Working Papers

Without abstracts | With abstracts

Integrating New York City Schools: The Role of Admission Criteria and Family Preferences
Updated January 2023 - Link to the Policy Brief - Revise and Resubmit at JPE

Abstract: Almost 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, most urban school districts remain segregated by race and income. School admission criteria could perpetuate segregation by limiting access. This paper uses recent screened-school admission reforms and a structural model to gauge the contribution of school admission criteria to segregation in New York City middle schools. Two admission reforms that reduced academic screening decreased economic and racial segregation, while prompting some White and high-income students to leave the traditional public school sector. These admission reforms also appear to have changed application behavior in a manner reinforcing their desegregating effects. I use a model of school demand that allows for strategic application behavior to predict the consequences of hypothetical city-wide admission reforms. The resulting estimates suggest that removing academic screening only modestly reduces school segregation. In contrast, dropping admission criteria based on geographic proximity reduces segregation markedly. On balance, only about half of NYC middle school segregation is due to school admission criteria, with the rest due to family preferences and residential sorting.

Can Selective School Admission Reforms Increase Student Achievement?
Updated May 2022

Abstract: The recent surge in admission reforms across selective US schools has been a source of much debate. The achievement consequences of these reforms hinge on which students benefit from attending these schools. I show that Boston exam schools have heterogeneous effects on achievement, driven primarily by the quality of applicants’ non-exam school alternatives rather than their demographic characteristics. Admission policies prioritizing students with weaker schooling alternatives thus have more potential to increase academic achievement than policies targeting specific demographic groups. Simulations of alternative admission criteria suggest that schemes reserving seats for such students are likely to yield the largest gains.

Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York  (with Joshua Angrist, Guthrie Gray-Lobe and Parag Pathak)
Updated December 2022 - Link to the Policy Brief

Abstract: School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the wake of court-mandated desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is costly, however, and has unclear integration and education consequences. We estimate the causal effects of non-neighborhood school assignment and school travel on integration and achievement using an identification strategy that exploits partly-random assignment variation arising from the Boston and New York City school matches. Instrumental variables estimates suggest distance and travel boost integration for those who choose to travel, but have little or no effect on test scores and college attendance. We argue that small effects on educational outcomes reflect modest effects of distance and travel on school quality, as measured by value-added.

Overcoming Racial Gaps in School Preferences: The Effect of Peer Diversity on School Choice (with Viola Corradini)
Updated November 2024 - Link to the Policy Brief

Abstract: Differences in school choice by race contribute to school segregation and unequal access to effective schools. Conditional on test score and district of residence, Black and Hispanic families consistently choose schools with fewer white and Asian students, lower average achievement, and lower value-added. This paper combines unique survey data and administrative data from New York City to identify the determinants of racial disparities in school choice and shows that attending a more diverse middle school can mitigate racial choice gaps. Instrumental variable estimates show that middle school students exposed to more diverse peers apply to and enroll in high schools that are also more diverse. These effects particularly benefit Black and Hispanic students who, as a result, enroll in higher value-added high schools. A post-application survey of guardians of high school applicants suggests that most cross-race differences in choice stem from information gaps and homophily in preferences for school demographics. The survey results also reveal that exposure to diverse middle school peers reduces racial differences in choices by addressing these underlying determinants: it increases preferences for peer diversity and broadens the range of known school options.

Work in Progress

Back to the Neighborhood: The Distributional Effects of Seattle's Return to Neighborhood Schools (with Raymond Han)

School Choice Search Under Uncertainty (with Viola Corradini)