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Most studies on going to specialized schools full of gifted people show it doesn't have positive impact on future outcomes compared to going to regular school.
by cm2012 5y ago
Most studies on going to specialized schools full of gifted people show it doesn't have positive impact on future outcomes compared to going to regular school.
Dobbie and Fryer (2013) look at New York City, comparing kids whose test scores are just-above versus just-below the cut points, and find that “exposure to these higher-achieving and more homogeneous peers has little impact on college enrollment, college graduation, or college quality.”
Abdulkadriglu, Angrist, and Pathak (2014) look at Boston and find that “the marked changes in peer characteristics at exam school admissions cutoffs have little causal effect on test scores or college quality.”
Barrow, Sartain, and de la Torre (2020) look at an effort in Chicago to give a boost to lower-scoring kids who came from high-poverty neighborhoods and find that “for students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate negative effects on grades and the probability of attending a selective college.”
- gnicholas 5y agoI can imagine that would be true for kids just at the cutoff. They are either toward the bottom of an advanced school or at the very top of a typical school. There are tradeoffs involved. I wonder if the same is true for kids who are well above the cutoff, for whom there is not the same tradeoff. For example, either the kid is at the top of an advanced school or the top of a typical school. I can't imagine that doesn't affect college admissions.
- Strilanc 5y agoI think I went to the wrong "Donnie and Fryer 2013" because it had an abstract that made the schools sound pretty good? [1] > youth offered admission to the Promise Academy middle school score 0.283 standard deviations higher on a nationally-normed math achievement test and are 14.1 percentage points more likely to enroll in college. Admitted females are 12.1 percentage points less likely to be pregnant in their teens, and males are 4.3 percentage points less likely to be incarcerated [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w19581 https://www.nber.org/papers/w19581
- cm2012 5y ago"The Impact of Attending a School With High Achieving Peers" is the one, which focused on tested into honors high school. Seems like some lottery charter schools do work though!