An Empirical Investigation of Peer Effects in Schools and of Household Responses to School Policy Changes

这项研究实证调查了北卡罗来纳州公立学校的同伴效应的大小和性质，以及家长如何通过选择住处和学校类型(私立或公立)来选择学校(以及学校内的同龄人群体如何内生形成)。来自北卡罗来纳州教育研究(NCER)数据中心的一个新的独特的数据集包含了北卡罗来纳州公立学校三年级到八年级学生在五年内的详细信息。学生与教师联系在一起，这允许对同龄人群体有不同的定义，包括在课堂上，而不是在年级或学校一级。所有公立学校学生都可以使用的学生地址，将链接到私人可用的抵押贷款/租户数据集中的地址，其中包括这类教育数据集中通常无法获得的大量家庭信息。这些数据将成为这项研究的基础。除了允许研究人员使用更广泛的家庭控制之外，该数据集还允许单独识别以下学生：(I)在样本期间留在北卡罗来纳州公立学校，无论他们是否搬家和转学，(Ii)在公立学校和私立学校之间切换，以及(Iii)进入或离开该州，从而进入或退出学校数据集。NCER数据集目前已可用，可用于第一个确定同伴效应和评估学校内同伴效应的确切性质的工作。将罗利-达勒姆大都市区的私人抵押贷款/租户数据与NCER的数据合并，使研究人员能够调查提案的第二个目标。政策实验和罗利达勒姆地区频繁的学校社区边界变化将被用来确定家庭对居住地点和学校类型的选择的决定因素。这为更雄心勃勃的努力奠定了基础，该努力将类似的抵押贷款/租户数据与整个NCER数据集合并，以创建一个单一的数据集，其中包含北卡罗来纳州所有学生、教师、学校、同龄人和家庭的广泛信息。这将是此类数据中唯一的数据集。研究结果在几个方面将是有用的：因为这项研究允许测试不同类型的同龄人群体的重要性，它很可能在确定同龄人效应的因果性质方面取得实质性进展。其次，这项研究将为政策制定者提供洞察力，这些政策制定者的努力往往因家庭对政策变化的选择而受挫。最后，该项目为建立一个非常全面的教育数据集奠定了基础，该数据集结合了关于学生、家庭、同龄人和教师的详细信息。

ABSTRACTPROPOSAL NO: 0339000 INSTITUTION: Duke UniversityNSF PROGRAM: ENHANCING HUMAN PERFORMANCEPI: Nechyba, ThomasTITLE: An Empirical Investigation of Peer Effects in Schools and of Household Responses to School Policy ChangesThis research empirically investigates the size and nature of peer effects in North Carolina public schools and how parents choose schools (and thus how peer groups within schools endogenously form) both through their choices of residential location and their choices of school type (private or public). A new and unique dataset from the North Carolina Education Research (NCER) Data Center contains detailed information on all North Carolina public school students in grades 3 through 8 over a five-year period. Students are linked to teachers and this allows for a variety of definitions of peer groups, including at the classroom rather than the grade or school level. Student addresses, available for all public school students, will be linked to addresses in privately available mortgage/renter datasets that include a wealth of household information not typically available in education datasets of this kind. This data will be the basis for the research.In addition to permitting researchers to use more extensive household controls, this dataset permits the separate identification of students who (i) remain within North Carolina public schools over the sample period regardless of whether they move and switch schools, (ii) switch between public and private schools, and (iii) enter or exit the state and thus enter or drop out of the school dataset. The NCER dataset is currently available and can be used in pursuit of the first of the identification of peer effects and the evaluation of the precise nature of peer effects within schools. Merging the private mortgage/renter data for the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area with the NCER data permits the researchers to investigate the second objective of the proposal. Policy experiments and frequent school neighborhood boundary changes within the Raleigh Durham area will be used to identify determinants of household choices over residential location and school type. This lays the groundwork for a more ambitious effort to merge similar mortgage/renter data with the entire NCER dataset in order to create a single dataset with extensive information on all students, teachers, schools, peers and households within North Carolina. This would be the only dataset of its kind. The research results will be useful in several ways: Because the research allows the testing the importance of different types of peer groups, it is likely to make substantial advances in identifying the causal nature of peer effects. Second, the research will yield insights for policymakers whose efforts are often frustrated by household choices that respond to policy changes. Finally, the project lays the groundwork for the construction of a very comprehensive education dataset that combines detailed information on students, households, peers and teachers.