When Chicago parents get a choice via a lottery, their children attend higher-quality elementary schools than lottery losers, according to an NBER “working paper.” But there was no academic benefit for kindergarten and first-grade lottery winners.
We track students for up to five years and examine outcomes such as standardized test scores, grade retention and special education placement. Comparing lottery winners and losers, we find that lottery winners attend higher quality schools as measured by both the average achievement level of peers in the school as well as by value-added indicators of the school’s contribution to student learning. Yet, we do not find that winning a lottery systematically confers any evident academic benefits.
Via Eduwonkette, who also notes a previous study on school choice in Chicago at the high school level, “which also finds no academic benefits but important social benefits (i.e. fewer disciplinary problems and lower arrest rates).”
I wonder if the “lower arrest rates” statistic in the Chicago high school study reflects an actual difference in behavior. Maybe it does, or maybe the school choice kids were formerly basically good kids in bad schools, schools so bad that the good kids got caught up in police arrests. That is, maybe the school choice kids moved to their new schools and continued to do whatever they were doing in their old schools, but in their new schools they didn’t get arrested for it.