SCHOOL CHOICE AND STUDENT SORTING: EVIDENCE FROM ADACHI WARD IN JAPAN*

We examine whether the school choice programme of public junior high schools in Adachi ward has caused student sorting and has thus increased the differences in scores between the schools. We find that students are sorted in the sense that the students living in the school attendance areas where there is a higher proportion of high‐status occupations are more likely to select private schools even after the introduction of the school choice programme, or they select public schools with higher scores. Adachi's average scores relative to the Tokyo average have improved, while the between school differences in scores have not expanded.     

The impact of school choice on student outcomes: an analysis of the Chicago Public Schools

We explore the impact of school choice on student outcomes in the context of open enrollment within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Roughly half of the students opt out of their assigned high school to attend a different CPS school, and these students are much more likely than those who remain in their assigned schools to graduate. To determine the source of this apparent benefit, we compare outcomes across (i) similar students with differential access to schooling options and (ii) travelers and non-travelers within the same school. The results suggest that, other than for students who select career academies, the observed cross-sectional benefits are likely spurious.     

The effects of generalized school choice on achievement and stratification: Evidence from Chile's voucher program

In 1981, Chile introduced nationwide school choice by providing vouchers to any student wishing to attend private school. As a result, more than 1000 private schools entered the market, and the private enrollment rate increased by 20 percentage points, with greater impacts in larger, more urban, and wealthier communities. We use this differential impact to measure the effects of unrestricted choice on educational outcomes. Using panel data for about 150 municipalities, we find no evidence that choice improved average educational outcomes as measured by test scores, repetition rates, and years of schooling. However, we find evidence that the voucher program led to increased sorting, as the “best” public school students left for the private sector.     

The effects of cognitive ability and high school quality on college entry decisions: nonparametric estimation of parameters of interest

The decisions to attend college are analysed and nonparametric predictions compared to those obtained from the widely used logit model. The impacts of measured cognitive ability and proxies for high school quality on the decisions to attend college are examined for a sample of white and black males and females from the USA. Two different parameters of interest which isolate the effects of ability and high school quality on college entry decisions are described and estimated by ‘integrating out’ the effect of other covariates. It is found that measured cognitive ability is an extremely important determinant of college entry for all race and gender groups. At the same point in the ability distribution, blacks are more likely to select into college than whites, and females more likely than males of the same racial group. Proxies for high school quality such as teacher education, student teacher ratios, school enrolment and library size are shown to have little or no effects on the likelihood of college entry for all race and gender groups. Further, predictions obtained from the flexible nonparametric analysis are found to be quite similar to those obtained from the logit model, suggesting that simpler fully parametric binary choice models perform quite well as modelling college entry decisions.     

Sorting,school performance and quality: Evidence from China

School choice reforms give talented students the option to sort out of low-performing schools but often leave disadvantaged students behind. This study shows how a Chinese city was successful in helping its low-performing schools to catch up by encouraging talented students to sort into these schools. The city identified eleven low-performing middle schools and guaranteed elite high school admission to their top ten-percent graduates. This study documents that the policy improved school performance by 0.19-0.26 standard deviations. Using data on lottery middle school assignment, I further test for potential mechanisms, including strategic sorting and improvement in school value-added.     

Test scores,educational opportunities,and individual choice

A model combining student preferences for college with university admissions decisions is estimated to provide information on the role of test scores in the determination of post-secondary educational opportunities in the U.S. In contrast to implications of much of the recent criticism of tests and their use, we find that scholastic aptitude test scores are more strongly related to student application and choice of college ‘quality’ than to college admissions decisions. In addition, although there is a substantial correlation between test scores and high school performance, we find that both post-secondary school preferences and ultimate opportunities are related as much to performance in high school as to test scores themselves. Although SAT scores certainly exclude some persons from schools, our findings indicate that they do not represent an overriding constraint on the college opportunities of high school graduates.     

School Choice and Segregation: Evidence from an Admission Reform*

We evaluate the effects of school choice on segregation using data from an admission reform in the Stockholm upper secondary schools. Before 2000, the students were assigned to their nearest school, but from the fall of 2000, the students can apply to any school within Stockholm and admission decisions are solely based on grades. As expected, the new admission policy increased segregation by ability. However, segregation by family background, and especially segregation between immigrants and natives, also increased significantly. The increase in segregation by family background can be explained by ability sorting, but the increase in ethnic segregation can not.     

How do school ‘report cards’ affect school choice decisions?

Abstract. We estimate the effect of information about school achievement that is disseminated to the public through websites and school ‘report cards’ on school choice decisions. We find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school‐level performance. Some parents’ school choice decisions respond to information soon after it becomes available. Others, including non‐English‐speaking parents, alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media. Parents in low‐income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information. JEL classification: I21, D83     

Assessing students’ equality of opportunity in OECD countries: the role of national- and school-level policies

This article analyses the relationship between equality of opportunity and the characteristics of the educational system, jointly considering country- and school-level policies. Because school social environment represents a fundamental channel in shaping educational opportunities, we consider all policies, recorded in PISA 2012 dataset, that affect the sorting of students to schools. We show that including sorting policies enriches the explanation of the socio-economic gradient, that is, the association between students’ performances and parental background, with respect to previous studies including only country-level features. The negative impact of early tracking on equality of opportunity is overvalued without including other sorting policies, while grouping students’ within-school by ability increases the socio-economic gradient and a greater students’ heterogeneity in the school reduces the gradient.     

Competition between private and public schools: testing stratification and pricing predictions

When there are peer effects in education, private schools have an incentive to vary tuition to attract relatively able students. Epple and Romano [American Economic Review 88(1) (1998) 33] develop a general equilibrium model characterizing equilibrium pricing and student selection into schools when peer effects are present. The model predicts that competition will lead private schools to give tuition discounts to more able students, and that this will give rise to an equilibrium exhibiting stratification by income and ability between the public and private sectors and to a hierarchy of schools within the private sector. The model also yields a variety of comparative-static predictions. The predictions of the model are tested in this paper using a unique data set assembled by Figlio and Stone [Research in Labor Economics (1999) 115]. Tests of equilibrium predictions of the model reveal that: The propensity to attend private school increases with both income and ability, and, among private schools, the propensity to attend the highest-tuition schools rises with both income and ability. Within private schools, tuition declines with student ability, with a substantial number of even high-income households paying little or no tuition. The correlation between income and ability is greater in public than private schools. Tests of comparative static predictions of the model reveal that: Both income and ability become stronger predictors of private school attendance as public school expenditure falls. Income becomes increasingly important in determining placement in the private school hierarchy as public school expenditure falls. Discounts to ability in the lowest-quality private school decline as public school expenditure rises while discounts to ability in the highest-quality private school are little affected by changes in public school expenditure. Expenditure in private schools rises as expenditure in public schools increases. These empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model.     

Which school systems sort weaker students into smaller classes? International evidence

We examine whether the sorting of high- and low-achieving students into classes of different sizes results in a regressive or compensatory pattern of class sizes for 18 national school systems. Sorting effects are identified by subtracting the causal effect of class size on performance from their total correlation. Our empirical results reveal strongly compensatory patterns of sorting within and especially between schools in many countries. Only the United States, which has a decentralized education finance and considerable residential mobility, exhibits regressive between-school sorting. Between-school sorting is more compensatory in systems with ability tracking. Within-school sorting is more compensatory where administrators rather than teachers assign students to classrooms.     

Sorting and inequality in Canadian schools

A student's peers are often thought to influence his or her educational outcomes. If so, an unequal distribution of advantaged and disadvantaged students across schools (“sorting”) in a community will amplify existing inequalities. This paper explores the relationship between the degree of sorting across schools within a community and educational inequality as measured by the variance of standardized high school exam scores within the community. Cross-sectional OLS estimates suggest that the variance of test scores is related to sorting by ethnicity, but not to sorting by income or parental education. We then implement two strategies for addressing endogeneity in the degree of sorting: a standard unobserved effects (first-difference) approach, and a first-difference/instrumental variables approach in which the structure of school choice (number and relative size of schools) is used to construct instruments for the degree of sorting. The results from both approaches indicate that the variance of test scores is related to sorting by home language and parental education, but not to sorting by income. Our results also suggest that reducing sorting would have little effect on inequality of outcomes in the typical Alberta community, but would have substantial effects in the larger cities.     

Birthday effect

According to the Turkish legal code, a student born in December must enrol in primary school alongside students born 11 months earlier in January. In this study, Turkish college admissions data is used to measure the effect of younger enrolment in primary school. It was found that students who are born in the second half of the year are less likely to be from selective public high schools, and are less likely to be successful in college admissions test. These results are consistent with disadvantages associated with younger enrolment in primary school.     

RISK AVERSION AND FIELD OF STUDY CHOICE: THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL ABILITY

Does the choice of field of study depend on individual risk aversion? The direction of the relationship between individual risk attitudes and type of university degree chosen is potentially ambiguous. On the one hand, risk averse individuals may prefer degree courses which allow high returns in the labour market; on the other hand, if these degrees expose students to a higher probability of dropping out, those who are more risk averse may be induced to choose less challenging fields. Using data from a sample of students enrolled at a middle‐sized Italian public university in 2009, we find that, controlling for a large number of individual characteristics, more risk averse students are more likely to choose any other field (Humanities, Engineering, and Sciences) rather than Social Sciences. We interpret this result bearing in mind that some of these fields, such as Humanities, involve a reduction in the risk of dropping out, while others (such as Engineering and Sciences) involve a lower risk in the labour market. It also emerges that the effect of risk aversion on degree choice is related to student ability. Risk averse students characterized by high abilities tend to prefer Engineering, while the propensity of risk averse students to enrol in Humanities decreases when ability increases, suggesting that the attention paid to labour market risks and drop‐out risk varies according to student skills.     

The effect of primary school type on the high school opportunities of migrant children in China

Using longitudinal data collected from China, this paper studies how primary school type affects migrant children’s high school opportunities. We use parental residence prior to a policy change in Shanghai as an instrument for primary school type, and find that migrant children who attended private primary schools are 10% less likely to enter high schools without retention than their counterparts who attended public primary schools. We show that both institutional barriers and learning at the primary school stage affect students’ probability of entering high school and whether they go to regular or vocational high schools.     

The impact of cost on the choice of university: evidence from Ontario

Abstract. This paper provides the first Canadian study of the link between cost to the student and the choice of university. Over the past two decades, there has been a substantial increase in the differences among Ontario universities in ‘net cost’ defined as tuition and fees minus the expected value to an academically strong student of a guaranteed merit scholarship. Our estimates generally indicate no relationship between net cost and the overall share of strong applicants that a university is able to attract. An increase in net cost is associated with an increase in the ratio of strong students from high‐income neighbourhoods to strong students from middle‐income and low‐income neighbourhoods in Arts and Science programs but not in Commerce and Engineering. Finally, more advantaged students are more likely to attend university, but merit aid is not of disproportionate benefit to those from more economically advantaged backgrounds, given registration. JEL classification: Health Education and Welfare     

Can information and counseling help students from poor rural areas go to high school? Evidence from China

Recent studies have shown that only about two-thirds of the students from poor, rural areas in China finish junior high school and enter high school. One factor that may be behind the low rates of high school attendance is that students may be misinformed about the returns to schooling or lack career planning skills. We therefore conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) using a sample of 131 junior high schools and more than 12,000 students to test the effects of providing information on returns or career planning skills on student dropout, academic achievement and plans to go to high school. Contrary to previous studies, we find that information does not have significant effects on student outcomes. Unlike information, counseling does have an effect. However, the effect is somewhat surprising. Our findings suggest that counseling increases dropouts and seems to lower academic achievement. In our analysis of the causal chain, we conclude that financial constraints and the poor quality of education in junior high schools in poor, rural areas (the venue of the study) may be contributing to the absence of positive impacts on student outcomes from information and counseling. The negative effects of counseling on dropout may also be due to the high and growing wages for unskilled labor (high opportunity costs) in China’s transitioning economy. It is possible that when our counseling curriculum informed the students about the reality of how difficult were the requirements for entering academic high school, it may have induced them to revise their benefit-cost calculations and come to the realization that they are better off dropping out and/or working less hard in school.     

The effects of the high school curriculum on school dropout

High school dropouts and their lower employment prospects are a major concern for developed countries. This article answers the question whether the high school curriculum has the potential to affect students’ dropout decision. Focusing on the curriculum is also motivated by the manifold curriculum reforms or reform initiatives worldwide. Using a quasi-experimental evaluation design, we identify the effects of a curriculum reform on students’ probability to drop out of high school in the short run, i.e. for the first three cohorts graduating under the new curriculum requirements. The reform increased the curriculum requirements in high school, for instance, by reducing the freedom of choice in course selection. The results show that high school dropout rates increased for males and females alike.     

学校类型与流动儿童的教育-来自上海的经验证据

本文根据在上海地区进行的问卷调查和标准化考试结果,考察学校类型对于流动儿童考试成绩的影响。我们在控制家庭和学生个人因素,并通过工具变量法调整学校选择的内生性问题后,发现在民工子弟学校就读和在公办学校就读的流动儿童之间仍存在较大的成绩差距。进一步的分位数回归结果显示学校类型对于成绩较差的学生影响更大。我们的研究结果与目前民工子弟学校教学质量普遍低于公办学校的观察相吻合。     

Crime and punishment: the role of student body characteristics in schools’ disciplinary behaviours

Discretion in schools’ discipline choices can provide an efficient and effective misconduct management structure, but could lead to discipline based on unrelated factors. Consequently, schools’ disciplinary decisions can significantly limit students’ access to education by removing students from familiar learning environments. We investigate schools’ disciplinary decisions for serious misconducts and show that punishments are more severe in schools that do not report misconducts to local law enforcement agencies. Moreover, we show that schools that report fewer misconducts to law enforcement impose more severe punishments when the student body is characterized as having a higher proportion of minority students, lower socioeconomic status students and a higher proportion of students who are below the 15th percentile of standardized test scores. These results suggest that between-school punishment differentials are associated with student body traits.