The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools - Discussion Paper No. 6790 - Research findings

Aug 29, 2026

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Parents assess school quality through student achievement and racial composition, and housing-market price changes across district boundaries reflect these peer-related signals. Whether schools with more attractive peers provide true value-added benefits remains unresolved. This paper applies a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design to admissions cutoffs for Boston and New York City’s oversubscribed exam schools. Near-cutoff students shift peer score distributions but show little causal impact on test scores or college quality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages70

Reading Time2 h 56 min

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Abstract

Introduction

School quality signals in housing markets

Racial composition and policy context

IZA DP No. 6790 The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools Atila Abdulkadiroğlu Joshua D. Angrist Parag A. Pathak August 2012 D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools Atila Abdulkadiroğlu Duke University Joshua D. Angrist MIT, NBER and IZA Parag A. Pathak MIT and NBER Discussion Paper No. 6790 August 2012 IZA P.O. Box 7240 53072 Bonn Germany Phone: +49-228-3894-0 Fax: +49-228-3894-180 E-mail: [iza@iza.org](iza@iza.org) Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program . IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6790 August 2012 ABSTRACT The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at * Boston and New York Exam Schools Parents gauge school quality in part by the level of student achievement and a school’s racial mix. The importance of school characteristics in the housing market can be seen in the jumpin house prices at school district boundaries where peer characteristics change. The question of whether schools with more attractive peers are really better in a value-added sense remains open, however. This paper uses a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effects of peer characteristics. Our design exploits admissions cutoffs for Boston and New York City’s heavily over-subscribed exam schools. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the least selective of these schools move from schools with scores near the bottom of the state SAT score distribution to a school with scores near the median. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the most selective of these schools move from above-average schools to schools with students drawn from the extreme upper tail. Exam school students can also expect to study with fewer nonwhite classmates than unsuccessful applicants. Our estimates suggest that the marked changes in peer characteristics at exam school admissions cutoffs have little causal effect on test scores or college quality. JEL Classification: I21, I28, C21 Keywords: human capital, peer effects, school quality Corresponding author: Joshua D. Angrist MIT Economics E52-391 77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA, 02142 USA E-mail: [angrist@mit.edu](angrist@mit.edu) * Our thanks to Kamal Chavda, Jack Yessayan, and the Boston Public Schools; and to Jennifer BellEllwanger, Thomas Gold, Jesse Margolis, and the New York City Department of Education, for graciously sharing their data. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of either the Boston Public Schools or the NYC Department of Education. We’re grateful for comments from participants in the June 2010 Tel-Aviv Frontiers in the Economics of Education conference, the Summer 2011 NBER Labor Studies

FAQs

How does the paper evaluate peer characteristics in exam schools?

It uses a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design exploiting admissions cutoffs for Boston and New York City’s oversubscribed exam schools.

What peer changes occur for applicants near the admissions cutoffs?

Successful applicants near cutoffs at less selective schools move from the lower SAT distribution toward the median, while those near cutoffs at the most selective schools move from above-average peers to students drawn from the extreme upper tail.

What is the main causal finding about achievement and college outcomes?

The paper’s estimates indicate that the marked shifts in peer characteristics at exam school admissions cutoffs have little causal effect on test scores or college quality.

Aug 29, 2026

Uploaded by Bintang