The attraction of magnet schools: Evidence from embedded lotteries in school assignment

Abstract

Magnet schools provide innovative curricula designed to attract students from other schools within a school district, typically with the joint goals of diversifying enrollment and boosting achievement. Measuring the impact of attending a magnet school is challenging because students choose to apply and schools have priorities over types of students. Moreover, magnet schools may influence non-cognitive skill formation that is not well-reflected in test scores. This study estimates the causal impact of attending a magnet school on student outcomes by leveraging exogenous variation arising from tie breakers embedded in a centralized school assignment mechanism. Using a rich set of administrative data from a large school district, we find robust evidence that attending a magnet school significantly increases student engagement, as measured through absenteeism and on-time progress rates. Students are significantly less likely to change schools when attending a magnet. We find suggestive evidence that attending a magnet school led to higher performance in mathematics and that attending non-language immersion magnet schools increased students’ reading scores. Together, these results suggest that magnet schools — a typically understudied school choice option — can benefit student learning and increase student engagement while enabling the system to achieve its goals of promoting racial and socioeconomic balance through school choice.