Non-Peer Productive Voucher Gains

In Simple Words

Imagine a ticket that lets kids switch sports leagues. If kids who receive the ticket end up in a league with less experienced teammates but still play significantly better overall, their improvement cannot be caused by riding on the coattails of stronger teammates. Instead, the ticket must be granting access to superior coaching or creating stronger personal motivation to practice.

Research question

Standard economic debates question whether school vouchers generate net educational productivity or merely redistribute access to high-achieving peers in a zero-sum sorting mechanism. Disentangling productive gains from peer effects requires testing voucher outcomes in settings where recipients do not gain access to observably superior peers.

Participants

N = 1,176 human student applicants (1995 cohort) and 300 target secondary schools in Bogotá, Colombia.

Study Design

Randomized controlled trial leveraging a randomized voucher lottery (PACES program) comparing lottery winners and losers among applicants to private vocational schools.

Results

Among vocational applicants, voucher winners attended schools where peers were 25% less likely to attend college and 33% more likely to drop out. Despite worse peer characteristics, voucher winners experienced a 25% increase in high school graduation likelihood and a 0.33 to 0.66 standard deviation increase in college entrance exam (ICFES) scores.

Takeaway

Evaluate school voucher productivity by isolating sub-populations where lottery mechanisms assign recipients to lower-performing peer groups to control for zero-sum peer redistribution.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Randomized controlled trial

A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.

ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.

GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →

Related findings

• Class Size Reduction Ineffectiveness →Education

  Reducing the number of audience members in a lecture hall does not help the remaining listeners understand a presentation if the speaker continues delivering the material in a language that the audience cannot comprehend.

• Elite School Non-Participation Filter →Education

  Think of a luxury sports club that refuses to accept public fitness vouchers because accepting them would force the club to lower its membership fees and crowd its facilities. Consequently, public vouchers are accepted mainly by budget and mid-tier private clubs catering to cost-conscious families.

• Heterogeneous Peer Preference Sorting →Education

  Imagine two groups of students—one group wants intensive French immersion and the other wants computer programming. Allowing each group to gather in specialized academies lets both groups enjoy their ideal learning environment without depriving the other group of what they value.

• Linear-in-Means Peer Externalities Model →Education

  Think of a team relay race where swapping a fast runner onto Team A makes Team A faster but makes Team B equally slower, leaving the combined average time of all runners completely unchanged. Unless the swap somehow inspires individual runners to run faster on their own regardless of who runs next to them, overall race performance remains identical.