Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 32 No. 1 2014

Evaluating Education Programs That Have Lotteried Admission and Selective Attrition

John Engberg¹; Dennis Epple²; Jason Imbrogno²; Holger Sieg³; Ron Zimmer⁴

¹ RAND Corporation · ² Carnegie Mellon University · ³ California University of Pennsylvania · ⁴ Vanderbilt University

Abstract

We study the effectiveness of magnet programs in an urban district that ration excess demand by admission lotteries. Differential attrition arises since students who lose the lottery are more likely to pursue options outside the school district than students who win the lottery. When students leave the district, important outcome variables are often not observed. The treatment effects are not point-identified. We exploit known quantiles of the outcome distribution to construct informative bounds on treatment effects. We find that magnet programs improve behavioral outcomes but have no significant effect on achievement.

DOI

10.1086/671797

Volume

32

Issue

1

Pages

27-63

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref

Cite

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