Lauen, Douglas Lee
Researchers: Douglas Lee Lauen
University Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Email: dlauen@unc.edu
Research Question:
This article examines differences in graduation
rates between participants and nonparticipants of Chicago's many public high school choice programs.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Journal Entry: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 179-199
Year: 2009
Findings:
- The unconditional on-time graduation propensity gap between those who exercise high school choice and those who remain in their neighborhood schools is 11.2 percentage points.
- Sociodemographic student characteristics associated with lower graduation rates include being male, in foster care, old for one’s grade, and having high previous school mobility.
- Students who exercised school choice as an elementary school student had higher likelihoods of graduating on time
- Higher levels of SES are associated with higher graduation rates, whereas neighborhood concentrated poverty is negatively associated with graduation propensity, net of student SES and other sociodemographic characteristics.
- Conditional on sociodemographic characteristics, SES, neighborhood concentrated poverty, prior math achievement, self-efficacy, and disciplinary incidences, there are no graduation rate gaps between Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics.
- Specifically, living in a low-poverty neighborhood is associated with a higher choice effect than living in a neighborhood with medium or high poverty.
- There is evidence to support the hypothesis that students living in neighborhoods with high-achieving high schools are more likely to graduate, but there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that students in neighborhoods with high-achieving schools get more (or less) benefit from exercising school choice (the high school achievement) choice interaction effect is not statistically different from zero).