Fierce local debates throughout the United States surround the equity of admitting students to public schools using academic criteria. Although research has evaluated the central assumption of these debates—that Selective Enrollment Public (SEP) schools enhance the welfare of students who attend them—none has addressed the district-level outcomes associated with these schools. This is important because the selectivity and scope of SEP schools produce tiered school systems (SEP districts). This district-level process, in turn, calls for an analysis of district-level educational outcomes. To address this gap, I compile an original list of SEP schools using an innovative web scraping procedure. I combine these data with secondary sources from the Common Core of Data, the Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates, the Stanford Education Data Archive, and the Civil Rights Data Collection to evaluate the districtwide effects of SEP school on three sets of key educational outcomes: segregation, achievement, and access to college preparation.
Before presenting these three quantitative analyses, I offer a detailed definition and background of SEP schools, which have been given little theoretical consideration by sociologists. The substantive analyses then begin by considering the first order question of whether sorting students on the basis of performance has implications for students sorting along other dimensions, namely race. I find evidence of some differences in patterns of segregation among white and under-represented minority (URM) students in SEP versus non-SEP districts, particularly in high school, which may suggest less stability for URM students attending predominantly white schools in SEP districts. With a better understanding of how SEP schools shape student sorting, I then evaluate districtwide academic outcomes. Using a grade-level Difference-in-Differences design, I find evidence of slower math achievement growth and widening white-Latinx gaps in SEP districts from third to eighth grade. Finally, evidence from Seemingly Unrelated Regression models suggests that, despite a narrower provision of Advanced Placement (AP) courses, AP enrollment rates are just as high (or higher) and exam passing rates are higher for white and Latinx AP participants in SEP versus non-SEP districts. However, white-URM gaps in college preparation are widest in SEP districts.
Overall, evidence of the effects of SEP districts on the average quality of education is mixed, but evidence suggesting that SEP districts exert significant influence on racial inequality in educational opportunity is relatively consistent. Even increases in efficiency appear to come at the cost of equity. Most importantly, this work highlights the importance of considering SEP schools as part of a differentiated school system, rather than isolated elite institutions.
