peer quality, and causal effects on outcomes for applicants to New York City’s centralized high school assignment mechanism. We use applicants’ rank-ordered choice lists to measure preferences and to construct selection-corrected estimates of treatment effects on test scores, high school graduation, college attendance, and college quality. Parents prefer schools that enroll high-achieving peers, and these schools generate larger improvements in short- and long-run student outcomes. Preferences are unrelated to school effectiveness and academic match quality after controlling for peer quality. (JEL D12, H75, I21, I26, I28)

scholarly journals The Welfare Effects of Coordinated Assignment: Evidence from the New York City High School Match

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (12) ◽  
pp. 3635-3689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atila Abdulkadiroğlu ◽  
Nikhil Agarwal ◽  
Parag A. Pathak
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
York City ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Welfare Effects ◽  
Student Preferences ◽  
Deferred Acceptance ◽  
School Assignment

Coordinated single-offer school assignment systems are a popular education reform. We show that uncoordinated offers in NYC's school assignment mechanism generated mismatches. One-third of applicants were unassigned after the main round and later administratively placed at less desirable schools. We evaluate the effects of the new coordinated mechanism based on deferred acceptance using estimated student preferences. The new mechanism achieves 80 percent of the possible gains from a no-choice neighborhood extreme to a utilitarian benchmark. Coordinating offers dominates the effects of further algorithm modifications. Students most likely to be previously administratively assigned experienced the largest gains in welfare and subsequent achievement. (JEL C78, D82, I21, I28)

scholarly journals Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence From New York City

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Dobbie ◽  
Roland G Fryer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Effective Schools ◽  
School Effectiveness ◽  
Instructional Time ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Per Pupil Expenditure ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
The Veil

In this paper, we collect data on the inner-workings of 39 charter schools and correlate these data with school effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures—class size, per-pupil expenditure, teacher certification, and teacher training—are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by qualitative research—frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations—explains approximately 45 percent of the variation in school effectiveness. The same index provides similar results in a separate sample of charter schools. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

Surviving at the Street Level: How Counselors’ Implementation of School Choice Policy Shapes Students’ High School Destinations

2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj ◽  
Jennifer L. Jennings ◽  
Sean P. Corcoran ◽  
Elizabeth Christine Baker-Smith ◽  
Chantal Hailey
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Street Level ◽  
School Choice Policy ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Choice Policy

Given the dominance of residentially based school assignment, prior researchers have conceptualized K–12 enrollment decisions as beyond the purview of school actors. This paper questions the continued relevance of this assumption by studying the behavior of guidance counselors charged with implementing New York City’s universal high school choice policy. Drawing on structured interviews with 88 middle school counselors and administrative data on choice outcomes at these middle schools, we find that counselors generally believe lower-income students are on their own in making high school choices and need additional adult support. However, they largely refrain from giving action-guiding advice to students about which schools to attend. We elaborate street-level bureaucracy theory by showing how the majority of counselors reduce cognitive dissonance between their understanding of students’ needs and their inability to meet these needs adequately given existing resources. They do so by drawing selectively on competing policy logics of school choice, narrowly delineating their conception of their role, and relegating decisions to parents. Importantly, we also find departures from the predictions of this theory as approximately one in four counselors sought to meet the needs of individual students by enlarging their role despite the resource constraints they faced. Finally, we quantify the impact of variation in counselors’ approaches, finding that the absence of action-guiding advice is associated with students being admitted to lower-quality schools, on average.

scholarly journals Constrained Curriculum in High Schools: The Changing Math Standards and Student Achievement, High School Graduation and College Continuation

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Daun-Barnett ◽  
Edward P. St. John
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
High School Graduation ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
College Attendance ◽  
Exit Exams ◽  
Public Policy Issue ◽  
School Graduation

Mathematics education is a critical public policy issue in the U.S. and the pressures facing students and schools are compounded by increasing expectations for college attendance after high school.  In this study, we examine whether policy efforts to constrain the high school curriculum in terms of course requirements and mandatory exit exams affects three educational outcomes – test scores on SAT math, high school completion, and college continuation rates.  We employ two complementary analytic methods – fixed effects and difference in differences (DID) – on panel data for all 50 states from 1990 to 2008. Our findings suggest that within states both policies may prevent some students from completing high school, particularly in the near term, but both policies appear to increase the proportion of students who continue on to college if they do graduate from high school. The DID analyses provide more support for math course requirement policies than mandatory exit exams, but the effects are modest. Both the DID and fixed effects analyses confirm the importance of school funding in the improvement of high school graduation rates and test scores.

scholarly journals School Segregation, Educational Attainment, and Crime: Evidence from the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg *

2013 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 435-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen B. Billings ◽  
David J. Deming ◽  
Jonah Rockoff
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
High School Graduation ◽  
College Attendance ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
Minority Males ◽  
School Graduation

Abstract We study the end of race-based busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools (CMS). In 2001, school boundaries in CMS were redrawn dramatically, and half of students received a new assignment. Using addresses measured prior to the policy change, we compare students in the same neighborhood that lived on opposite sides of a newly drawn boundary. We find that both white and minority students score lower on high school exams when they are assigned to schools with more minority students. We also find decreases in high school graduation and four-year college attendance for whites and large increases in crime for minority males. We conclude that the end of race-based busing widened racial inequality, despite efforts by CMS to mitigate the effect of segregation through compensatory resource allocation.

scholarly journals The Effects of English Learner Classification on High School Graduation and College Attendance

AERA Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 233285841985080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Johnson
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
English Learners ◽  
College Enrollment ◽  
High School Graduation ◽  
College Attendance ◽  
Full Time ◽  
English Learner ◽  
Attendance Rates ◽  
School Graduation ◽  
Before School

Descriptive evidence shows that English learners (ELs) have lower high school graduation and 4-year-college attendance rates than monolingual and fluent English users. Applying the regression discontinuity design to rich administrative data from a large district in California, this study identifies the first causal effects of initial EL classification on high school graduation and college enrollment. I also report the effects of maintaining EL status, or not reclassifying, after testing in each grade between third and eighth grades. I find no statistically significant impact of initial EL classification on high school graduation or college enrollment. Reclassification just before school transition (fifth and eighth grades) significantly affected the probabilities of on-time graduation and, conditional on college attendance, starting at a 4-year university and starting full-time.

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