• About our Discussion Papers

    SEII Discussion Papers report on our work in progress. Discussion Papers include results from SEII’s ongo­ing exper­i­men­tal and econo­met­ric eval­u­a­tions of school effec­tive­ness, our stud­ies of the American income dis­tri­b­u­tion, and our research on student-school matching.

    • June 19, 2017

    Maimonides Rule Redux: Does Class Size Affect Student Achievement?

    Authors
    Joshua D. Angrist, Victor Lavy, Jetson Leder-Luis, and Adi Shany

    March 30, 2017

    Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans’ OneApp

    Authors
    Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Olivier Tercieux

    January 1, 2017

    Free to Choose: Can School Choice Reduce Student Achievement?

    A cen­tral argu­ment for school choice is that par­ents can choose schools wisely. This prin­ci­ple may under­lie why lottery-based school eval­u­a­tions have almost always reported pos­i­tive or zero achieve­ment effects. This paper reports on a strik­ing coun­terex­am­ple to these results. We use ran­dom­ized lot­ter­ies to eval­u­ate the Louisiana Scholarship Program, a voucher plan that pro­vides pub­lic funds for dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents to attend pri­vate schools. LSP par­tic­i­pa­tion low­ers math scores by 0.4 stan­dard devi­a­tions and also reduces achieve­ment in read­ing, sci­ence, and social stud­ies. These effects may be due in part to selec­tion of low-quality pri­vate schools into the program.

    Authors
    Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Parag Pathak, Christopher Walters

    November 30, 2016

    Research Design Meets Market Design: Using Centralized Assignment for Impact Evaluation

    Authors
    Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Joshua Angrist, Yusuke Narita, Parag Pathak

    November 30, 2016

    Boys Lag Behind: How Teachers’ Gender Biases Affect Student Achievement

    Authors
    Camille Terrier

    October 28, 2016

    Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston’s Charter School Sector

    Authors
    Sarah Cohodes, Elizabeth Setren, Christopher Walters

    October 27, 2016

    Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education?

    Authors
    Joshua Goodman, Julia Melkers, Amanda Pallais

    October 27, 2016

    Special Education and English Language Learner Students in Boston Charter Schools

    Authors
    Elizabeth Setren

    September 8, 2016

    The Efficiency of Race-Neutral Alternatives to Race-Based Affirmative Action: Evidence from Chicago’s Exam Schools

    Authors
    Glenn Ellison and Parag Pathak

    March 20, 2015

    Charters Without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston

    Authors
    Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Joshua Angrist, Peter Hull, and Parag Pathak