Credible School Value-Added with Undersubscribed School Lotteries

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>We introduce two empirical strategies harnessing the randomness in school assignment mechanisms to measure school value-added. The first estimator controls for the probability of school assignment, treating take-up as ignora...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Angrist, Joshua, Hull, Peter, Pathak, Parag A, Walters, Christopher
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MIT Press - Journals 2022
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144444
Description
Summary:<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>We introduce two empirical strategies harnessing the randomness in school assignment mechanisms to measure school value-added. The first estimator controls for the probability of school assignment, treating take-up as ignorable. We test this assumption using randomness in assignments. The second approach uses assignments as instrumental variables (IVs) for low-dimensional models of value-added and forms empirical Bayes posteriors from these IV estimates. Both strategies solve the underidentification challenge arising from school undersubscription. Models controlling for assignment risk and lagged achievement in Denver and New York City yield reliable value-added estimates. Estimates from models with lower-quality achievement controls are improved by IV.</jats:p>