Can You Leave High School Behind?

Sandra Black, Jane Arnold Lincove (), Jenna Cullinane () and Rachel Veron ()
Additional contact information
Jane Arnold Lincove: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Jenna Cullinane: University of Texas at Austin
Rachel Veron: University of Texas at Austin

No 7899, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In recent years, many states, including California, Texas, and Oregon, have changed admissions policies to increase access to public universities for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A key concern, however, is how these students will perform. This paper examines the relationship between high school quality and student success at college. Using newly available administrative data from the University of Texas at Austin, we take advantage of the unique policy environment provided by Texas's Top Ten Percent automatic admissions law, which has not only increased the diversity of high schools in the state that send students to the university, but also provides an admission criteria based on a sole observable characteristic: high school class rank. We find that high school characteristics do affect student performance, and these effects seem more pronounced for women and low-income students. In addition, there is little evidence that the effects of high school characteristics decay over time.

Keywords: high school quality; higher education access; college outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2014-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - revised version published in: Economics of Education Review, June 2015

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7899.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can you leave high school behind? (2015)
Working Paper: Can you Leave High School Behind? (2014)
Working Paper: Can You Leave High School Behind? (2014)
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:iza:izadps:dp7899

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().