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 suggestive evidence that attending a magnet school led to higher performance in mathematics and non-language immersion magnet schools also increased students’ reading scores. Student engagement was significantly higher, as measured through absenteeism and on-time progress rates. Further, students were significantly less likely to change schools when attending a magnet. These results provide robust evidence that magnet school—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.