Author(s)
Glenn Ellison and Parag Pathak
Source
NBER Working Paper 22589, September 2016
Summary
The race-neutral affirmative action system used at elite Chicago schools has been upheld as a national model. Under this system, slots are reserved students from low-income areas. But the schools must accept far more students with low test scores than under a race-based quota system.
Policy Relevance
Color-blind admissions policies distort admissions more than necessary, compared with racial quotas. Banning racial preferences in admissions has a high cost.
Main Points
- Schools’ affirmative action plans are intended to ensure that children are exposed to different viewpoints, while allowing the school to offer a curriculum suited to students’ abilities.
- The benefits of affirmative action depend on its effect on the number of minority students admitted, and whether the policy prevents the school from admitting desirable students.
- The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) use a system based on socioeconomic status to allocate slots at elite exam high schools; slots are reserved for students from low-income neighborhoods.
- The CPS system admits some students with low test scores, distorting the admission process by reducing the average score of admitted students.
- The reduction in score is four or five times larger than the reduction that would result if the schools adopted policies that explicitly consider race.
- The race-neutral policy is highly inefficient.
- No race-neutral affirmative action plan could increase minority representation to 50%, but a plan that explicitly considers race could do this without significant reductions in average scores.
- Under the CPS plan, some minority students with top scores are not admitted (even if they are from low-income households); as a result, the CPS plan doubles the gap between the average scores of students of different races.
- Race neutral plans are less effective than minority quotas in increasing the proportion of low-income students at the schools.