Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Education researchers have a longstanding interest in the effects of peers on educational choices. Much of this research has focused on the relationships between peer norms and educational decision-making for higher levels of education. Less is known about peer effects on educational choices at lower levels. These issues are of increased importance as large urban school districts implement K-12 school choice programs. In this paper, we examine the case of universal public high school choice in New York City and estimate the extent to which school classmates’ applications are correlated. We propose and evaluate novel methods for measuring similarity of choice lists. We find that students’ choices are highly dissimilar to those of other students in their school, district, borough, and city – a pattern largely inconsistent with strong peer influences on students’ specific application decisions. However, we find that some demographic subgroups exhibit much higher levels of similarity than others, and that those differences cannot be entirely explained by school or geographic characteristics. Finally, we propose three mechanisms by which these differences could arise: the supply of schools, preferences for schools or peers, and information.