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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 27-40 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Journal of Urban Economics |
Volume | 77 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2013 |
Keywords
- Education reform
- Heterogeneous treatment
- Instrumental variables
- Small schools
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics
- Urban Studies