About the Speaker:

Hongliang is a PhD candidate in economics and urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota and BS in Urban Studies and Planning from Beijing University. He served as consultant at the World Bank. His areas of interest are in development economics, labor economics, urban economics and public economics.

Abstract:

This paper examines the impact of attending a magnet school on student achievement using school admissions lotteries in Wuhan, China. Although lottery winners were more likely to attend magnet schools that appear better in many dimensions, including peer achievement, I find little evidence that winning a lottery improved students’ performance on the High School Entrance Exam or enrolment status at elite high schools three years later. Magnet school popularity, measured by either the competitiveness of the admission lottery or the take-up rate of lottery winners, is highly positively correlated with the average student achievement, but largely unrelated to the treatment effect on test scores that I estimate for each school. This evidence suggests that parents value peer quality beyond its effect on achievement gains, or confuse average student achievement with value added. The finding that magnet schools are sought mainly for their observed superiority in average student achievement rather than for their academic value added casts doubt on the potential of school choice to improve student achievement, at least in this context.

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