Choice in a World of New School Types

As school choice options have evolved over recent years, it is important to understand what family and school factors are associated with the enrollment decisions families make. Use of restricted‐access data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study allowed us to identify household location from a nationally representative sample of students and to match households to the actual schools attended and other nearby schools. This matching is significant as previous research generally has not been able to link individual households to school enrollment decisions. Using these data, we examined the role that socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity play in school enrollment decisions. One of our more interesting results suggests that the newest public alternative, charter schools, attracts families with higher socioeconomic status than those that traditional public schools attract. The attraction of charter schools, however, unlike traditional public schools, appears to be racially and ethnically neutral. Families do not choose a charter school because of its racial or ethnic composition, nor do race and ethnicity within a household influence its choice of charter schools. Other socioeconomic factors influencing charter school choice are more similar to factors explaining private school choice than to those factors explaining the choice of traditional public schools. The findings suggest that policies governing the design of charter schools should focus on broader socioeconomic diversity rather than race only.     

Charter High Schools’ Effects on Long‐Term Attainment and Earnings

Since their inception in 1992, the number of charter schools has grown to more than 6,800 nationally, serving nearly three million students. Various studies have examined charter schools’ impacts on test scores, and a few have begun to examine longer‐term outcomes including graduation and college attendance. This paper is the first to estimate charter schools’ effects on earnings in adulthood, alongside effects on educational attainment. Using data from Florida, we first confirm previous research (Booker et al., 2011 ) that students attending charter high schools are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. We then examine two longer‐term outcomes not previously studied in research on charter schools—college persistence and earnings. We find that students attending charter high schools are more likely to persist in college, and that in their mid‐20s they experience higher earnings.     

The Impact of School Choice on Public School Budgets: Evidence From Open Enrollment in New York City

This paper examines budgetary responses of public schools to competition from school choice, exploiting a discrete change in the choice set available to New York City high school students in 2003–2004. Schools facing increased competition (zoned, unscreened, and those with few applicants) increase per-pupil expenditures on noninstructional functions, reducing resources for instruction. Thus, schools may face important tradeoffs when competing for applicants, including between quantity and academic quality of applicants and between incentives to reach capacity and to improve academic outcomes. While advocates claim that school choice improves academic achievement, these results may help explain mixed findings in the previous literature.     

Elementary Grade Retention in Texas and Reading Achievement Among Racial Groups: 1994–2002

Students who failed the Texas mandatory third grade reading test were followed through their sophomore year in high school. Comparisons of reading scores between third grade students who repeated the grade and their socially promoted classmates revealed that the positive effect of retention persisted over time. Retention in third grade benefited low‐performing readers regardless of race. Supplemental analyses found that the results are not likely attributable to selection biases, differential attrition of students from the panel, changes in the special education status of students, and regression to the mean effects. Making students repeat a grade, when supplemented with additional educational assistance, can benefit academically challenged children.     

A supervisor like me: Race,representation, and the satisfaction and turnover decisions of public sector employees

Studies of race representation in public organizations illustrate the importance of bureaucrat race in determining client‐level outcomes. Building “upward” from this research, this study examines how supervisor race impacts outcomes for street‐level bureaucrats using data from a nationally representative sample of public schools. Employing multiple estimation methods, we find that, consistent with the predictions of representation theory, teachers report higher job satisfaction and turn over less often when supervised by an own‐race principal. We also find that race congruence impacts the tangible and intangible organizational benefits teachers receive, and, moreover, that race congruence impacts white and African American employees differently. Most troubling, we find evidence that black teachers earn substantially less in supplemental pay when they work for a white principal, even when compared to white teachers in the same school. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

What Research Can Tell Policymakers about School Choice

American school systems have implemented several different kinds of school choice policies, and most of them are controversial. The research literature on various forms of school choice reveals some areas of consensus, but other areas where the results of studies diverge. Consensus results show that parents are more satisfied with choice, that they report using academic preferences to make choices, and that they tend to be more involved with their child's education as a consequence of choice. There is some, though mixed, evidence of improved test scores for children involved with various forms of choice. Actual parental use of choice and gathering of information, however, show some evidence of stratification, not always by race or income, but often by the level of parental involvement and motivation. These results provide considerable evidence about the effects on students whose parents have made an active choice, but more policy research is needed on the effects of competition on students in schools that have not been chosen. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion

This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We used the random assignment in Project STAR (the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment) to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We found that assignment to a small class increases students’ probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among black students. Among students enrolled in the poorest third of schools, the effect is 7.3 percentage points. Smaller classes increased the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shifted students toward high‐earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), business, and economics. We found that test‐score effects at the time of the experiment were an excellent predictor of long‐term improvements in postsecondary outcomes.     

The role of teacher quality in retention and hiring: Using applications to transfer to uncover preferences of teachers and schools

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and students. Prior research on teacher transfers uses career history data, identifying the school in which a teacher teaches in each year. When such data are used to see which teachers transfer, it is unclear the extent to which the patterns are driven by teacher preferences or school preferences, because the matching of teachers to schools is a two‐sided choice. This study uses applications‐to‐transfer data to examine separately which teachers apply for transfer and which get hired and, in so doing, differentiates teacher from school preferences. Holding all else equal, we find that teachers with better pre‐service qualifications (certification exam scores, college competitiveness) are more likely to apply for transfer, while teachers whose students demonstrate higher achievement growth are less likely. On the other hand, schools prefer to hire “higher quality” teachers across measures that signal quality. The results suggest that not only do more effective teachers prefer to stay in their schools but that schools are able to identify and hire the best candidates when given the opportunity © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The uneven playing field of school choice: Evidence from new zealand

New Zealand's 10‐year experience with self‐governing schools operating in a competitive environment provides new insights into school choice initiatives now being hotly debated in the United States with limited evidence. This article examines how New Zealand's system of parental choice of schools played out in that country's three major urban areas with particular emphasis on the sorting of students by ethnic and socioeconomic status. The analysis documents that schools with large initial proportions of minorities (Maori and Pacific Island students in the New Zealand context) were at a clear disadvantage in the educational market place relative to other schools and that the effect was to generate a system in which gaps between the “successful” and the “unsuccessful” schools became wider. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Does choice lead to racially distinctive schools? Charter schools and household preferences

A persistent fear regarding school choice is that it will lead to more racially distinctive schools. A growing number of studies compares choosing households to non‐choosing households, but few have examined the possibility that choosers sort themselves out based upon school preferences that are correlated with race and ethnicity. This report addresses this issue by analyzing the responses of 1,006 charter school households in Texas. It first examines the expressed preferences of choosing households, then compares expressed preferences with behavior. A comparison of the characteristics of the traditional public schools that choosers leave with the characteristics of the charter schools they choose indicates that race is a good predictor of the choices that choosing households make. Whites, African Americans, and Latinos transfer into charter schools where their groups comprise between 11 and 14 percentage points more of the student body than the traditional public schools they are leaving. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Patrolling Public Schools: The Impact of Funding for School Police on Student Discipline and Long‐term Education Outcomes

As police officers have become increasingly common in U.S. public schools, their role in school discipline has often expanded. While there is growing public debate about the consequences of police presence in schools, there is scant evidence of the impact of police on student discipline and academic outcomes. This paper provides the first quasi‐experimental estimate of funding for school police on student outcomes, leveraging variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. Exploiting detailed data on over 2.5 million students in Texas, I find that federal grants for police in schools increase middle school discipline rates by 6 percent. The rise in discipline is driven by sanctions for low‐level offenses or school code of conduct violations. Further, I find that Black students experience the largest increases in discipline. I also find that exposure to a three‐year federal grant for school police is associated with a 2.5 percent decrease in high school graduation rates and a 4 percent decrease in college enrollment rates.     

Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency

Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools, teachers, or students. This article uses administrative data from Miami‐Dade County Public Schools to investigate the implementation and effects of the district's involuntary transfer policy, including which schools transferred and received teachers, which teachers were transferred, what kinds of teachers replaced them in their former schools, and how their performance—as measured by their work absences and value‐added in math and reading—compared before and after the transfer. We find that, under the policy, principals in the lowest performing schools identified relatively low‐performing teachers for transfer who, based on observable characteristics, would have been unlikely to leave on their own. Consistent with an equity improvement, we find that involuntarily transferred teachers were systematically moved to higher performing schools and generally were outperformed by the teachers who replaced them. Efficiency impacts are mixed; although transferred teachers had nearly two fewer absences per year in their new positions, transferred teachers continued to have low value‐added in their new schools.     

Disentangling the racial test score gap: Probing the evidence in a large urban school district

We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within‐school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within‐school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size—implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade‐off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within‐school race gaps. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Explaining race,poverty, and gender disparities in advanced course‐taking

We use panel data on Florida high school students to examine race, poverty, and gender disparities in advanced course‐taking. While white students are more likely to take advanced courses than black and Hispanic students, these disparities are eliminated when we condition on observable pre–high school characteristics. In fact, black and Hispanic students are more likely than observably similar white students to take advanced courses. Controlling for students' pre–high school characteristics substantially reduces poverty gaps, modestly reduces Asian–white gaps, and makes little dent in female–male gaps. Black and Hispanic students attend high schools that increase their likelihood of taking advanced courses relative to observably similar white students; this advantage is largely driven by minorities disproportionately attending magnet schools. Finally, recent federal and state efforts aimed at increasing access to advanced courses to poor and minority students appear to have succeeded in raising the share of students who take advanced courses from 2003 to 2006. However, secular trends (or spillovers of the policies to non‐poor, non‐minority students) have spurred faster growth for other students, contributing to widening demographic gaps in these years. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Public Subsidies for Private Schooling: A Comparative Analysis of Argentina and Chile

Argentina and Chile have long-standing policies that award public subsidies to private schools. This article compares the academic outcomes of seventh- and eighth-graders in public and private schools in each country. Three types of private schools are analyzed: Catholic schools that are subsidized by the government, nonreligious schools that are subsidized, and private schools that receive no subsidies. Ultimately, the analyses suggest a mixed portrait of private school effectiveness, in which Catholic schools have the most consistent links to achievement. Nonreligious subsidized schools in Chile, often operated by for-profit corporations, produce outcomes no different from public schools.     

School Starting Age and Cognitive Development

We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children's cognitive development from ages 6 to 18 using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and large‐scale population‐level birth and school data from the state of Florida. We estimate effects of being old for grade (being born in September vs. August) that are remarkably stable—always around 0.2 SD difference in test scores—across a wide range of heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth, race/ethnicity, birth weight, gestational age, and school quality. While the September‐August difference in kindergarten readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by the time students take their first exams, the heterogeneity in estimated effects on test scores effectively disappears. We do, however, find significant heterogeneity in other outcome measures such as disability status and middle and high school course selections. We also document substantial variation in compensatory behaviors targeted towards young‐for‐grade children. While the more affluent families tend to redshirt their children, young‐for‐grade children from less affluent families are more likely to be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention and redshirting are correlated with improved outcomes for the groups less likely to use those remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more affluent families and redshirting in the case of less affluent families.) Finally, we find that very few school policies or practices mitigate the test score advantage of September‐born children.     

The negative impacts of starting middle school in sixth grade

Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, we find that sixth grade students attending middle schools are much more likely to be cited for discipline problems than those attending elementary school. That difference remains after adjusting for the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the students and their schools. Furthermore, the higher infraction rates recorded by sixth graders who are placed in middle school persist at least through ninth grade. An analysis of end‐of‐grade test scores provides complementary findings. A plausible explanation is that sixth graders are at an especially impressionable age; in middle school, the exposure to older peers and the relative freedom from supervision have deleterious consequences. These findings are relevant to the current debate over the best school configuration for incorporating the middle grades. Based on our results, we suggest that there is a strong argument for separating sixth graders from older adolescents. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

School Vouchers and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Washington,DC

School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation for participating students. The District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has operated in the nation's capital since 2004, funded by a federal government appropriation. Because the program was oversubscribed in its early years of operation, and vouchers were awarded by lottery, we were able to use the “gold standard” evaluation method of a randomized experiment to determine what impacts the OSP had on student outcomes. Our analysis revealed compelling evidence that the DC voucher program had a positive impact on high school graduation rates, suggestive evidence that the program increased reading achievement, and no evidence that it affected math achievement. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent policy developments including the reauthorization of the OSP and the enactment or expansion of more than a dozen school voucher or voucher‐type programs throughout the United States in 2011 and 2012.     

Policy Implications of Limiting Immigrant Concentration in Danish Public Schools

Immigrant students in Denmark on average perform worse in lower secondary school than native Danish students. Part of the effect may not stem from the immigrant students themselves, but from the student composition at the school. From a policy perspective, the latter aspect is quite interesting since it is more feasible to change student composition in schools than the socioeconomic status of the individual students. This article describes theoretically the circumstances under which total student achievement can be increased by reallocating certain groups of students. Empirical analyses of Danish register data of more than 40,000 students suggest that the gain in total student achievement by reallocating immigrant students is minor. The educational outcome of immigrant students can however, ceteris paribus, be increased, at minimal expense to the majority of native Danish students' educational outcome, by limiting the share of immigrant students at grade level at any one school to less than 50 percent. The policy implications of this finding are discussed.