Working Paper: NBER ID: w23912
Authors: Atila Abdulkadiroglu; Parag A. Pathak; Jonathan Schellenberg; Christopher R. Walters
Abstract: School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents’ choices reward effective schools and punish ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics. We study relationships among parent preferences, peer quality, and causal effects on outcomes for applicants to New York City’s centralized high school assignment mechanism. We use applicants’ rank-ordered choice lists to measure preferences and to construct selection-corrected estimates of treatment effects on test scores, high school graduation, college attendance, and college quality. Parents prefer schools that enroll high-achieving peers, and these schools generate larger improvements in short- and long-run student outcomes. Preferences are unrelated to school effectiveness and academic match quality after controlling for peer quality.
Keywords: School Choice; Educational Outcomes; Peer Quality; Causal Effectiveness
JEL Codes: I21; I24; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| parent preferences (J13) | school choice (I21) |
| peer quality (C92) | student outcomes (A21) |
| school effectiveness (I21) | parent preferences (J13) |
| peer quality (C92) | school effectiveness (I21) |
| school choice (I21) | screening processes (C90) |
| school choice (I21) | instructional quality (L15) |