Each year millions of middle school students nationwide spend angst-filled months waiting to hear if they scored high enough on an entrance exam to attend a selective public high school. In New York City alone more than 27,000 students apply for precious spots in the three best-known schools: Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and Bronx High School of Science. What Mr. Dobbie and Mr. Fryer wanted to know was just how much of a difference attending one of these high schools makes in the long run for students with similar equal admissions test scores. Some proponents say the benefits of an environment of high achievers, more advanced coursework and higher expectations are obvious. Skeptics counter that these gifted and motivated teenagers would have done well no matter where they went. Students in these schools with low class ranks may even be less competitive when it comes to college admissions. They might be better off in less competitive environments or in schools with a wider range of student abilities. Because there are so many applicants of similar ability and achievement who are not accepted to these New York institutions, the authors were able to compare the average outcomes of students who graduated from different high schools. “We provide the first causal estimate of the impact of attending an exam-high school in the United States on later outcomes,” they write.
