RESEARCH BRIEFS - The Impact of Public School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys

School choice systems have expanded K–12 enrollment assignment beyond neighborhood boundaries, yet prior research left unclear whether public district choice produces better outcomes than traditional assignment. This research evaluates Los Angeles Unified School District’s Zones of Choice (ZOC) program using a natural experiment across neighborhoods. Results show sizable gains in student achievement, four-year college enrollment, and college preparedness, with reduced neighborhood achievement inequality mainly explained by improved school quality and competition-driven incentives.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages2

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

The question motivating the research

Study design: Zones of Choice program

Effects on achievement and college outcomes

Mechanisms: school quality and competition incentives

Alternative explanations tested

Changes in discipline and parent preferences

| | | --- | | | | R E S E A R C HB R I E F S | | I N E C O N O M I C P O L I C Y | | February 14 , 2 02 4 Number 370 | The Impact of Public School Choice Evidence from Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice By Christopher Campos, Booth sChool of Business, university of ChiCago; and Caitlin Kearns, formerly university of California, BerKeley I n recent years, school choice systems have become increasingly popular for allocating K–12 students to schools, a shift away from traditional neighborhoodbased assignment. Research has shown that this alternative approach expands students’ access to effective schools and introduces potential improvements in studentschool match quality and that under certain conditions, competition can lead to improvements in the quality of education. Large school districts, such as those in New York City, Denver, and New Orleans, have adopted such systems. However, existing research is unclear on how student outcomes compare under the two systems. Does a public school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? Our research tackles this important question by studying the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, an ongoing initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program’s design provides a natural experiment in which roughly 30–40 percent of the district operates under school choice systems mirroring expansions in other districts while the remaining neighborhoods operate under the status quo of neighborhood assignment. In particular, the program creates small local high school markets of varying sizes in some neighborhoods but leaves traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest ofthe district. Students in the ZOC program are eligible to attend any school within their neighborhood-based zone, even if it is not the closest one, and a mechanism rations access to oversubscribed schools. Our research finds large positive effects of the ZOC program on student achievement and four-year college enrollment. By the sixth year of the program, the English language arts exam and math exam performance of students in the ZOC program improved by 0.16 standard deviations relative to comparable non-ZOC-program students. The program also improved students’ college preparedness, as measured by changes in course portfolios and SAT score improvements of about 0.16 standard deviations. Editor, JEFFREY MIRON, Harvard University and Cato Institute. Furthermore, the ZOC program raised four-year college enrollment by roughly 5 percentage points, a 25 percent increase from the average among students participating in the ZOC program before it began, an effect mostly explained by increases in enrollment at California State University campuses. These effects led to vast reductions in inequality of educational outcomes between neighborhoods. Our results reveal that improvements in school quality (rather than improvements in student-school match quality) mostly explain the effects, which led to a substantial reduction in neighborhood-based achievement gaps. Indeed, improvements in school quality are concentrated among the lowest-performing schools. Additionally, our research finds that the beneficial effects of the program are larger for students given access to more popular schools. Moreover, educational quality has improved most at schools that now must compete with more popular schools for students. These findings suggest that the competitioninduced incentives generated by the ZOC program are a key mechanism for its effects on school performance. Our analysis rules out certain alternative explanations for the effects discovered in ZOC neighborhoods. First, other sources of competition from charter and magnet schools do not differentially affect ZOC neighborhoods, alleviating concerns that these alternative schooling models drive our results. Second, the composition of students with respect to race, gender, poverty, and

FAQs

What problem does this research address?

It asks whether a public school district that expands school choice delivers better student outcomes than a neighborhood-based assignment system.

How is the Los Angeles Zones of Choice (ZOC) program structured for comparison?

ZOC creates local high school markets of varying sizes in some neighborhoods while keeping traditional attendance zones elsewhere, generating a natural experiment for evaluating choice versus status quo assignment.

What are the main findings on student and college outcomes?

The program improves English and math exam performance relative to comparable non-ZOC students, raises four-year college enrollment by about 5 percentage points, and enhances college preparedness through course portfolio and SAT score improvements.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys