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The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries
Author(s) -
Cullen Julie Berry,
Jacob Brian A,
Levitt Steven
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00702.x
Subject(s) - lottery , peer effects , exploit , variety (cybernetics) , randomized controlled trial , randomized experiment , psychology , outcome (game theory) , economics , actuarial science , social psychology , medicine , microeconomics , computer science , computer security , surgery , pathology , artificial intelligence
School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self‐reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.