Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district? We explore New York City’s small high school reform in which hundreds of new small high schools were built in less than a decade. We use rich individual student data on four cohorts of New York City high school students and estimate effects of schools on student outcomes. Our results suggest that the introduction of small schools improved outcomes for students in all types of schools: large, small, continuously operating, and new. Small school reform lifted all boats.
AbdulkadirogluA.PathakP.RothA. (2005). The New York City high school match. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 95(2), 364–367.
2.
AbdulkadirogluA.PathakP.RothA. (2009). Strategy-proofness versus efficiency in matching with indifferences: Redesigning the NYC high school match. American Economic Review, 99(5), 1954–1978.
3.
AngristJ.ImbensG. (1994). Identification and estimation of local average treatment effects. Econometrica, 62(2), 467–476.
4.
BarrowL.ClessensA.SchanzenbachD. W. (2010). The impact of small schools in Chicago: Assessing the effectiveness of Chicago’s small high school initiative. Working paper.
5.
BloomH.UntermanR. (2014). Can small high schools of choice improve educational prospects for disadvantaged students?Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(2), 290–319.
CahillM.HughesR. (2010). Small schools, big difference: How one city tackled its dropout problem. Education Week, 30(05), 22–24.
8.
CardD. (1995). Using geographic variation in college proximity to estimate the return to school. In ChristofidesL. N.GrantE. K.SwidinskyR. (Eds.), Aspects of labor market behaviour: Essays in honour of John Vanderkamp (pp. 201–222). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
9.
CorcoranS. P.LevinH. M. (2011). School choice and competition in the New York City schools. In O’DayJ. A.BitterC. S.GomezL. M. (Eds.), Education reform in New York City: Ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system (pp. 199–224). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
10.
CullenJ. B.JacobB. A.LevittS. D. (2005). The impact of school choice on student outcomes: An analysis of Chicago Public Schools. Journal of Public Economics, 89, 729–760.
11.
CurrieJ.MorrettiE. (2003). Mother’s education and the intergenerational transmission of human capital: Evidence from college openings. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1495–1532.
12.
Department of Labor Statistics. (2012). Local area unemployment statistics, featured LAU searchable databases. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/lau/
13.
FowlerW. J.Jr. (1992, April). What do we know about school size: What should we know?Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
14.
FowlerW. J.Jr.WalbergH. J. (1991). School size, characteristics, and outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 13, 189–202.
15.
GoertzM.LoebS.WyckoffG. (2011). Recruiting, evaluating and retaining teachers: The children first strategy to improve New York City’s teachers. In O’DayJ. A.BitterC. S.GomezL. M. (Eds.), Education reform in New York City: Ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system (pp. 157–177). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
16.
HowleyC.StrangeM.BickelR. (2000). Research about school size and school performance in impoverished communities. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education in Small Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 448968)
17.
KempleJ. (2011). Children first and student outcomes: 2003–2010. In O’DayJ. A.BitterC. S.GomezL. M. (Eds.), Education reform in New York City: Ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system (pp. 255–292). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
18.
LeeV. E.SmithJ. B. (1997). High school size: Which works best and for whom?Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19, 205–227.
New York State Education Department. (Various years). School report cards. Retrieved from http://data.nysed.gov.php
21.
PageL.LayzerC.SchimmentiJ.BernsteinL.HorstL. (2002). National evaluation of smaller learning communities: Literature review. Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates. Retrieved from http://www.abtassociates.com/reports/SMALLER.pdf
22.
PowellA. G.FarrarE.CohenD. K. (1985). The shopping mall high school: Winners and losers in the educational marketplace. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
23.
SchneiderB.WyseA. E.KeeslerV. (2007). Is small really better? Testing some assumptions about high school size. In LovelessT.HessF. M. (Eds.), Brookings papers on education evaluation policy 2006/2007 (pp. 15–47). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
24.
SchwartzA. E.StiefelL.WiswallM. (2013). Do small schools improve performance in large, urban districts? Causal evidence from New York City. Journal of Urban Economics, 77, 27–40.
25.
ShouseR. (2004). Democratic spirit and moral learning in comprehensive high schools. In HammackF. M. (Ed.), The comprehensive high school today (pp. 69–86). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
StiefelL.BerneR.IatarolaP.FruchterN. (2000). High school size: The effects on budgets and performance in New York City. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22(1), 27–39.
28.
StiefelL.SchwartzA. E. (2011). Financing K–12 education in the Bloomberg years, 2002–2008. In O’DayJ. A.BitterC. S.GomezL. M. (Eds.), Education reform in New York City: Ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system (pp. 55–84). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
29.
StiefelL.SchwartzA. E.IatarolaP.ChellmanC. (2009). Mission matters: The cost of small high schools revisited. Economics of Education Review, 28, 585–599.
