Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
971536 Journal of Urban Economics 2013 14 Pages PDF
Abstract

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country’s largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created small schools have positive effects on graduation and some other education outcomes while older small schools do not. Importantly, we show that ignoring this source of treatment effect heterogeneity by assuming a common small school effect yields a misleading zero effect of small school attendance.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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