School choice in Chile: Is it class or the classroom?

Skeptics of school choice are concerned that parents, especially low‐income ones, will not choose schools based on sound academic reasoning. Many fear that, given choice, parents will sort themselves into different schools along class lines. How‐ever, most surveys find that parents of all socioeconomic groups cite academic aspects as important when choosing a school. Moreover, almost no parents refer to the social composition of the student body. Many advocates of choice hold up these results as proof that choice will produce desirable outcomes. However, these results may not be reliable because they may simply be verbal responses to survey items rather than indicators of actual behavior. In this research, we report on the search behavior of parents in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, examining how they construct their school choice sets and comparing this to what they say they are seeking in choosing schools. The data indicate that parental decisions are influenced by demographics. Based on this evidence, we argue that unfettered choice may reduce the pressure on schools to improve their performance and could potentially increase stratification. © 2006 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.     

Sinking Swann: Public School Choice and the Resegregation of Charlotte's Public Schools

Public school choice is a widely used tool for education reform and may be a way to improve school accountability and efficiency. This article examines what happened to student outcomes when Charlotte‐Mecklenburg Schools, a large and diverse urban school district located in North Carolina, changed its assignment policy to one of open enrollment with mandatory choice. The previous policy used a broad array of magnet schools and a limited amount of mandatory busing to achieve desegregation. The new policy required that all students choose a school, and it specifically avoided using race or ethnicity considerations in assigning students. The article examines the impacts of the new policy on the end‐of‐grade standardized tests in reading and math. The article uses regression analysis to discover whether the scores of various groups of students increased or decreased after the policy change. The analysis suggests that the “race‐neutral” assignment policy was neither neutral in the opportunity it provided students to attend their school of choice nor in its academic outcomes. Anglo students were more likely to receive their first choice of schools and to improve their scores. African American students were less likely to receive their first choice school and their scores declined.     

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.     

Private Schools and the Parents that Choose Them: Empirical Evidence from the Danish School Voucher System

Research on the effect of school choice on student performance has generally been based on small-scale experiments or comparisons of Catholic and public schools in the United States. Recent studies indicate, however, that the market competition stemming from school vouchers does not affect all private schools equally. This study makes use of individual-level register data on the performance of more than 30,000 students in Denmark, where private schools have been voucher-financed for more than 100 years, while public schools are governed and financed by the politico-administrative system. Using an instrumental variable model to exclude selection effects, the results show no significant average effect of private schooling on final examination scores. However, a multilevel model shows that private schools of high socio-economic status perform better than similar public schools, while private schools of low socio-economic status under-perform – even for individual students with high socio-economic status. This indicates that the institutional setting of a voucher system is not enough to raise educational performance in general, arguably because some parents choose schools on the basis of non-academic criteria.     

School Choice and the Creation of Social Capital Reexamined

Scholars have argued that by spurring parental involvement in school activities, school choice creates social capital. While government policies may be able to create social capital, we doubt that school choice is such a policy and argue that participation in school activities is largely determined by individual-level attributes and the school context, rather than choice per se. To assess this claim we use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data. Unlike most school choice studies, this data set has a large, representative national sample. More importantly, the panel structure of the data allows us to examine the same parents both before and after the school choice decision has been made, permitting a true dynamic analysis. The results demonstrate that actively choosing a child's school does not make parents more likely to participate in school activities. Some institutional attributes of schools do appear to increase parental involvement in school activities, however.     

Private exit,public exit,and achievement in secondary education

Perceptions of declining academic achievement have motivated a number of governments worldwide to introduce greater school choices to parents in the hope of fostering competition and thus arrest the apparent decline in educational achievement. Exit provides dissatisfied citizens with a decisive mechanism to signal their views regarding the quality of public education institutions. Private exit – abandoning the public education system entirely – is well established in most countries; however, public exit – moving to a separate system of selective high-quality public schools – is an alternative that exists in only a few jurisdictions. We employ a comprehensive 6-year panel of data on socio-educational advantage and academic achievement for an education system which offers both private and public exit choice. In so doing, we show how different exit options affect choices and outcomes for various categories of schools.     

THE CURRENTS BENEATH THE “RISING TIDE” OF SCHOOL CHOICE: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ENROLLMENT FLOWS IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Existing research highlights that families face geographic, social, and psychological constraints that may limit the extent to which competition can take hold in school choice programs. In this paper, we address the implications of such findings by creating a network of student flows from 11 cohorts of eighth‐grade students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We applied a custom algorithm to group together schools with similar sending and receiving patterns, and calculated the difference in mean achievement between a student's attended and assigned high schools. For all identified school groupings, we found that the students were on average moving to higher achieving schools. We also found that the movement toward higher achieving schools of the top achievement quartile of students was over twice as large as that of the bottom quartile, but that the flows of both the highest and lowest achieving student quartiles were toward higher achieving destinations. Our results suggest that student movements in CPS between the years of 2001 to 2005 were consistent with creating market pressure for improvement as well as increasing segregation by achievement. However, further research into how schools responded to those movements is required to make inferences about the level or consequences of competition generated by choice‐related reforms during that time.     

Lessons from New York City's Small Schools of Choice about High School Features that Promote Graduation for Disadvantaged Students

The present paper uses a rich dataset based on naturally-occurring lotteries for 68 new small non-selective high schools in New York City, which we refer to as small schools of choice (SSCs), to address two related questions: (1) What high school features are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students? and (2) What high school features helped to produce SSCs’ positive impacts on graduation rates? Our findings provide suggestive evidence that school leadership quality, teacher empowerment, teacher mutual support, teacher evaluation and feedback, teacher professional development, data-driven instruction, teacher/parent communication, academic rigor, personalized learning, and teacher/student respect are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students. Our findings also provide suggestive evidence that many of these school features explain part of the total average SSC effect on graduation rates, although most of this average effect remains unexplained. Lastly, our findings indicate that SSCs are clearly distinguishable from their counterfactual counterparts in terms of school features that were emphasized by SSC funders.     

Deconstructing School Choice: Problem Schools or Problem Students?

School choice has developed into one of the most contentious policy debates in K–12 education. Proponents argue that choice leads to competition among schools, thereby raising school quality for all students, while opponents claim that school choice often results in racial segregation and worsens inequity. The findings of this study, collected from qualitative interviews with school administrators and quantitative analysis of school performance and enrollment data, suggest that a common form of school choice, intradistrict transfer, may not always have the desired impacts on administrators, particularly with regard to intradistrict transfer programs. In addition, the author finds important differences in criteria that shape transfer decisions at different grade levels, and in the factors that shape the decision to transfer away from a school versus those that influence decisions about which school to transfer into.     

Performance Measures,Ranking and Parental Choice: An Analysis of the English School League Tables

ABSTRACT

Parental choice among schools in England is informed by annually published school performance (league) tables. The 2006 league tables included a measure of contextual value added (CVA) for the first time. By explicitly accounting for the characteristics of a school's intake, the aim is that CVA should isolate the impact a school has on its pupils' progress and so provide a measure of school effectiveness. In this paper we use UK government administrative data to replicate CVA and other key performance measures in order to investigate the extent to which the current league tables provide the information necessary to support parental choice on the basis of school effectiveness. We find that school rankings based on CVA are largely uninformative for parents: almost half of English secondary schools are indistinguishable from the national average level of CVA.     

Local supply,temporal dynamics,and unrealized potential in teacher hiring

We explore the dynamics of competitive search in the K–12 public education sector. Using detailed panel data on teacher hiring from Boston Public Schools, we document how teacher labor supply varies substantially across vacancies even within a single district depending on position type, school characteristics, and the timing of job postings. We find that early-posted positions are more likely to be filled and end up securing new hires that are better qualified, more effective, and more likely to remain at a school. In contrast, the number of applicants to a position is largely unassociated with hire quality, suggesting that schools may struggle to identify and select the best candidates even when there is a large pool of qualified applicants. These patterns persist even when we restrict comparisons to only positions within an individual school using school fixed effects. Our findings point to substantial unrealized potential for improving teacher hiring.     

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.     

School Bureaucracy and Student Performance at the Local Level

A major debate in American education centers on the role bureaucracy plays in shaping educational performance. Proponents of school choice argue hat large educational bureaucracies have contributed to dramatic performance shortfalls in America's public schools. Other scholars view educational bureaucracies as beneficial because they manage a wide range of problems and thus make it easier for teachers to focus on the core task of teaching. This study examines these competing claims about the impact of bureaucracy on student performance using district level data from Texas public schools. The findings from several regression models reveal negative relationships between bureaucracy (measured both at the central and campus administration levels)and student performance across several different grade levels.     

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.     

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

This paper examines the impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on student achievement for low‐income students in upper elementary and middle school who used a voucher to transfer from public to private schools during the first four years of the program. We analyzed student‐level longitudinal data from public and private schools taking the same statewide standardized assessment. Overall, voucher students experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 SDs in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with matched students who remained in a public school. This loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English/Language Arts, we did not observe statistically meaningful effects. Although school vouchers aim to provide greater educational opportunities for students, the goal of improving the academic performance of low‐income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.     

Is Charter School Competition in California Improving the Performance of Traditional Public Schools?

A premise of charter school initiatives has been that these schools have direct benefits for the students attending them and indirect benefits for other students by creating competition for traditional public schools to improve their performance. This study uses a two-pronged approach to assess whether California charter schools are having indirect effects on students in traditional public schools. First, we examine how traditional public school principals react to the introduction of charter schools. Second, we assess whether competition from nearby charters is affecting student achievement outcomes for students that remain in traditional public schools. The survey results show that traditional public school principals felt little competitive pressure from charters. Similarly, the student achievement analysis shows that charter competition was not improving the performance of traditional public schools. These results suggest that California charter schools are having little effect on the climate of traditional public schools.     

Correctly Understanding “School Choice”

Despite ample debates over the efficacy of school choice, theorizing has lagged behind and this hinders progress. Milton Friedman, the choice movement founder, never claimed that choice would improve academics; choice was inherently valuable and parents might demand anything. Choice advocates also exaggerate the remedial power of markets and proliferating academic options seldom brings academic diligence. Given free tutoring opportunities, those lagging behind reject them, and costs will usually be too high for most low achievers. Extensive schooling options already exist, so waging political battles to add more is unnecessary. Moreover, today’s supposed “school choice” is not genuine consumer choice no matter how educationally worthwhile; it is imposed from above san consumer input. Even when choice schools shine, it is unclear why. If free to chose, consumes may prefer non-academics. Finally, if choice qua choice is the standard, focusing on academic achievement is misdirected.

Who Benefits from Accountability-Driven School Closure? Evidence from New York City

We estimate the effects of accountability-driven school closure in New York City on students who attended middle schools that were closed at the time of closure and students who would have likely attended a closed middle school had it remained open. We find that students who would have entered the closed school had it not closed attended schools that perform better on standardized exams and have higher value-added measures than did the closed schools. While we find that closure did not have any measurable effect on the average student in this group, we do find that high-performing students in this group attended higher-performing schools and experienced economically-meaningful and statistically-significant improvements in their 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade math test scores. We find that these benefits persisted for several cohorts after closure. We also find that closure adversely affected students, low-performing students in particular, who were attending schools that closed. For policymakers, our results highlight a key trade-off of closing a low-performing school: future cohorts of relatively high-performing students may benefit from closure while low-performing students in schools designated for closure are adversely affected.     

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.