COMPETITION IN PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS: CHARTER SCHOOL ENTRY,STUDENT SORTING,AND SCHOOL INPUT DETERMINATION

This article develops and estimates an equilibrium model of charter school entry, school input choices, and student school choices. The structural model renders a comprehensive and internally consistent picture of treatment effects when there may be general equilibrium effects of school competition. Simulations indicate that the mean effect of charter schools on attendant students is positive and varies widely across locations. The mean spillover effect on public school students is small but positive. Lifting caps on charter schools would more than double entry but reduce gains for attendant students.     

Charter school quality and parental decision making with school choice

Charter schools have become a very popular instrument for reforming public schools, because they expand choices, facilitate local innovation, and provide incentives for the regular public schools while remaining under public control. Despite their conceptual appeal, analysis has been hindered by the selective nature of their student populations. This paper investigates the quality of charter schools in Texas in terms of mathematics and reading achievement and finds that average school quality in the charter sector is not significantly different from that in regular public schools after an initial start-up period but that there is considerable heterogeneity. Perhaps more important for policy, however, is the finding that the parental decision to exit a charter school is significantly related to school quality. The magnitude of this relationship is substantially larger than the relationship between the probability of exit and quality in the regular public school sector and consistent with the notion that the introduction of charter schools substantially reduces the transactions costs of switching schools.     

Stuck in the middle: Impacts of grade configuration in public schools

We examine the implications of separating students of different grade levels across schools for the purposes of educational production. Specifically, we find that moving students from elementary to middle school in 6th or 7th grade causes significant drops in academic achievement. These effects are large (about 0.15 standard deviations), present for both math and English, and persist through grade 8, the last year for which we have achievement data. The effects are similar for boys and girls, but stronger for students with low levels of initial achievement. We instrument for middle school attendance using the grade range of the school students attended in grade 3, and employ specifications that control for student fixed effects. This leaves only one potential source of bias–correlation between grade range of a student's grade 3 school and unobservable characteristics that cause decreases in achievement precisely when students are due to switch schools–which we view as highly unlikely. We find little evidence that placing public school students into middle schools during adolescence is cost-effective.     

Grain inflation: Identifying agent discretion in response to a conditional school nutrition program

Many incentive programs rely on local agents with significant discretion to allocate benefits. We estimate the degree of discretion exercised by teachers within a conditional transfer program designed to improve nutrition and encourage student attendance in Mumbai, India. The program allocates grain to students every month their attendance exceeds 80% , creating an incentive for teachers to inflate attendance to benefit certain students. We find that teachers manipulate students' records, altering the incentives to attend school. The teachers' response also varies across students. Teachers inflate more for girls, better students, and students from lower castes, but less for Muslim students.     

Encouraging Tutorial Attendance at University Did Not Improve Performance

When tertiary education is subsidised the cost of poor student performance in university subjects falls not only on the individual student but also on society in general. Society therefore has an interest in promoting student performance. There is evidence in the literature that absenteeism from university classes is widespread and that absenteeism adversely affects student performance. In this paper I describe an incentive scheme that increased attendance of business and economics students in an introductory statistics subject at a typical Australian university. Like other authors I find a strong positive association between attendance and academic performance, both in the presence and absence of the scheme. However, there is no evidence that the incentive scheme caused student performance to improve. Although students attended more classes they did not perform better than students in the previous year's class who had the same observable characteristics and attendance levels but who were not exposed to the scheme.     

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 Effect of Attending a Small Class in the Early Grades on College-test Taking and Middle School Test Results: Evidence from Project Star

This paper provides a long-term follow-up analysis of students who participated in the Tennessee STAR experiment. In this experiment, students and their teachers were randomly assigned to small, regular-size, or regular-size classes with a teacher aide in the first four years of school. We analyse the effect of past attendance in small classes on student test scores and whether they took the ACT or SAT college entrance exam. Attending a small class in the early grades is associated with an increased likelihood of taking a college-entrance exam, especially among minority students, and somewhat higher test scores.     

How Would One Extra Year of High School Affect Academic Performance in University? Evidence from an Educational Policy Change

This paper uses a unique policy change in Ontario, Canada, to provide direct evidence on how reducing the length of high school would impact student performance in university. After a five‐year educational program was eliminated from Ontario high schools and replaced with a four‐year program, two graduating cohorts with different amounts of high school education simultaneously entered university. The results demonstrate that students who receive one less year of high school education perform significantly worse than their counterparts in all subjects, even after the age difference between the cohorts is accounted for.     

THE RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

ABSTRACT ** :  This analysis compares the technical efficiency of charter school primary and secondary campuses with that of comparable campuses in traditional Texas school districts. Charter schools are hybrids—publicly funded, but not required to meet all the state regulations releant for traditional schools. Student performance is measured using value added on standardized tests in reading and mathematics, and efficiency is measured using the input distance function. The analysis suggests that at least in Texas, charter schools are substantially more efficient than traditional public schools.     

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.     

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.     

Degree performance of Economics students in UK universities: absolute and relative performance in prior qualifications

We exploit individual‐level data on full cohorts of UK university leavers who were enrolled for an Economics degree during the period 1984–85 to 1992–93 or the academic year 1997–98. We analyse the determinants of degree performance and find that performance depends not only on prior qualifications as measured by A‐level scores, for example, but also on the individual student's ranking (based on their A‐level scores) within their cohort at their university. The students' performance is also enhanced by having previously studied mathematics, although there is no benefit from the prior study of Economics. We find that attendance at an Independent school has a negative effect on degree performance, and that there are comparatively few social class background effects. Females are more likely than males to obtain a good degree.     

School Finance Induced Migration and Stratification Patterns: The Impact of Private School Vouchers

This paper introduces a general equilibrium model of public school finance that includes: (i) multiple school districts that finance local public schools via property taxes set by majority vote; (ii) multiple neighborhoods within school districts where each neighborhood is characterized by a quality level of housing; (iii) local public schools that are obligated to admit all interested students who reside within the school district; (iv) private schools that function as clubs of parents who share the cost of the private school equally and who can choose to exclude others; (v) an educational production process that depends on both per pupil spending and average peer quality within the school; and (vi) individual peer quality levels that are correlated with the socioeconomic status of households. Since it allows for various degrees of imperfect stratification of residents across communities, the model is well suited for investigating empirically relevant migration forces induced by school finance reform proposals. The abstract model itself, however, is too complex to yield many analytic results. A computational counterpart to the model isnb therefore developed, calibrated to data, and utilized for policy experiments. In particular, the impact of vouchers in the context of different types of prevoucher educational finance systems is investigated, and it is found that migration patterns in general would cause vouchers to benefit public schools in poor communities while hurting public schools in wealthy communities.     

THE INFLUENCE OF TYPE OF HIGH SCHOOL ATTENDED ON UNIVERSITY PERFORMANCE*

It is widely reported that the main determinant of success at university is the score on university entrance exams. Recent studies have argued that the outcomes at university also differ according to the type of high school attended. This paper examines the impact of attending a non‐Government school on the marks of first‐year university students. Non‐Government school students are found to have lower marks at university than Government school students, with the mark differential being slightly larger for those who do not perform well at tertiary study. The main factors influencing the size of the gap between the university marks of students from Government and non‐Government schools are university entrance exam results and attendance at same‐sex high schools.     

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.     

Does reducing student support affect scholastic performance? Evidence from a Dutch reform

This paper investigates the impact of student support on performance and time allocation of students in Dutch higher education. In 1996 the maximum duration of grants was reduced by 1 year, and thereby limited to the nominal duration of the study program. This reform could have had substantial financial consequences for students. We evaluate the effects of the reform using a difference-in-differences approach. Our main findings are that after the reform, students early in their study (i) switched less to other programs, (ii) obtained higher grades, while (iii) they did not spend more time studying or working. In addition, for students not older than 20 years when they started their study we find larger effects on all performance variables (switching, percentage of completed courses, graduation in the first year and grade point averages). These findings are consistent with recent evidence on heterogeneous treatment effects for higher ability students.     

When do better schools raise housing prices? Evidence from Paris public and private schools

In this paper, we investigate how housing prices react to the quality of education offered by neighboring public and private schools. The organization of secondary schooling in the city of Paris, which combines residence-based assignment to public schools with a well-developed and almost entirely publicly funded private school system, offers a valuable empirical context for analyzing how private schools affect the capitalization of public school performance in housing prices. Using comprehensive data on both schools and real estate transactions over the period 1997–2004, we develop a matching framework to carefully compare sales across school attendance boundaries. We find that a standard deviation increase in public school performance raises housing prices by 1.4 to 2.4%. Moreover, we show that the capitalization of public school performance in the price of real estate shrinks as the availability of private schools increases in the neighborhood. Our results confirm the predictions of general equilibrium models of school choice that private schools, by providing an advantageous outside option to parents, tend to mitigate the impact of public school performance on housing prices.     

STUDENT OUTCOMES AT UNIVERSITY IN AUSTRALIA: A QUANTILE REGRESSION APPROACH*

Students’ success during their first year at university is largely influenced by their university entrance score. Personal characteristics and secondary school characteristics also impact on success. This paper uses quantile regression to investigate how the effects of these factors vary along the grade distribution. It finds that the factors which influence grades have a more pronounced impact on the success of low‐achieving students than on that of high‐achieving students. These results have implications for student selection and also for the way scholarships may be used to attract talented high school students.     

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