Do Parents Value School Effectiveness?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Abdulkadiroglu, Atila; Pathak, Parag A.; Schellenberg, Jonathan; Walters, Christopher R.
• 署名单位: Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20172040
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 1502-1539
• 关键词: charter high-schools; public-schools; instrumental variables; econometric-models; CHOICE; COMPETITION; college; teachers; preferences; achievement

摘要

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.