Search EdWorkingPapers

Search EdWorkingPapers by author, title, or keywords.

Jeffrey R. Henig

David M. Houston, Jeffrey R. Henig.

We examine the effects of disseminating academic performance data—either status, growth, or both—on parents’ school choices and their implications for racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. We conduct an online survey experiment featuring a nationally representative sample of parents and caretakers of children age 0-12. Participants choose between three randomly sampled elementary schools drawn from the same school district. Only growth information—alone and not in concert with status information—has clear and consistent desegregating consequences. Because states that include growth in their school accountability systems have generally done so as a supplement to and not a replacement for status, there is little reason to expect that this development will influence choice behavior in a manner that meaningfully reduces school segregation.

More →


David M. Houston, Jeffrey R. Henig.
We conduct an online survey experiment in which participants are asked to imagine that they are parents moving to a new metropolitan area. They then choose between the five largest school districts in that area. All participants receive demographic data for each district. In addition, some participants are randomly assigned to receive average achievement and/or average growth data for each district. While there are strong relationships between student demographics and student achievement, the links between student demographics and student growth are much weaker. We find that, on average, the provision of growth data causes participants to choose less white and less affluent districts. Moreover, the provision of both achievement and growth data causes participants to choose less white and less affluent districts than the provision of achievement data alone.

More →