School Choice
Neighbors' Spillovers on High School Choice
Do residential neighbors affect each others' schooling choices? We exploit oversubscription lotteries in Chile's centralized school admission system to identify the effect of close neighbors on application and enrollment decisions. A student is 5-7% more likely to rank a high school as their… more →
The Effect of Taxpayer-Funded Education Savings Accounts on Private School Tuition: Evidence from Iowa
Does state implementation of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are voucher-like taxpayer-funded subsidies for children to attend private schools, increase tuition prices? We analyze a novel longitudinal dataset for all private schools in Iowa and Nebraska, neighboring states that adopted… more →
Constrained Agency and the Architecture of Educational Choice: Evidence from New York City
Many school districts consider family preferences in allocating students to schools. In theory, this approach provides traditionally disadvantaged families greater access to high-quality schools by weakening the link between residential location and school assignment. We leverage data on the… more →
Competitive Effects of Charter Schools
Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging three alternative identification strategies, we explore how increase in access to charter schools in twelve districts in Florida affects students remaining in traditional public schools (TPS). We… more →
Is Reputational Pressure Enough to Create Competitive School Choice Effects? Evidence from Seoul’s School Choice Policy
During the pandemic, a number of states instituted hold-harmless funding policies to protect school district financially from declining enrollments (Center for Public Education, 2021). In addition, some school choice policies have protected traditional public schools financially from declining… more →
The Stickiness of Pandemic-Driven Disenrollment from Public Schools
The extent to which pandemic-induced public school enrollment declines will persist is unclear. Student-level data from Michigan through fall 2021 yields three relevant findings. First, relative to pre-pandemic trends, fall 2021 enrollment had partially recovered for low-income, Black, and… more →
For-profit milk in nonprofit cartons? The case of nonprofit charter schools subcontracting with for-profit education management organizations
There is growing concern that some nonprofit public service providers may be nonprofit in name but not in fact. We consider this concern in the context of nonprofit charter schools, which sometimes subcontract their daily operations to for-profit management organizations. We use unique data from… more →
The Causal Impact of Charter Schools on Private Tutoring Prevalence
Greater school choice leads to lower demand for private tutoring according to various international studies, but this has not been explicitly tested for the U.S. context. To estimate the causal effect of charter school appearances on neighboring private tutoring prevalence, we employ a… more →
Structured Choice: School Segregation at the Intersection of Policy and Preferences
This paper conceptualizes segregation as a phenomenon that emerges from the intersection of public policy and individual decision-making. Contemporary scholarship on complex decision-making describes a two-step process—1) Editing and 2) Selection— and has emphasized the individual decision-maker… more →
Cream Skimming and Pushout of Students Participating in a Statewide Private School Voucher Program
A pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream-skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less challenging, or less costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may “pushout” low-achieving, more challenging, or more costly students. Using longitudinal… more →
Segregating Gotham's Youngest: Racial/Ethnic Sorting and the Choice Architecture of New York City’s Pre-K for All
New York City’s Pre-K for All (PKA) is the Nation’s largest universal early childhood initiative, currently serving some 70,000 four-year-olds. Stemming from the program’s choice architecture as well as the City’s stark residential segregation, PKA programs are extremely segregated by… more →
Choice and Change: The Implications of Charter School Expansion for School and Neighborhood Diversity in NYC
In this paper we estimate the effect of charter schools on the diversity of nearby traditional public schools (TPSs) and neighborhoods in New York City. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the differences in the expansion of the charter sector between grades in the same… more →
Public School Choice, Outside Options, and Public School Enrollment
In this paper, I study the effect of winning the public school choice lottery on public school enrollment. In particular, I look at how different outside options affect how sensitive students are to receiving their first choice in the public school lottery, focusing on three measures of outside… more →
How Do Charter Schools Affect System-Level Test Scores and Graduation Rates? A National Analysis
We study the combined effects of charter schools, and their various mechanisms, on a national level and across multiple outcomes. Using difference-in-differences and fixed effects methods, we find that charter entry (above 10 percent market share) increases high school graduation rate in… more →
When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice
This paper reports the results of a large, school-level randomized controlled trial evaluating a set of three informational interventions for young people choosing high schools in 473 middle schools, serving over 115,000 8th graders. The interventions differed in their level of customization to… more →
The ‘Good’ Schools: Academic Performance Data, School Choice, and Segregation
We examine the effects of disseminating academic performance data—either status, growth, or both—on parents’ school choices and their implications for racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. We conduct an online survey experiment featuring a nationally representative sample of parents and… more →
Why Does Education Increase Voting? Evidence from Boston’s Charter Schools
In the United States, people with more education vote more. But, we know little about why education increases political participation or whether higher-quality education increases civic participation. We study applicants to Boston charter schools, using school lotteries to estimate charter… more →
The Pandemic’s Effect on Demand for Public Schools, Homeschooling, and Private Schools
The Covid-19 pandemic drastically disrupted the functioning of U.S. public schools, potentially changing the relative appeal of alternatives such as homeschooling and private schools. Using longitudinal student-level administrative data from Michigan and nationally representative data from the… more →
Distribution of Education Savings Accounts Usage Among Families: Evidence from the Florida Gardiner Program
Education savings accounts (ESAs) are education funding mechanisms that allow for families to receive a deposit of public funds to a government-authorized savings account. Using student-level longitudinal data, this paper examines how families participating in the Florida Gardiner Scholarship… more →
The Kids on the Bus: The Academic Consequences of Diversity-Driven School Reassignments
Many public school diversity efforts rely on reassigning students from one school to another. While opponents of such efforts articulate concerns about the consequences of reassignments for students’ educational experiences, little evidence exists regarding these effects, particularly in… more →