@EdWorkingPaper{ai20-339,
title = "Climbing the College Ladder? The Effects of New Orleans School Reforms on College Outcomes and the Quality of Colleges that Students Attended",
author = "Beth Glenn, Douglas N. Harris",
institution = "Annenberg Institute at Brown University",
number = "339",
year = "2020",
month = "December",
URL = "http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai20-339",
abstract = {Multiple studies have documented the positive effect of school choice on college attendance. We focus instead on the quality of colleges, which is linked to higher graduation rates and later-in-life wages, especially for Black and Hispanic students. We examine the effect of the New Orleans school reforms, a district-wide reform creating an almost all-charter school district, on the quality of colleges that students attended. Using difference-in-differences analysis of statewide microdata, we find that the reforms led students to attend four-year colleges, and higher-quality ones, at higher rates. The reforms also increased the share of college-goers who were well matched to their colleges and this had little effect on transfer or persistence rates. Overall, these results reinforce that the reforms led students to attend higher-quality colleges that will improve long-term life outcomes.},
}