Achievement Gains from Attendance at Selective High Schools

Achievement Gains from Attendance at Selective High Schools Brendan Houng ORCID: 0000-0002-0858-7876 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2018 Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Abstract Academically selective high schools are a polarizing topic in education policy, despite only having a small presence in some Australian states. They appear successful. The schools regularly top annual school rankings of university entrance results, but this is perhaps unsurprising given that their students are admitted based on their performances on an entrance exam. This thesis asks whether selective high schools improve their students’ university entrance results beyond what they would have achieved otherwise. The main chapter is a case study from an anonymized Australian state that follows high-achievement students through high school. The key challenge is finding a group of non-selective students comparable to those who attend selective schools. For additional background, the thesis explored the following themes: the historical development of selective high schools, the premise that the schools cater to gifted and talented students, and the high levels of demand for the schools within current trends in educational policy. The thesis provides the first estimates of the selective school effect (roughly contemporaneous with Zen 20161) from matching and regression discontinuity approaches in the Australian context, which are improved statistical methods compared with that of previous research (e.g. regression analyses from Lu and Rickard, 2014). The estimates point to small positive effects at best on university entrance results from attending the selective schools. Overall, the small selective school effect appears to reflect the high levels of educational aspiration of both selective students as well as applicants who attended other schools. Both groups of students appear to be among the most driven and motivated, being disproportionately from immigrant and socio-economically advantaged backgrounds and having implicitly signaled an aspirational intent by applying to the schools. Lastly, the thesis expands on one aspect of the selective schools, whereby many of their students experience a decrease in within-school achievement ranks from attending a school with high-achievement peers. In a more general context, the thesis assesses the effect from changes in local ranks on later achievement for students who transitioned from primary to secondary school. The results indicate that perceived increases in local rank have a negative 1 Zen (2016) conducted similar regression discontinuity analyses of 18 selective schools in New South Wales, reflecting a broad range of academic selectivity. Zen finds limited and mostly insignificant effects consistent with the research here and previous studies from the UK and the USA. Note that Zen’s study was not accessible prior to March 2018. effect on standardized test scores, suggesting that students reduced their allocation of effort in response to random increases in rank. The new empirical evidence from the thesis supports the view that selective schools represent a positive achievement ideal for their students. Recent public policy discourse on the selective schools has included calls for expansion of the system to the primary school level in one state, and criticisms of a hyper-competitive culture at the schools, including suggestions of unfair entry due to excessive tutoring on the part of applicants. The research positively contributes to the discourse by providing historical context, identifying the relevant issues and articulating the potential indirect consequences of these policies. Declaration This is to certify that: 1. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface, 2. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, 3. the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. _________________________ Brendan Houng, March 2018 Preface My experience attending a selective high school inspired my interest in this topic. Chapter 4 is an iteration of a research project conducted in 2016 and is joint work with my supervisor Associate Professor Chris Ryan. It is also the second set of analyses relating to the main research question, reflecting the historical development of the research. Chapter 3, the preliminary set of analyses, was presented at an Economics PhD conference at the University of Queensland in November 2015. Data, Privacy and Anonymization The main research uses data from an Australian state that is anonymized for privacy concerns regarding the identities of both the state and individual selective schools. The number of selective high schools in the thesis is not specified and certain details are intentionally less precise to prevent the identification of schools. The research from Chapter 5 uses data from the Victorian Department of Education and Training. The findings and views reported in this thesis are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to any branches of state or Australian Commonwealth governments. Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my supervisors Associate Professor Chris Ryan, Professor Guyonne Kalb, and Professor Moshe Justman. I thank them for exceeding their duties, guiding and supporting me towards raising the quality of my work. I especially thank Chris as my main supervisor for helping me develop an intuition for narrative, and for his inexhaustible patience and insights. I thank Guyonne for stepping up at the crucial end period to shoulder a large share of the burden, helping me with improving the clarity of my writing and getting all the small details right. I thank Moshe for showing me the importance of sustained effort in the Sisyphean struggle that is the creative process. I thank: Dr. Cain Polidano for thought-provoking discussions on education and selective schools, committee member Professor John Haisken- DeNew for his contribution to this work, and Associate Professor Gigi Foster for providing helpful comments on an earlier version of Chapter 3. I am indebted to the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute), where I have worked on public policy research and on this thesis. I thank my colleagues and fellow students at the Melbourne Institute and at the Faculty of Business and Economics who I have gotten to know so well and helped me along the way, and with whom I shared a common enjoyment in the exchange of ideas and furthering research in public policy. I am thankful for crossing paths with Dr. Mike Helal and Lama Andari. I am thankful for the University of Melbourne for providing an ideal environment for intellectual endeavours with beautiful surrounds. For Chapters 3 and 4, I thank the state education department for providing access to the data that is used in this research, and thank the individuals at the state department who helped facilitate the research. I thank also the principals of the selective schools for their valuable input. I thank seminar and conference participants at the Melbourne Institute and at the state education department for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this research. I thank the Victorian Department of Education and Training (formerly the Department of Education and Early Childhood Education) and the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, for providing access to the data that is used in Chapter 5. I would like to thank the individuals involved in setting up the research partnership between the Department of Education and Training and the Melbourne Institute, including Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark and Professor Duncan McVicar. I thank the individuals who helped facilitate my research under the research partnership and provided their comments and feedback on the veracity of the details in my work, including: Rose Peterson, Leona Smith, Catherine Rule, Joe Bui, Michael Dalton, Emma Katauskas, Scott Ware, Jamie Jacob, Sam Dwyer, Colleen Howell, Joyce Cleary, and Andrew Nipe. Apologies to others who I have missed. I thank my loving wife Saori for her unwavering belief in me, and my children, Yuka, Kenji and Sota, for inspiring me. I thank my parents, Simon and Susan Houng, for their encouragement and support. I thank all my friends and family, who helped provide motivation when progress stalled. Thank you to you all. Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Structure ........................................................................................................................... 3 1.2. Background ....................................................................................................................... 3 1.3. Setup of the Main Analyses ............................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 13 2.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 13 2.2. Demand for Academic Selection ..................................................................................... 14 2.3. Academic Achievement & Educational Psychology ........................................................

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