Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A large literature examines the role of peer effects or changes in school quality on students’ outcomes after they participate in school choice policies. Yet, many students face insurmountable barriers to enrollment in choice high schools. The role peers and school staff play in helping students navigate the school choice process is underdeveloped. This mixed methods paper examines how a program to increase high-absence students’ school engagement changes students’ high school choice behaviors through direct pathways of program participation and indirect pathways of program spillover that include peer effects or school-level changes induced by the intervention.

Examining the effectiveness of policies with spillovers to non-participants proves difficult. Since treatment may also influence control outcomes, program spillover can bias the treatment-control comparison even in experiments. Yet, the effectiveness of a program may rely on this spillover as a pathway for inducing positive change. In this study, we implemented a stratified randomized control trial at student, grade, and school levels to measure both direct and indirect effects of a policy that changes students’ social capital via peers and staff resources at their school.

We examine the effectiveness of Check & Connect (C&C) a flexible student-centered mentoring intervention for high-absences students in Chicago. Mentors may directly mitigate barriers to school choice participation by providing treatment students with information, encouragement, and individualized support rarely offered by counselors. C&C may indirectly influence control students who attend schools randomly selected to have C&C mentors via the school choice actions of their peers or changes mentors have on the school environment.

Our quantitative analysis indicates the importance of this indirect pathway of social spillover on students’ school choice behaviors. We find no differences in the school choice participation of treatment and control students who attend the same school. Sample students at treatment schools, however, are 8.6 percentage points more likely to be accepted to a choice school (p < 0.01) and submit 1.5 more applications (p < 0.01) than similar students at control schools. Spillover to control students at treatment schools appear to drive these school-level results, since impacts change only slightly when control students at treatment schools are compared to their control counterparts at control schools. Control student at C&C treatment schools are 7.6 percentage points more likely to be accepted (p < 0.05) and apply to 1.4 more schools (p < 0.01) than similar students at control schools.

Complimentary qualitative analysis finds variation in mentors’ formal relationships with non-caseload students and other school personnel. Mentors randomly assigned to one focal school compared to two appear more likely to make these connections. Future quantitative analysis will test this qualitative finding by examining whether mentors assigned to one focal school induce greater spillover. Additional analysis will seek to untangle whether spillover occurs via peer networks or mentor spillover at the school level.

Effective school choice policies require students and families to actively participate in school choice decisions. This research indicates the significant role peers and staff at the school level also play in students’ school choice decisions.