Competitive Outcomes: Does Increased School Choice Mean Better Schools in the Long Run?

As American political rhetoric becomes more and more partisan, debates around public education have become increasingly divisive. From Betsy DeVos’s support for charter schools to nationwide protests by public teachers demanding higher pay, disagreement abounds regarding how best to serve America’s struggling students. In December, New Orleans propelled itself to the center of this debate when it voted to turn its last public high school into a charter school. Two central questions have now emerged: Does “school choice” guarantee better outcomes for children? And does competition arising from “school choice” actually generate motivation for schools to improve?

In a recent study, Jane Arnold Lincove, Jon Valant, and Joshua Cowen sought to understand whether students in a system of centralized school choice experienced differential school quality when they were able to attend their first-choice schools compared to when they were not. They focused on New Orleans, which at the time this research was conducted was composed of both charter and public schools. New Orleans first began contracting with charter schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Years later, the city created OneApp, New Orleans’ centralized application and enrollment system. In OneApp, families can rank up to eight school preferences; those preferences are then entered into a lottery. Lincove et al. noted that parents take many factors into consideration when ranking schools, including academics, socialization, location and facilities. For the purposes of the study, the researchers assessed school quality by comparing average GPA, math value-added scores, distance from home and median teacher experience.

The researchers found that about 40 percent of students were placed in schools they ranked lower than their first choice. The researchers found that schools ranked first by parents were generally superior to last-ranked choices in grades, teacher experience, and distance to school. These high-demand schools were often oversubscribed, meaning they had fewer seats than requested. When students were not placed in these high-demand schools, they were more likely to be placed in undersubscribed, lower-quality schools with less experienced teachers and lower average GPAs. This meant that students who did not receive their first choice placement generally obtained a lower-quality education.

For example, if a child in a “non-transition” grade—meaning a grade that did not require moving schools—lost the first round of the lottery, he or she was assigned to a school with a 1.16-point lower average GPA than his or her first choice. Meanwhile, if a child in a “transition” grade—meaning a grade that required moving to a new school—lost the first round of the lottery, he or she was assigned to a school with 0.78-point lower average GPA and teachers with 9.22 years less experience, compared to high-quality schools. The authors considered both non-transition and transition grades because the two groups had different incentives and therefore different behavior with regard to the lottery. While students in transition grades were required to re-enter the lottery in order to be assigned to their next school (e.g., middle or high school), students in non-transition grades were guaranteed seats in their schools the following year. As a result, students in non-transition grades were able to opt out of the lottery, while students in transition grades were required to participate in order to be placed.

The authors found that with this lottery system, the oversubscription of higher-quality schools resulted in lower-quality schools still being able to fill their seats. Therefore, the lottery did not appear to induce sufficient competition to drive low-performing schools to improve their quality. Schools could “survive” without being high-demand as long as the high-demand schools ran out of seats. Since many parents in urban settings cannot afford private school, opting out of public schooling for their children was not an option; therefore, low-demand schools remained able to fill their seats. However, the researchers cautioned that further analysis was necessary to determine if and how schools responded to increasing enrollment pressure. Moreover, while the researchers were not able to measure the exact cost of lottery participation, their findings indicated that significant time was required for parents to research available schools and rank their choices for the lottery.

As the article described, a centralized lottery system left the quality of a child’s education up to chance. When a child did not win the lottery to enter a high-performing school, he or she was instead placed in schools that had less experienced teachers and lower average GPAs. As the achievement gap continues to grow, further research is needed to determine the best mechanism for school districts to ensure that all schools are motivated to perform at a high level.

Article source: Lincove, Jane Arnold, Jon Valant, and Joshua M. Cowen. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Capacity Constraints in a Choice-Based School System.” Economics of Education Review 67 (2018): 94-109.

Featured photo: cc/(Ridofranz, photo ID: 950607874, from iStock by Getty Images)