Increasing Access to Selective High Schools through Place-Based Affirmative Action: Unintended Consequences

Lisa Barrow, Lauren Sartain and Marisa de la Torre

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2020, vol. 12, issue 4, 135-63

Abstract: We investigate whether elite Chicago public high schools differentially benefit high-achieving students from more and less affluent neighborhoods. Chicago's place-based affirmative action policy allocates seats based on achievement and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES). Using regression discontinuity design (RDD), we find that these schools do not raise test scores overall, but students are generally more positive about their high school experiences. For students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate negative effects on grades and the probability of attending a selective college. We present suggestive evidence that these findings for students from low-SES neighborhoods are driven by the negative effect of relative achievement ranking.

JEL-codes: H75 I21 I24 I28 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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DOI: 10.1257/app.20170599

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