The Mirage of Elite Schools: Evidence from Lottery-based School Admissions in China

Abstract

In this paper we use school admission lotteries to estimate the eect of elite school atten- dance on student achievement in China. The empirical assessment requires combining lottery records with administrative Middle School Exit Exam (MSEE) records, in which we encounter an imperfect matching problem arising from the lack of a common unique identi…er. To address this problem, we develop a data combination procedure and extend the existing local average treatment eect (LATE) framework to analyze treatment eects in contexts with imperfect matching following data combination. Despite the large observed superiority of elite schools in student achievement, we …nd little evidence that three-year attendance at an elite school improves students'MSEE scores or secondary school admission outcomes. We also …nd that the most sought-after elite schools are those with the highest student achievement level, rather than those with the largest value-added eect on test scores. This …nding suggests that parents may choose schools primarily on the basis of their observed superiority in student outcomes rather than their academic value-added, which casts doubt on parents'ability to identify schools that are better suited to their children's learning needs.