Use school admissions lotteries as randomized experiments to estimate long-term civic outcomes¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The report's design strategy is to exploit oversubscribed school admissions lotteries as a source of randomization: it matches "records from Democracy Prep's admissions lotteries to a national database of registration and voting" and uses "the admissions lotteries to conduct a randomized experimental analysis" of adult civic participation.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A school whose admissions are determined by lottery, and access to an external database of the long-term outcomes of interest (here, registration and voting records)

Constraints¶

• Applies to cohorts old enough for the outcome to be observed; the analysis here covers students from the network's early years who could vote in the 2016 election

Target Learners¶

• Students admitted or denied via school admissions lotteries

Target Learning Goals¶

• Measuring effects of schooling on adult civic participation outcomes

Related Strategies¶

• Document the lotteries schools of choice conduct and their waiting-list admission procedures
• Use school lotteries as a research design for estimating impacts of schools of choice on student outcomes

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Brian Gill, Charles Tilley, Emilyn Whitesell, Mariel Finucane, Liz Potamites, Sean Corcoran. (2018). The Impact of Democracy Prep Public Schools on Civic Participation. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/the-impact-of-democracy-prep-public-schools-on-civic-participation