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Increasing Access to Selective High Schools through Place-Based Affirmative Action: Unintended Consequences†

Increasing Access to Selective High Schools through Place-Based Affirmative Action: Unintended... AbstractWe investigate whether elite Chicago public high schools differentially benefit high-achieving students from more and less affluent neighborhoods. Chicago’s place-based affirmative action policy allocates seats based on achievement and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES). Using regression discontinuity design (RDD), we find that these schools do not raise test scores overall, but students are generally more positive about their high school experiences. For students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate negative effects on grades and the probability of attending a selective college. We present suggestive evidence that these findings for students from low-SES neighborhoods are driven by the negative effect of relative achievement ranking. (JEL H75, I21, I24, I28, R23) http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Economic Journal Applied Economics American Economic Association

Increasing Access to Selective High Schools through Place-Based Affirmative Action: Unintended Consequences†

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Publisher
American Economic Association
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 © American Economic Association
ISSN
1945-7790
DOI
10.1257/app.20170599
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractWe investigate whether elite Chicago public high schools differentially benefit high-achieving students from more and less affluent neighborhoods. Chicago’s place-based affirmative action policy allocates seats based on achievement and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES). Using regression discontinuity design (RDD), we find that these schools do not raise test scores overall, but students are generally more positive about their high school experiences. For students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate negative effects on grades and the probability of attending a selective college. We present suggestive evidence that these findings for students from low-SES neighborhoods are driven by the negative effect of relative achievement ranking. (JEL H75, I21, I24, I28, R23)

Journal

American Economic Journal Applied Economics – American Economic Association

Published: Oct 1, 2020

References