Working Paper: NBER ID: w28280
Authors: Kalena Cortes; Daniel Klasik
Abstract: The Top 10% Plan admissions policy has now been in place in Texas for over two decades. We analyze 18 years of post-Top 10% Plan data to look for evidence of increased access to the selective Texas flagship campuses among all Texas high schools. We provide a detailed description of changes in enrollment patterns at the flagship campuses from Texas high schools after the implementation of the Top 10% Plan, focusing on whether the policy resulted in new sending patterns from high schools that did not have a history of sending students to the flagship campuses. Our analysis reveals an increase in the likelihood that high schools in non-suburban areas sent students to the flagship campuses, but ultimately little to no equity-producing effects of the Top 10% Plan over this 18-year period. In fact, the representation of traditional, always-sending, feeder high schools on the flagship campuses continued to dwarf the population of students from other high schools. Thus, the purported high school representation benefits of the policy appear to be overstated and may not go as far as advocates might have hoped in terms of generating equity of access to the flagship campuses in the state.
Keywords: Top 10 Plan; Texas; flagship institutions; college admissions; racial diversity
JEL Codes: I21; I23; I24; J18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Top 10 Plan (Y10) | increased likelihood of sending students from nonsuburban high schools to flagship campuses (I24) |
| increased likelihood of sending students from nonsuburban high schools to flagship campuses (I24) | did not lead to regular sending patterns (L87) |
| Top 10 Plan (Y10) | changes in sending patterns trivially related to racial composition of high schools (R23) |
| financial assistance programs (I38) | increased likelihood of sending students from participating high schools to flagship campuses (I23) |