The Impact of School Choice on Public School Budgets: Evidence From Open Enrollment in New York City

Michah W. Rothbart

Public Budgeting & Finance, 2020, vol. 40, issue 4, 3-37

Abstract: This paper examines budgetary responses of public schools to competition from school choice, exploiting a discrete change in the choice set available to New York City high school students in 2003–2004. Schools facing increased competition (zoned, unscreened, and those with few applicants) increase per‐pupil expenditures on noninstructional functions, reducing resources for instruction. Thus, schools may face important tradeoffs when competing for applicants, including between quantity and academic quality of applicants and between incentives to reach capacity and to improve academic outcomes. While advocates claim that school choice improves academic achievement, these results may help explain mixed findings in the previous literature.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/pbaf.12267

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:pbudge:v:40:y:2020:i:4:p:3-37

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0275-1100

Access Statistics for this article

Public Budgeting & Finance is currently edited by Philip Joyce and William Simonsen

More articles in Public Budgeting & Finance from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().