TY - JOUR
T1 - Who benefits from selective education? Evidence from elite boarding school admissions
AU - Shi, Ying
N1 - Funding Information:
The author is grateful to Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Elizabeth Ananat, Peter Arcidiacono, Charles Clotfelter, Philip Cook, Tom Dee, Robert Garlick, V. Joseph Hotz, Helen Ladd, Susanna Loeb, Hugh Macartney, Manoj Mohanan, Marcos A. Rangel, Sean Reardon, Seth Sanders, Jeffrey Smith, Jacob Vigdor, and seminar participants at Duke University, IZA Brown Bag Seminar, and the 2017 SOLE annual conference for their helpful feedback. This work was supported by the Institute for Education Sciences (Award R305B130017).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/2
Y1 - 2020/2
N2 - Existing research finds minimal gains from attending elite US secondary schools. This paper estimates the causal effect of attending a selective public boarding school, an institutional model increasingly used by states to serve academically gifted students. Regression discontinuity estimates using multiple admissions thresholds show math score gains and college application and enrollment patterns that shift away from less competitive colleges. Effects are concentrated among minorities, students with lower prior individual achievement, from rural neighborhoods, or lower-achieving sending schools. The opportunity to attend selective boarding schools reduces the tendency of disadvantaged or under-represented students to attend a less selective college by at least one-quarter.
AB - Existing research finds minimal gains from attending elite US secondary schools. This paper estimates the causal effect of attending a selective public boarding school, an institutional model increasingly used by states to serve academically gifted students. Regression discontinuity estimates using multiple admissions thresholds show math score gains and college application and enrollment patterns that shift away from less competitive colleges. Effects are concentrated among minorities, students with lower prior individual achievement, from rural neighborhoods, or lower-achieving sending schools. The opportunity to attend selective boarding schools reduces the tendency of disadvantaged or under-represented students to attend a less selective college by at least one-quarter.
KW - Achievement gap
KW - Peer effects
KW - STEM education
KW - Selective education
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U2 - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.07.001
DO - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.07.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068764103
SN - 0272-7757
VL - 74
JO - Economics of Education Review
JF - Economics of Education Review
M1 - 101907
ER -