Primary and secondary school choice among public and religious alternatives (original) (raw)
Related papers
Private school choice: The effects of religious affiliation and participation
2007
In this paper, we quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by estimating a Random Utility Model of school-choice in which households choose among public, private-nonsectarian, Catholic and Protestant schools. In our model households differ not only in their income levels but also in their religion and religiosity levels. The model is then estimated using multinomial logit and multinomial probit regressions of attendance at different types of private schools using individual data from the General Social Survey. We find that both religion and religiosity have important effects on the demand for the different types of private schools. Further, it is shown that if religiosity is not taken into account (the usual case), the effect of religion on demand is biased. Our results imply that previous studies on the treatment effect of Catholic schools that have not taken into account the selection of highreligiosity youth into Catholic schools overestimate the positive influence of Catholic schools.
Private School Choice: The Effects of Religion and Religiosity
2006
The effects of religion and religiosity on the demand for private schooling are considered both theoretically and empirically. Probit estimates of private school attendance and multinomial logit estimates of attendance at different types of private schools including Catholic schools, Protestant schools, and nonsectarian private schools are undertaken. It is shown that both religion and religiosity have important effects on the demand for the different types of private schools. Further, it is shown that if religiosity is not taken into account (the usual case), the effect of religion on demand is biased. The effects of race, ethnicity, family background, and location on the demand for private schooling are also considered. Data from the National Opinion Research Center's "General Social Survey" are used.
Journal of Urban Economics, 2008
In this paper, we quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by estimating a random utility model of school-choice in which households choose among public, private-nonsectarian, Catholic and Protestant schools. The model is estimated using a multinomial logit regression of attendance at different types of private schools using individual data from the General Social Survey. We find that both religion and religiosity have important effects on the demand for private schools. We also provide evidence that previous studies that do not take into account religiosity probably overestimate the positive influence of private schools on measures of educational attainment. Evidence on the magnitude of this bias is presented.
2004
This paper reviews the research on school supply and reports on recent data from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), to inform debates about school choice. The MPCP data indicate that about 30% of participating schools are secular, with the remainder religiously affiliated (although most of these religious schools are Catholic, this number is falling over time). About one-third of voucher students attended secular schools, another third attend Catholic schools (down from 48% in 1998), and the remaining third attend other religious schools. Increasingly, voucher student enrollments are a majority within their school: by 2001, 40% of participating schools have more than 80% of their students claiming vouchers. The supply of new schools appears elastic: 46% of participating schools were founded after the Program was introduced. Explaining this supply behavior in terms of school revenues is complex, however. Many schools report costs above the value of the voucher, and costs only weakly converge to the voucher amount. Plausibly, schools with higher proportions of voucher students do track their costs more closely to the value of the voucher. The implications of this evidence for school choice policies are discussed.
Religiosity and parochial school choice: cause or effect
Education Economics, 2011
In this study, we examine the effect of religiosity as measured by attendance at religious services on religious school choice. Particular attention is given to the possibly endogenous relationship between school choice and religiosity. We find that religiosity has an important causal effect on the demand for parochial schools. It is also shown that religiosity is substantially biased downward in OLS and probit estimates of parochial school choice. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for estimating the treatment effect of private school attendance on student outcomes.
School choice and student performance: Are private schools really better?
1997
Are private schools really better than public schools, or is it simply that better students attend private schools? Although a number of recent studies find that students perform better in private schools (more specifically, Catholic schools), others do not. Typically, however, the instruments used to adjust for nonrandom selection are weak. This study employs uniquely detailed local instruments and jointly models selection into religious and nonreligious private high schools, relative to public high schools-improving instrument power in predicting private sector attendance to roughly three times that of prior studies. Failing to correct adequately for selection leads to a systematic upward bias in the estimated treatment effect for religious schools, but a downward bias for nonreligious private schools.
A Dynamic Model of Elementary School Choice
This paper builds and estimates a dynamic model of elementary school choice using detailed Chilean administrative data. In the model, parents care about different features of primary schools: school's socioeconomic composition, quality (measured as the school's contribution to standardized test scores), religiosity, location, type of administration, tuition fee and GPA standard. Parents are heterogeneous in two dimensions: whether they have the skills needed to understand public information about quality (standardized tests), and their involvement in their child's school. The results suggest that: (1) Parents care about school quality, but to a moderate degree. (2) Parents have an important misperception about school quality, which results in a less favorable opinion about the quality of public schools, relative to private schools. (3) If parents were only concerned about quality, they would choose public schools more often. (4) Admission restrictions play a relevant rol...
School Choice in Theory and Practice: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
Education Economics, 1997
School choice has received increasing attention from scholars and policy-makers. We review the rationales for government financing and provision of education and the arguments made for using market mechanisms in education provision. We then take stock of school choice in practice, focusing on developments in the US. In so doing, we discuss how school-choice initiatives can be evaluated, and suggest directions for future research.
Parental preferences and school competition: Evidence from a public school choice program
2005
This paper uses data from the implementation of a district-wide public school choice plan in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to estimate preferences for school characteristics and examine their implications for the local educational market. We use parental rankings of their top three choices of schools matched with student demographic and test score data to estimate a mixed-logit discrete choice demand model for schools. We find that parents value proximity highly and the preference attached to a school's mean test score increases with student's income and own academic ability. We also find considerable heterogeneity in preferences even after controlling for income, academic achievement and race, with strong negative correlations between preferences for academics and school proximity. Simulations of parental responses to test score improvements at a school suggest that the demand response at high-performing schools would be larger than the response at low-performing schools, leading to disparate demand-side pressure to improve performance under school choice.
School Choice: Supporters and Opponents
We conduct a phone survey to examine the attitudes of Ohioans about school choice, which includes open enrollment programs, school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools. Previous studies examine more limited forms of choice and investigate fewer possible influences. We find the strongest opposition for school choice by people with graduate degrees and people who believe their assigned public school district is excellent. In fact, people's opinions about their public schools are stronger predictors of school choice support than are objective measures of school quality. We find people with children in private schools and people with associate's degrees to be the strongest supporters. Males tend to oppose choice and blue collar workers support it. We find no role for age, the convenience of alternative schools, or the protection of house values in support for school choice.