Pathways to an Elite Education: Application, Admission, and Matriculation to New York City's Specialized High Schools

Sean Corcoran and E. Christine Baker-Smith
Additional contact information
E. Christine Baker-Smith: Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development New York University New York, NY 10003 Author email: christine.baker-smith@nyu .edu

Education Finance and Policy, 2018, vol. 13, issue 2, 256-279

Abstract: New York City's public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous, college preparatory education to the city's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students using a single entrance exam has raised questions about diversity and equity in access. In this paper, we provide a descriptive analysis of the “pipeline” from middle school to matriculation at a specialized high school, identifying group-level differences in application, admission, and enrollment. In doing so, we highlight potential points of intervention to improve access for underrepresented groups. Controlling for other measures of prior achievement, we find black, Hispanic, low-income, and female students are significantly less likely to qualify for admission to a specialized high school. Differences in application and matriculation rates also affect the diversity in these schools, and we find evidence of middle school “effects” on both application and admission. Simulated policies that offer admissions using alternative measures, such as state test scores and grades, suggest many more girls, Hispanics, and white students would be admitted under these alternatives. They would not, however, appreciably increase the share of offers given to black or low-income students.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/edfp_a_00220 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:edfpol:v:13:y:2018:i:2:p:256-279

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().