The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries

  1. Julie Berry Cullen1,
  2. Brian A Jacob2,
  3. Steven Levitt3,†

Article first published online: 7 SEP 2006

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00702.x

Issue

Econometrica

Econometrica

Volume 74, Issue 5, pages 1191–1230, September 2006

Additional Information

How to Cite

Cullen, J. B., Jacob, B. A. and Levitt, S. (2006), The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries. Econometrica, 74: 1191–1230. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00702.x

Author Information

  1. 1

    Dept. of Economics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0508, U.S.A.; jbcullen@ucsd.edu, http://www.dss.ucsd.edu/~jbcullen/

  2. 2

    Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.; brian_jacob@harvard.edu, http://www.ksghome.harvard.edu/~bjacob/

  3. 3

    Dept. of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, U.S.A.; s-levitt@uchicago.edu, http://www.pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/home.html.

  1. †

    We would like to thank John Dinardo, David Lee, Gary Solon, a co-editor, three anonymous referees, and numerous seminar participants for useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful to John Easton, Joseph Hahn, Dan Bugler, Jack Harnedy, Amy Nowell, Frank Spoto, and John Quane for assistance in collecting the data, and to Wei Ha, Sara Lalumia, John David LaRock, and Patrick Walsh for excellent research assistance. The National Science Foundation provided research support. All remaining errors are our own.

  • †

    We would like to thank John Dinardo, David Lee, Gary Solon, a co-editor, three anonymous referees, and numerous seminar participants for useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful to John Easton, Joseph Hahn, Dan Bugler, Jack Harnedy, Amy Nowell, Frank Spoto, and John Quane for assistance in collecting the data, and to Wei Ha, Sara Lalumia, John David LaRock, and Patrick Walsh for excellent research assistance. The National Science Foundation provided research support. All remaining errors are our own.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 7 SEP 2006
  2. Article first published online: 7 SEP 2006
  3. Manuscript received November, 2003; final revision received April, 2006.

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Keywords:

  • School choice;
  • randomized lottery;
  • student outcomes

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self-reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.

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