Year: 2003
Type: report
Abstract: School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for urban school districts seeking to enhance academic achievement.Evaluating the impact of such programs is complicated by the fact that a highly select sample of students takes advantage of these programs.To overcome this difficulty, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools.Surprisingly, we find little evidence that attending sought after programs provides any benefit on a wide variety of traditional academic measures, including standardized test scores, attendance rates, course-taking, and credit accumulation.This is true despite the fact that those students who win the lotteries attend better high schools along a number of dimensions, including higher peer achievement levels, higher peer graduation rates, and lower levels of poverty.We do, however, uncover evidence that attendance at such schools may improve a subset of non-traditional outcome measures, such as self-reported disciplinary incidences and arrest rates.
DOI: 10.3386/w10113
Authors: Julie Berry Cullen, Brian Jacob, Steven Levitt
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W1500324366