Estimating the Returns to Urban Boarding Schools: Evidence from SEED

Vilsa E. Curto and Roland Fryer ()

No 16746, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The SEED schools, which combine a "No Excuses'' charter model with a five-day-a-week boarding program, are America's only urban public boarding schools for the poor. We provide the first causal estimate of the impact of attending SEED schools on academic achievement, with the goal of understanding whether changing a student's environment through boarding is a cost-effective strategy to increase achievement among the poor. Using admission lotteries, we show that attending a SEED school increases achievement by 0.198 standard deviations in reading and 0.230 standard deviations in math, per year of attendance. Despite these relatively large impacts, the return on investment in SEED is less than five percent due to the substantial costs of boarding. Similar "No Excuses'' charter schools -- without a boarding option -- have a return on investment of over eighteen percent.

JEL-codes: I20 J01 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01
Note: ED LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as The Potential of Urban Boarding Schools for the Poor: Evidence from SEED Vilsa E. Curto and Roland G. Fryer Jr. Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 32, No. 1 (January 2014), pp. 65-93

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