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The Effect of School Quality on School Choice: Evidence from Secondary Education in Hungary

This research study examines the impact of school quality on school choice in Hungary's secondary education system. The study explores whether parents consider the level of the school or its added value when making school choices, and whether this effect varies depending on family background and parental education. The findings highlight the importance of both school quality and level, with highly educated parents placing more weight on these factors. The study also identifies heterogeneity in preferences for school quality based on parental background within feasible choice sets.

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The Effect of School Quality on School Choice: Evidence from Secondary Education in Hungary

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  1. The effect of school quality on school choice Evidence from secondary education in Hungary Carla Haelermans (Maastricht University, the Netherlands) Zoltán Hermann (Institute of Economics, Budapest, Hungary) Thomas Wouters (KU Leuven, Belgium)

  2. Research questions • Does school quality affect school choice? • Do parents pay attention to the level of the school, or to added value? • Does this effect depend on family background? Do more educated parents give more weight to school quality? 2

  3. Motivation • Many countries have a system of school choice • Parents and/or students choose school (often based on some constraints (distance, grades, etc.) • Increased school choice is assumed to increase school quality through compeittion • Equality of opportunity • Low EOp when disadvantaged students end up in lower quality schools

  4. Previous literature Evidence on determinants of school choice (Hastings et al, Burgess et al) indicates the following determinants: • School quality in performance • School denomination (religion/church schools) • Educational philosophy / profile • Distance to home/work • School composition (ethnic/SES) • Teachers • Information on school quality • Information on odds of admission

  5. Motivation and contribution • Application data (instead of realised choices) • Not directly affected by schools’ decisions • Hungarian case: high stake decision • Rank-orderedlogisticregression • School choice in uppersecondaryinstead of primaryeducation • Focus on quality • Level versus addedvalue (therole of perception) • Heterogeneity

  6. Uppersecondary education in Hungary

  7. School admission system in Hungary 1. Students apply to programs • Choice of educational programs within schools and tracks • Students rank these programs 2. Schools rank students • Decision on a cutoff entry score • Priority for higher scores 3. Centralised matching algorithm • No incentive for strategic ranking of schools • Non-matched students have to find a school in a second round (not observed)

  8. Data Administrative data for a single cohort:2006 Matched data from three datasets (~75% of students) • Secondary School Application Register Students’ ranked applications • National Assesment of Basic Competences Achievement: math and reading test scores in grade Other individual characteristics, including family background • Travel time data Public transportation, ZIP-code level

  9. Estimation: rank-ordered logit

  10. Estimation: rank-ordered logit

  11. Issues before estimation • Estimating school quality and the level of the school • Defining feasible choice sets 11

  12. Measuring school quality and level Quality: value-added model A10i,s = β1 A8i,s+ β2 (A8i,s)2 + β3 (A8i,s)3 + δXi,s + θs + εi,s A: student test score in grade 8,10 X: gender, SEN, parental education, number of books θs : school quality random effects, shrinkage estimator Level: school mean of grade 8 scores 12

  13. Creating feasible choice sets Choice sets: • Application list: schools chosen by the student • Application list + schools chosen by similar students, within feasible travel time • (Application list + all schools within feasible travel time) Travel time: 50-90 minutes Further restrictions: • only schools in tracks chosen by the student • gender composition

  14. Creating feasible choice sets Similar students: overlap in 1-3. applications 14

  15. Creating feasible choice sets Similar students: overlap in 1-3. applications 15

  16. Results (actual list)

  17. Results (actual list)

  18. Results (feasible choice set)

  19. Results (feasible choice set)

  20. Conclusions • School quality matters, but school level is at least as important • Both quality and level matter more for highly educated parents • Relative to quality, school level becomes more important in the lower tracks • Heterogeneity ito parental background in preferences for quality only surfaces in feasible choice sets

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