The Impact of Chicago's Small High School Initiative

Lisa Barrow, Amy Claessens and Diane Schanzenbach

No 18889, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This project examines the effects of the introduction of new small high schools on student performance in the Chicago Public School (CPS) district. Specifically, we investigate whether students attending small high schools have better graduation/enrollment rates and achievement than similar students who attend regular CPS high schools. We show that students who choose to attend a small school are more disadvantaged on average. To address the selection problem, we use an instrumental variables strategy and compare students who live in the same neighborhoods but differ in their residential proximity to a small school. In this approach, one student is more likely to sign up for a small school than another statistically identical student because the small school is located closer to the student's house and therefore the "cost" of attending the school is lower. We find that small schools students are substantially more likely to persist in school and eventually graduate. Nonetheless, there is no positive impact on student achievement as measured by test scores. The finding of no test score improvement but a strong improvement in school attainment is consistent with a growing literature suggesting that interventions aimed at older children are more effective at improving their non-cognitive skills than their cognitive skills.

JEL-codes: I21 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
Note: CH ED PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Barrow, Lisa & Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore & Claessens, Amy, 2015. "The impact of Chicago’s small high school initiative," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 100-113.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18889.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of Chicago’s small high school initiative (2015)
Working Paper: The Impact of Chicago's Small High School Initiative (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:nbr:nberwo:18889

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18889

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().