“The Impact of Selective High Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from New South Wales, Australia”, 2016-11-15 (; backlinks; similar):
Selective high schools in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) provide an opportunity for students to attend a public school with substantially higher-achieving peers—the average successful applicant scores more than 2 standard deviations higher on baseline numeracy tests than the state average. Competition for entrance into these schools is fierce, with general public opinion attributing the superlative academic success of selective school students at least in part to the selective school environment.
Much recent attention has been paid to credible evaluations of similar selective programs in other jurisdictions. Studies by et al 2014 and 2014 in Boston, MA and New York City, NY find little-to-no statistically-significant effect of attending selective high schools on student achievement.
In this paper, I employ fuzzy regression discontinuity designs on 18 NSW selective schools with varying gradations of selectivity to estimate causal effects of selective school attendance on performance in high-stakes university entrance assessments and participation rates in advanced coursework. This is the first such study of selective schools in NSW, which is home to the oldest and most extensive selective school system in Australia, using a newly matched dataset encompassing the school careers of three state-wide cohorts of selective school applicants.
I find that receiving an offer to attend a selective school has only scattered and mostly insignificant impacts on overall student achievement and participation in advanced coursework. I do find suggestive evidence that selective schools benefit low socioeconomic status students, but that such students are typically underrepresented in selective schools, which has implications for Gifted and Talented education policy.