Closing the Gaps: An Examination of Early Impacts of Dallas ISD’s Opt-out Policy on Advanced Course Enrollment

While there is consensus that taking advanced coursework in high school is strongly related to subsequent academic outcomes, well-qualified Students of Color are less likely than White students to take advanced high school courses. K12 schools have sought strategies to encourage more qualified Students of Color to take advanced courses in secondary school. One policy that has gained traction is the “opt-out” policy. Traditionally, qualified students must opt-in to enroll in advanced coursework, and many qualified students - particularly those of color - fail to do so. Under an “opt-out” policy, qualified students are automatically enrolled in advanced coursework and must have their guardian sign off to get permission to enroll in less advanced courses. We use synthetic control methods to examine the causal effect of an opt-out policy first implemented in 2018-19 in Dallas ISD (DISD), one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the nation, on advanced course enrollment. Results show a significant increase in the overall number of students taking Algebra I before high school in DISD, about 13 percentage points more, due to the opt-out policy, but this effect was concentrated in Hispanic and White students. Thus, the enrollment gap between Hispanic and White students decreased significantly, but the gap between Black and White students did not change. Descriptive analysis suggests that Black students did not benefit as much likely due in part to having fewer students meet the auto enrollment criterion, more students leaving DISD, and fewer non-honors track students taking Algebra I by 8th grade.