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ERIC Number: ED674486
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Jan
Pages: 59
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: 0000-00-00
When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice. Discussion Paper #2022.09
Sarah Cohodes; Sean Corcoran; Jennifer Jennings; Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj
Blueprint Labs
This paper reports the results of a large, school-level randomized controlled trial evaluating a set of three informational interventions for young people choosing high schools in 473 middle schools, serving over 115,000 8th graders. The interventions differed in their level of customization to the student and their mode of delivery (paper or online); all treated schools received identical materials to scaffold the decision-making process. Every intervention reduced likelihood of application to and enrollment in schools with graduation rates below the city median (75 percent). An important channel is their effect on reducing nonoptimal first choice application strategies. Providing a simplified, middle-school specific list of relatively high graduation rate schools had the largest impacts, causing students to enroll in high schools with 1.5-percentage point higher graduation rates. Providing the same information online, however, did not alter students' choices or enrollment. This appears to be due to low utilization. Online interventions with individual customization, including a recommendation tool and search engine, induced students to enroll in high schools with 1-percentage point higher graduation rates, but with more variance in impact. Together, these results show that successful informational interventions must generate engagement with the material, and this is possible through multiple channels. [Additional funding for the NYC High School Admissions Study came from the NYU Institute for Human Development and Social Change.]
Blueprint Labs. 30 Wadsworth Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. e-mail: contact@mitblueprintlabs.org; Web site: https://blueprintlabs.mit.edu/
Related Records: ED618515
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education; High Schools; Elementary Education; Grade 8
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Blueprint Labs; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Identifiers - Location: New York (New York)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A