Program Profile: Public School Choice Lottery (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., School District)

This program consisted of an open-enrollment school choice plan in the Charlotte–Mecklenburg, N.C., School District, which was designed to offer slots at oversubscribed schools through a lottery-based system. The program is rated No Effects. There were no statistically significant differences between middle or high school students who won the lottery and middle or high school students who did not win the lottery in number of drug, property, or violent felony arrests, at the 7-year follow up.

A No Effects rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s) and may result in a negative outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals/Program Components

Before 2001, the Charlotte–Mecklenburg, N.C., School District (CMS) was required by a court order to preserve a racial balance in all schools. To meet this requirement, students were bused around the school district. After numerous legal challenges, the court order was overturned, and CMS was no longer allowed to determine enrollment on the basis of race. Instead, in 2001 the school board voted for districtwide open enrollment, also known as School Choice, for the 2002–03 school year. School Choice policies allow parents to choose the best public school for their child, regardless of whether the school is in the student’s neighborhood. In Charlotte–Mecklenburg, students were guaranteed access to their neighborhood school, and those who wanted to attend a school other than the one in their neighborhood were able to do so by applying for open-enrollment admission. Parents could submit up to three choices of schools, and admission was subject to capacity for each grade level. Parents ranked their three choices of schools in an ordered list.

Given that the open-enrollment policy led to the use of a lottery system, this provided an opportunity to examine the possible impact of school choice on crime. Deming (2011) took advantage of this opportunity by examining students who were able to attend their first-choice school, compared with students who did not get to attend their first-choice school. Information on the lottery-based system is offered in the methodology alongside of the methods used to investigate the impact of School Choice in the Charlotte–Mecklenburg School District.

Target Population

Parents and families in the Charlotte–Mecklenburg School District, including middle and high school, were targeted through an extensive outreach campaign, so that interested families knew about the open-enrollment lottery and had the opportunity to apply.

Program Theory

School Choice policies are grounded in research suggesting that criminal activity typically peaks when youths should still be enrolled in high school, and is concentrated among minority males in high-poverty neighborhoods (Deming 2011). Researchers and policy makers have attempted to explain this link between education and crime. For example, Lochner and Moretti (2004) found that schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration and arrest. They used changes in compulsory schooling and child labor laws, which show that legal reforms appear to raise education levels and reduce arrest rates.

A human capital framework is also used to explain this link between education and crime. A human capital framework explains that low-skilled youths will engage in crime early in life because they do not anticipant a high return on school involvement (Lochner 2004). This framework argues that if the return on school investment is raised, students will stay in school longer, earn higher wages as adults, and therefore commit fewer crimes. Specifically, it is believed that offering youths admission to a better school would raise their investment in school, thus keeping them in school longer and decreasing their likelihood of criminal involvement.

Using these theories, School Choice polices seek to affect the link between education and crime by offering parents and students the opportunity to attend a school of their choice. It is believed that providing the opportunity to attend a first-choice school will diminish the likelihood that a student will become criminally involved (Deming 2011).

Study 1

Open enrollment was available to middle and high school students in the Charlotte–Mecklenburg, N.C., School District (CMS) and required parents to apply for the lottery-based system, thus creating a self-selecting sample. More than 95 percent of parents submitted at least one choice. However, an open-enrollment policy meant that some schools would have more students who wanted to go there than the schools would have available slots. A policy was developed whereby slots at oversubscribed schools were first filled by students with guaranteed access (i.e., students in the neighborhood) and any remaining slots were allocated by a random lottery-based system. CMS used an algorithm known as “first choice maximizer,” which gave students a higher likelihood of receiving their first choice school than their second, a higher likelihood of their first choice than their third choice, and a higher likelihood of their second choice than their third choice (Deming 2011).

The lottery-based system was structured by an ordered priority grouping, which consisted of the following groups: 1) students who attended school in the previous year and their siblings; 2) free or reduced-priced lunch eligible (FRPL) students applying to schools where fewer than half of the school’s population in the previous year were FRPL; 3) students applying to schools in their choice zone. Applicants were sorted into these priority groups and then assigned a lottery number. Lottery numbers were distributed within each group, so that remaining slots at these schools were offered to those in a higher-ranking priority group, by their lottery number, before slots were offered to applicants in a lower-ranking priority group.

CMS administrative data was matched to arrest records from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff (MCS). The administrative data includes demographic information, attendance and behavioral outcomes, yearly test scores in math and reading for grades 3 through 8, and subject-specific tests for higher grades. The data also includes students’ addresses each year; these were used to create geographic identifiers. The MCS maintains an online searchable database that covers arrests in the county for the previous 3 years, which includes all arrests of adults (age 16 and older in North Carolina) that occurred in the county. Given that open enrollment began in 2002 and the MCS had arrest records only for 2006–09, some of the older students may have been arrested before 2006 and thus would not be captured by this database. As a result, historical arrest records were also obtained directly from the MCS for lottery members only.

The overall sample consisted of 21,132 high school students and 22,896 middle school students. Sixty percent of the total sample were excluded from the analysis because they chose, and thus automatically received, their neighborhood school. Of the remaining 40 percent, 75 percent were excluded because these students were in lottery priority groups where the probability of admission was either 0 or 1; therefore, there was no random assignment to analyze. Further, given that high-risk students are overwhelmingly male, females were excluded from the analysis. This left a final lottery sample of 1,891 high school students and 2,320 middle school students.

Lottery winners and nonwinners were matched on variables such as race, gender, and prior test scores to ensure comparability. Within the final sample, lottery winners were compared with nonwinners on the following outcome measures: all nontraffic arrests; felony arrests; property felonies; violent felonies; drug felonies; total social costs; sentence-weighted, which weights crimes by the expected punishment if convicted, while taking into account criminal intent; and total dates incarcerated. Total social costs were defined as the victimization costs, such as lost productivity and medical care, as well as quality of life. Certain crimes are given an estimated financial value, which were used to determine the total social cost of crime. Sentence-weighted weighed crimes by the expected punishment if convicted, while taking into account criminal intent. Subgroup analyses were conducted to examine the potential difference in outcomes for middle- and high-school students.

Subgroup Analysis

Deming (2011) conducted subgroup analyses to examine the potential difference in outcomes for middle- and high-school students. For middle-school students, there were no statistically significant differences between students who won the school choice lottery and students who did not win the lottery in all nontraffic arrests or felony arrests at the 7-year follow up. However, middle-school students who won the lottery had statistically significantly fewer property felony arrests, violent felony arrests, and drug felony arrests, compared with middle-school students who did not win the lottery at the 7-year follow up. For high-school students, there were no statistically significant differences found between students who won the school choice lottery and students who did not win the lottery in all nontraffic arrests, property felony arrests, violent felony arrests, or drug felony arrests at the 7-year follow up. However, high-school students who won the lottery had statistically significantly fewer felony arrests, compared with students who did not win the lottery, at the 7-year follow up.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: