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 achievement outcomes. To address this gap, I compile an original list of SEP schools using an innovative web scraping procedure. I combine these data with newly available district-level measures of third to eighth grade achievement from the Stanford Education Data Archive. Analyses follow a difference-in-differences design, using grade level as the longitudinal dimension. This approach facilitates a falsification test, using future treated districts, to reject spurious causation. I find evidence of overall slower growth in mean math achievement in SEP districts and for white, black, and Latinx racial/ethnic groups separately. SEP districts also see an increase in the white–Latinx math achievement gap. This work highlights the importance of considering SEP schools as part of a differentiated school system.

中文翻译：

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三年级至八年级的选择性招生公立学校和区级成就成果

全美各地激烈的本地辩论围绕着采用学术标准录取学生入读公立学校的公平性。尽管研究评估了这些辩论的中心假设-选择性招生公立学校（SEP）增强了就读学校的学生的福利，但没有一个论及与这些学校相关的地区级成果。这很重要，因为SEP学校的选择性和范围会产生分层的学校系统（SEP地区）。反过来，该地区级过程要求对地区级成就成果进行分析。为了弥补这一差距，我使用创新的网络抓取程序编制了SEP学校的原始列表。我将这些数据与斯坦福教育数据档案库中新获得的三年级到八年级成绩的地区级别指标相结合。使用等级级别作为纵向尺寸，进行差异分析。这种方法有助于进行伪造测试，使用将来处理的地区来拒绝虚假因果关系。我发现有证据表明，在SEP地区以及白人，黑人和拉丁裔种族/族裔群体中，平均数学成绩总体上增长缓慢。SEP地区的白人与拉丁裔数学成绩差距也有所增加。这项工作凸显了考虑将SEP学校作为差异化学校系统的一部分的重要性。和拉丁裔种族/民族群体分开。SEP地区的白人与拉丁裔数学成绩差距也有所增加。这项工作凸显了考虑将SEP学校作为差异化学校系统的一部分的重要性。和拉丁裔种族/民族群体分开。SEP地区的白人与拉丁裔数学成绩差距也有所增加。这项工作凸显了考虑将SEP学校作为差异化学校系统的一部分的重要性。