Working Paper: NBER ID: w16746
Authors: Vilsa E. Curto; Roland G. Fryer Jr.
Abstract: The SEED schools, which combine a "No Excuses'' charter model with a five-day-a-week boarding program, are America's only urban public boarding schools for the poor. We provide the first causal estimate of the impact of attending SEED schools on academic achievement, with the goal of understanding whether changing a student's environment through boarding is a cost-effective strategy to increase achievement among the poor. Using admission lotteries, we show that attending a SEED school increases achievement by 0.198 standard deviations in reading and 0.230 standard deviations in math, per year of attendance. Despite these relatively large impacts, the return on investment in SEED is less than five percent due to the substantial costs of boarding. Similar "No Excuses'' charter schools -- without a boarding option -- have a return on investment of over eighteen percent.
Keywords: Urban Boarding Schools; Academic Achievement; Causal Estimates; Charter Schools
JEL Codes: I20; J01; J15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| enrollment (I23) | academic achievement (I24) |
| attending a seed school (I23) | closing the racial achievement gap (I24) |
| seed schools (I23) | academic achievement of the poorest minority students (I24) |
| attending a seed school (I23) | girls' scores higher than boys' scores (I24) |
| lottery offer (H27) | enrollment (I23) |
| attending a seed school (I23) | academic achievement (I24) |