Privately Managed Public Secondary Schools and Academic Achievement in Trinidad and Tobago: Evidence from Rule-Based Student Assignments

Abstract

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A Theory of Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of School Quality

“…Narita (2015) uses lottery-based randomization to identify a structural model. Other studies use related regression-discontinuity-style tie-breaking rules to evaluate college majors in Norway (Kirkeboen et al 2016) and in Chile (Hastings et al 2013), daycare in Italy (Fort et al 2016), privately managed public schools in Trinidad and Tobago (Beuermann et al 2016), as well as popular selective schools in Ghana (Ajayi 2013), Kenya (Lucas and Mbiti 2014), Romania (Pop-Eleches and Urquiola 2013), Trinidad and Tobago (Jackson 2010(Jackson , 2012, and the U.S. (Abdulkadroǧlu et al 2017).…”

Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design

“…22 The non‐lottery tie‐breaking embedded in centralized assignment schemes is used in econometric research on schools in Chile (Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman (2013), Zimmerman (2019)), Ghana (Ajayi (2014)), Italy (Fort, Ichino, and Zanella (2020)), Kenya (Lucas and Mbiti (2014)), Norway (Kirkeboen, Leuven, and Mogstad (2016)), Romania (Pop‐Eleches and Urquiola (2013)), Trinidad and Tobago (Jackson (2010, 2012), Beuermann, Jackson, and Sierra (2016)), and the United States (Abdulkadiroğlu, Angrist, and Pathak (2014), Dobbie and Fryer (2014), Barrow, Sartain, and de la Torre (2016), Abdulkadiroğlu et al (2017)). These studies treat individual schools and tie‐breakers in isolation, without exploiting centralized assignment.…”

Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design

“…The propensity score theorem says that for research designs in which treatment status, D i , is independent of potential outcomes conditional on covariates, X i , treatment status is also independent of potential outcomes conditional on the propensity score, that is, conditional on E[D i |X i ]. In work building onAbdulkadiroglu et al (2017a), the DA propensity score has been used to study schools(Bergman, 2018), management training(Abebe et al, 2019), and entrepreneurship training (Pérez Vincent and Ubfal, 2019).2 Non-lottery tie-breaking embedded in centralized assignment schemes has been used in econometric research on schools in Chile(Hastings et al, 2013; Zimmerman, 2019), Ghana(Ajayi, 2014), Italy(Fort et al, 2020), Kenya(Lucas and Mbiti, 2014), Norway(Kirkeboen et al, 2016), Romania (Pop-Eleches and Urquiola, 2013), Trinidad and Tobago(Jackson, 2010(Jackson, , 2012Beuermann et al, 2016), and the U.S (Abdulkadiroglu et al, 2014;Dobbie and Fryer, 2014;Barrow et al, 2016)…”