Central city school administrative policy: systematically passing undeserving students

Abstract

Local public schools must satisfy the electorate to pass tax levies and re-elect school board members. Central city schools seem to pursue these goals differently than suburban or non-metropolitan schools. While something about Ohio's central city schools depresses standardized test scores, that same something raises graduation rates, all else constant. This paper argues that social promotion may be the cause. It therefore seems that central city school districts perform poorly independent of school and neighborhood factors, yet they consciously choose to pass students through the system. The results are obtained using both weighted least squares and 2SLS analysis. [ JEL D73, H40, I21]