TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cullen,Julie Berry
AU  - Jacob,Brian A.
TI  - Is Gaining Access to Selective Elementary Schools Gaining Ground? Evidence From Randomized Lotteries
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13443
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13443
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13443.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Julie Berry Cullen
Department of Economics - 0508
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Tel: 858/822-2056
Fax: 858/534-7040
E-Mail: jbcullen@ucsd.edu

Brian Jacob
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan
735 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734-615-6994
Fax: NA
E-Mail: bajacob@umich.edu
M1  - published as Julie Berry Cullen, Brian A. Jacob. "Is Gaining Access to Selective Elementary Schools Gaining Ground? Evidence from Randomized Lotteries," in Jonathan Gruber, editor, "The Problems of Disadvantaged Youth: An Economic Perspective" University of Chicago Press (2009)

M3  - presented at "Conference on Disadvantaged Youth", April 13-14, 2007
AB  - In this paper, we examine whether expanded access to sought-after schools can improve academic achievement.  The setting we study is the "open enrollment" system in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We use lottery data to avoid the critical issue of non-random selection of students into schools.  Our analysis sample includes nearly 450 lotteries for kindergarten and first grade slots at 32 popular schools in 2000 and 2001.  We track students for up to five years and examine outcomes such as standardized test scores, grade retention and special education placement. Comparing lottery winners and losers, we find that lottery winners attend higher quality schools as measured by both the average achievement level of peers in the school as well as by value-added indicators of the school's contribution to student learning.  Yet, we do not find that winning a lottery systematically confers any evident academic benefits.  We explore several possible explanations for our findings, including the possibility that the typical student may be choosing schools for non-academic reasons (e.g., safety, proximity) and/or may experience benefits along dimensions we are unable to measure, but find little evidence in favor of such explanations.  Moreover, we separately examine effects for a variety of demographic subgroups, and for students whose application behavior suggests a strong preference for academics, but again find no significant effects.
ER  -