Choices of low achieving students in NYC high school choice

The Institute for Education and Social Policy has a report out on NYC high school choices, and how these differ for high and low achieving students. (I blogged about news reports of this and related studies here.)

The study itself, by Lori Nathanson, Sean Corcoran and Christine Baker-Smith, all of NYU is here:
High School Choice in New York City: A Report on the School Choices and Placements of Low-Achieving Students

Here's the summary of the executive summary:


Key Findings
• Low-achieving students were matched to schools that were lower performing, on average, than
those of all other students.
• These differences in placements were:
- Driven by differences in students’ initial choices—low-achieving students’ first-choice
schools were less selective, lower-performing, and more disadvantaged;
- Not a consequence of low-achieving students being less likely to receive their first
choice—overall, lower-achieving and higher-achieving students were matched to their top
choices at the same rate.
• Both low- and higher-achieving students appear to prefer schools that are close to home. Thus,
differences in students’ choices likely reflect, at least in part, the fact that lower-achieving
students are highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where options may be more limited.