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  3. American Economic Review
  4. December 2004
  5. Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program

  • Joshua D. Angrist
  • Kevin Lang
American Economic Review
vol. 94, no. 5, December 2004
(pp. 1613–1634)
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Abstract

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (Metco) is a desegregation program that sends students from Boston schools to more affluent suburbs. Metco increases the number of blacks and reduces test scores in receiving districts. School-level data for Massachusetts and micro data from a large district show no impact of Metco on the scores of white non-Metco students. But the micro estimates show some evidence of an effect on minority third graders, especially girls. Instrumental variables estimates for third graders are imprecise but generally in line with ordinary least squares estimates. Given the localized nature of these results, we conclude that peer effects from Metco are modest and short lived.

Citation

Angrist, Joshua, D., and Kevin Lang. 2004. "Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program." American Economic Review, 94 (5): 1613–1634. DOI: 10.1257/0002828043052169

JEL Classification

  • I21 Analysis of Education
  • J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination