Effects Of School Choice Research Articles

Implications of school type for active commuting to school in primary education students

School choice has implications for school travel as it allows students to attend schools that are further away from their residence than their neighborhood schools. The aim was to study the implications of school choice (i.e., private or public) for active commuting to school (ACS). Differences on ACS, parental attitudes, socio-economic status (SES) and CO2 emissions with respect to the type of school and the threshold distance to ACS were analyzed. The influence of distance, parents' attitudes, and family socioeconomic status, in the frequency of ACS by type of school were also analyzed. All students aged 9 to 11 years old, from eleven public or private primary education schools in Huesca (Spain), and their parents (i.e., mother and father, separately), participated in this study. The results show differences among students, who live above the threshold distance and attend public and private schools, in terms of frequency of ACS, mothers’ attitudes, and SES. CO2 emissions were higher in the area around private schools than public schools, regardless of the threshold distance. Effects of school choice on weekly frequency of ACS behavior appear to be mostly explained by its connection with travel distance, SES and by mothers’ attitudes, in students attending public schools. While, for private schools, the final model showed an influence of distance, mother’s attitudes, and gender, on weekly frequency of ACS. This paper highlights how school choice can influence the mode of commuting to school, and some other related variables such as distance, mothers’ attitudes, and CO2 emissions.

The effects of school choice on mental health

ABSTRACT School choice allows families to choose schools that are more suited to their children. These choices may affect non-academic outcomes, including students’ mental health. We empirically examine the relationship between school choice and mental health using two methods. First, we use difference-in-differences to estimate the effects of state voucher and charter school laws on adolescent suicide rates. States adopting charter school laws witness declines in adolescent suicides, whereas private school voucher laws are generally not associated with statistically significant changes in suicides. Second, we use survey data to estimate the effects of private schooling on adult mental health. Controlling for a post-baseline measure of mental health and a variety of individual characteristics, the estimates suggest that private schooling reduces the likelihood that individuals report having mental health issues as adults.

The Effects of School Choice on Mental Health

School choice allows families to choose schools that are more suited to their children. These choices may affect non-academic outcomes, including students’ mental health. We empirically examine the relationship between school choice and mental health using two methods. First, we use difference-in-differences to estimate the effects of state voucher and charter school laws on adolescent suicide rates. States adopting broad-based voucher programs and charter schools witness declines in adolescent suicides. Second, we use survey data to estimate the effects of private schooling on adult mental health. Controlling for a post-baseline measure of mental health and a variety of individual characteristics, the estimates suggest that private schooling reduces the number of times individuals are seen for mental health issues.

The effects of school choice on achievement gaps between private and public high schools: Evidence from the Seoul high school choice program

In 2010, Seoul began a universal school choice program for high schools. The implementation of school choice introduced autonomy, competition, and sorting, barely existent when public and private schools were under strong governmental control. Using school-level panel data, this study investigated how a newly introduced school choice policy affected achievement gaps between private and public high schools. We found evidence that competition and autonomy have minimal impacts on the achievement of private and public high schools. However, we found that student sorting did significantly increase the achievements of private high schools, widening existing gaps between public high schools.

The Effect of School Choice on School Segregation by Academic Performance and Social and Economic Status

The Effect of School Choice on School Segregation by Academic Performance and Social and Economic Status

Composite Geographical Context and School Choice Attitudes in Sweden: A Study Based on Individually Defined, Scalable Neighborhoods

This article contributes both to the expanding literature on the effect of school choice and to the literature focusing on how to measure and conceptualize neighborhood effects. It uses a novel approach to the measurement of geographical context to analyze neighborhood influences on school choice attitudes among Swedish parents. Data on attitudes come from a survey of 3,749 families with children in upper primary school. Geographical context is measured using multi-scalar contextual factors based on socioeconomic indicators for individually defined, bespoke neighborhoods that incorporate from 12 to 12,800 people. The results show that parental motives for choosing schools in Sweden are strongly influenced by the social and ethnic composition of their own and their adjacent neighborhoods. Contrary to most other studies, we find effects of socioeconomic context stronger than the effects of the parents’ own social and ethnic background. Thus, parents living in academic, high-income areas put little stress on attending an assigned school, close-to-home schools, or stating that the municipality has influenced their decision. Furthermore, these attitudes become even stronger if nearby neighborhoods are dominated by visible minorities and disadvantaged groups. Supported by Sampson's ideas of coordinated perceptions among inhabitants in the same neighborhoods, we explain these surprisingly strong contextual effects with the idea that school choice motives are especially sensitive to neighbors’ ideas and easily influenced as measured preferences in a survey.

The Effect of School Choice on Student's Academic Performance: Evidence from Policy Change in Korea

We test the effect of school choice on students’ academic performance by exploiting the change in high school assignment program in Seoul, Korea from within-district randomization to open enrollment. Using administrative level data on high school students’ National Assessment of Educational Achievement test scores, we find no evidence that enhanced school choice improved average test scores in Seoul. However, we find differential effects across school types – regular high schools’ test scores fell whereas newly converted selective private high schools’ test scores rose substantially. Increased sorting across schools is shown to have adverse effects particularly on low-ability students.

Behaviors, Noncognitive Skills, and School Choice

While choice opponents and proponents tend to focus on how programs impact achievement, the growing body of research indicating a strong relationship between future outcomes and noncognitive skills indicates a need to broaden the basis for assessing programs. This article synthesizes the existing literature on the development of noncognitive skills in private schools, charter schools, and public school choice programs. Comprehensive knowledge of the effects of school choice should include an understanding of the promotion of noncognitive skills and socially acceptable behavior in choice settings. This article highlights the need for future research examining the impacts of schools of choice on noncognitive skill development and student behaviors.

Evaluating School Choice Policies: A Response to Harry Brighouse

In his writings on school choice and educational justice, Harry Brighouse presents normative evaluations of various choice systems. This paper responds to Brighouse's claim that it is inadequate to criticise these evaluations with reference to empirical data concerning the effects of school choice.(Orig.)

Effects of school choice on the margin: The cream is already skimmed

Critics of school choice argue that cream-skimming will worsen outcomes for those left behind in public schools. Since “high ability” families may have already sorted themselves out of the schools in question, this paper will examine whether existing within-school heterogeneity leaves any scope for cream-skimming to operate. It asks, “given the current level of within-school heterogeneity, how strong would peer effects have to be to significantly worsen outcomes for those left behind?” In order for cream-skimming to lower math test scores by one half-year's progress, the peer effect would have to be as strong as increasing class sizes by 8–20 students, or cutting per-student funding by $400–2000. These results indicate that current levels of within-school heterogeneity are so low that peer effects would have to be unrealistically strong to give cream-skimming any bite.

Private Schools and the Parents that Choose Them: Empirical Evidence from the Danish School Voucher System

Research on the effect of school choice on student performance has generally been based on small‐scale experiments or comparisons of Catholic and public schools in the United States. Recent studies indicate, however, that the market competition stemming from school vouchers does not affect all private schools equally. This study makes use of individual‐level register data on the performance of more than 30,000 students in Denmark, where private schools have been voucher‐financed for more than 100 years, while public schools are governed and financed by the politico‐administrative system. Using an instrumental variable model to exclude selection effects, the results show no significant average effect of private schooling on final examination scores. However, a multilevel model shows that private schools of high socio‐economic status perform better than similar public schools, while private schools of low socio‐economic status under‐perform – even for individual students with high socio‐economic status. This indicates that the institutional setting of a voucher system is not enough to raise educational performance in general, arguably because some parents choose schools on the basis of non‐academic criteria.

Analysis on the effect of school choice on student achievement based on PISA 2003 database

Analysis on the effect of school choice on student achievement based on PISA 2003 database

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL CHOICE IN ENGLAND

The British government has placed the extension of school choice at the centre of its education reform programme for its third term in office. Those promoting choice make an appeal to a simple economic argument. Competitive pressure helps make private firms more efficient and consumer choice acts as a major drive for efficiency. Giving parents the ability to choose applies competitive pressure to schools and, analogously with private markets, it is assumed they will raise their game to attract business. This article subjects this assumption to the scrutiny provided by the theoretical and empirical economic evidence on school choice, and then uses the evidence to examine the potential impact of current policies to extend choice being proposed by the Labour government. The key question we address is whether policies that extend choice will improve educational outcomes and, if so, under what circumstances. We reach three main conclusions. First, increasing school choice will create losers as well as winners. Second, flexibility in the supply of school places is crucial to the success of a policy to extend school choice. Third, the role of peer groups partly determines the effects of school choice.

The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self-reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.

Gender and Performance: Evidence from School Assignment by Randomized Lottery

School choice programs are intended to improve student achievement, by allowing for better matches between students and schools. It is not clear, however, that academic achievement will improve if parents make school choice decisions over both academic and nonacademic school attributes (Justine S. Hastings et al., 2005, 2006). Indeed, many randomized studies of impacts of school choice find little or no effect of school choice on academic outcomes. For example, initial evaluations of randomized voucher experiments in Milwaukee and New York City found modest academic impacts on eligible students (John F. Witte et al., 1995; Daniel P. Mayer et al., 2002). More recently, evaluations of public school choice lotteries in Chicago and Charlotte have found no difference between the average lottery winner and loser in academic outcomes such as test scores (Julie Cullen et al., 2003; Hastings et al., 2006). When parents are choosing schools for academic and nonacademic reasons, school choice may increase utility but not necessarily improve academic outcomes. There is growing evidence that educational interventions may have heterogeneous treatment effects by gender. Analysis of the Moving To Opportunity demonstration, in which parents were randomly given the opportunity to move to nonpoverty neighborhoods, found improvements in education, mental health, and criminal behavior for females, but negative effects on males (Jeffrey R. Kling and Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2004). Similarly, Michael Anderson (2005) reanalyzed data from three randomized trials of early childhood education and found that all of the long-term benefits accrued to girls and not to boys. We use data from a public school choice program, with school assignment by lottery, to estimate the impacts on academic outcomes by race and gender of attending a first-choice school. Our data come from the CharlotteMecklenburg school district (CMS) in North Carolina, which introduced district-wide public school choice in the fall of 2002 after a racebased busing plan was terminated by the courts. The data include students’ choices, lottery numbers, school assignments, demographics, and academic achievement for the years surrounding implementation of school choice. We compare outcomes for those making similar choices, whose school assignment was determined solely by lottery number. Overall, there was no gain in academic achievement for those winning the lottery. White females did experience significant improvements in test scores when randomized into their first choice school, however. White females were also more likely to choose academically focused magnets and, among those who won the lottery, reported significant increases in time spent on homework. Our evidence suggests that school choice programs may have heterogeneous treatment effects by gender, which are related to differences in the factors driving parental choices.

The Role of Information and Institutional Arrangements in Stemming the Stratifying Effects of School Choice

The design and implementation of school choice programs have emerged as critical issues in debates about how to reform American schools. At the core of these debates are issues of equity and fairness. For example, does the introduction of school choice lead to greater stratification along racial and socio-economic dimensions? Do all parents have equal access to the choice programs available to them? In this study I investigate such questions by first reviewing previous research that examines how school choice affects the equality of educational opportunities and then developing a framework and a set of testable hypotheses that provide a better understanding of how institutional, demographic, and contextual factors affect potential inequities in those who participate in school choice. In applying this framework to evaluate the public school choice programs of two inner-city New York districts, I find that institutional arrangements and information play a critical role in the distribution of educational opportunity. In East Harlem’s District 4, the gap in participation levels among advantaged and disadvantaged parents has been bridged not only by the maturity of the choice program and the institutional structures that are in place to disseminate and facilitate the flow of information, but also because the district culture and norms reinforce choice behavior among parents.

The More Things Change ... The Missing Impact of Marketisation?

This paper uses longitudinal data from the secondary schools in six of the new unitary authorities in South Wales—Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil, Dridgend, Caerphilfy and Rhondda Cynon Taff local education authorities—to provide an empirical test of the academic debate concerning the likely effects of school choice on the social composition of differing schools. Using several measures of segregation between schools, including a new one calculated from eligibility for free meals, the study concludes that the introduction of choice reforms for England and Wales in 1988 may have had a small but significant positive effect on the pre‐existing social stratification between schools. In coming to this conclusion, the study inevitably raises questions about the findings generated by some previous qualitative studies of markets and choice in education.

Educational Choice: The Stratifying Effects of Selecting Schools and Courses

The current political climate of educational reform very actively focuses on the positive aspects of increasing parental choice of children's schools, but there is little discussion of (and scant empirical research on) the potentially negative effects of increasing choice. This article examines the rich empirical base on another aspect of choice in education-curriculum choice-to draw parallels between the potentially harmful effects of both types of choice. Specifically, it has been shown that a wide latitude of student choice of courses in high school magnifies the social stratification of educational outcomes. This socially undesirable consequence results from two well-documented relationships: (a) Following a more demanding set of academic courses in high school is strongly and positively associated with higher academic achievement, and (b) less advantaged students are considerably less likely to select such a demanding course of study than are their more academically and socially advantaged counterparts. Additionally, academically and socially disadvantaged students and their families are less likely to seek out, or have access to, information about the consequences of their choices (of either schools or courses). If our society is unwilling to accept any educational reform that increases the inequitable distribution of educational outcomes among diverse social and racial groups, as is argued in this article, then we must take a hard look at the possible effects of school choice in this regard.