Centralized admission systems and school segregation: Evidence from a national reform

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the adoption of centralized school admission systems can alter within-school socio-economic diversity relative to decentralized settings. We take advantage of the largest school-admission reform implemented to date: Chile’s SAS, which in 2016 replaced the country’s decentralized system with a Deferred Acceptance algorithm. We exploit its sequential introduction across regions to quantify its heterogeneous impact on segregation. The empirical analysis is carried out using administrative data and a Difference-in-Difference strategy. Our findings do not suggest an overall improvement in the representation of low-SES students across schools. SAS, however, increased within-school segregation in districts with high levels of pre-existing residential segregation or an extensive presence of private schools. The migration of high-SES students attending publicly funded schools to private institutions emerges as a potential driver.