Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York

Joshua Angrist, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Clemence M. Idoux and Parag Pathak

No 30308, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is increasingly costly, however, and has unclear integration and education consequences. We estimate the causal effects of non-neighborhood school enrollment and school travel on integration, achievement, and college enrollment using an identification strategy that exploits partly-random assignment in the Boston and New York school matches. Instrumental variables estimates suggest distance and travel boost integration for those who choose to travel, but have little or no effect on test scores and college attendance. We argue that small effects on educational outcomes reflect modest effects of distance and travel on school quality as measured by value-added.

JEL-codes: D47 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-tre and nep-ure
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